First things first: My DAW is a standalone PC that never sees the internet, and has a $1,500 AD/DA input output device attached to it. This question is NOT about Cakewalk / Sonar. On the other side of my desk sits my $400 "beater" PC that I use to surf the net while on breaks from Sonar. It came with the standard $0.35 made-in-China piece of garbage built-in RealTek soundcard that most off the shelf cheap PCs come with. I do a fair amount of music listening over the internet PC, and want to upgrade from the crappy realtek, mainly because it has so much self-noise that the mind boggles. (Turn up the speakers to 50% with no song playing, and it sounds like outer space noises; it is garbage.) I'd go as high as $50 (but I'd rather keep it around $30-$40). I surfed around, and see the 'Sound Blaster Audigy SE PCI Sound Card' for around $30 online. (Forum old-timers will share my reluctance to spend $$ on a Sound Blaster; it was the realTek of 15 years ago), but it might be the right choice for my non-DAW PC. Thoughts or tips for a guy who wants to step up from the RealTek for a non-DAW casual use PC? Thanks for any insights, Ed

well, I had both, the Audigy and the Extreme Gamer a step up. I suggest (for a Soundblaster card I guess) the Extreme Gamer. Just my thoughts as at least you can record on it if really needing to, while the Audigy you can not. And the Extreme Gamer will just sound better (but still what it is - cheap Soundblaster). But then................................

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The M-Audio audiophile 24/96 is pretty cheap. I have one I'll never use again. PM me if your interested and make an offer. I live in the Boston area.

Sounds like there's something awry with your onboard or you've got all your input levels full up.  The Realtek chip is usually as good (or perhaps no worse) as any other add on consumer card.

If you are on Windows 7 uninstall the bloated Realtek driver and just use the standard Windows HD Audio device driver and mute your line and mic inputs in the standard windows mixer and you will be fine.

There's some folk that produce some really good mixes just using the onboard while they are on the road.

It ain't the tools.  I wouldn't waste money putting a SB when you can get a reasonable 2X2 interface for the same cost if you are going to put something else in it.  Something like the suggestion from GuitarPima above may even be a better bet.

JB: "Sounds like there's something awry with your onboard or you've got all your input levels full up." "It ain't the tools." Ed: In this case, I think it is the tools (and there probably is something awry). I have everything (other inputs) turned off (muted plus volume slider at minimum) except for the input channel that I need to play back the occasional file. This is such a low priority thing for me that I may just "deal with it" for a while; who knows. I can play things like youtube vids (or anything quiet) with minimal annoyance. It's only when I want to either crank something up (or listen to my own songs over headphones to evaluate MP3 transfers before emailing to others) where I get annoyed by the nasty cross-talk noises. Definitely not worth spending $99 on... It's funny: I've had *many* crappy "internet only / non-DAW" computers since probably 1993, and I have NEVER heard so much strange spaceship noises coming out of a built-in soundcard. I think I got a dud. It just strikes me as ironic that I have (what feels to me like) a bajillion dollars worth of audio gear connected to the PC on my left, yet every day I spend at least an hour listening to the world's cheapest, crappiest audio gear that's connected to the PC on my right...

Yeah I'm sure some implementations are better than others as far as noise goes, both the boards I've used the onboard on have been acceptable the HDAudio technology as a base line is obviously adequate for most as it's pretty much standard on every machine out there now and the market for third party consumer audio cards is pretty small.

While they are nothing to write home about SNR has never been a problem for me with one and they certainly have the capability of exceeding the mp3 spec whatever bit rate you choose.

I'd strongly suggest getting rid of the Realtek driver if you are on Vista or above and using the default Microsoft HD Audio Device one as the Realtek driver has all sorts of noise cancellation routines and wacky environmental effects built-in.

Jonbouy is right, the on board sound is not usually this bad. Sounds more like an electrical (analog signal) problem than a digital failure. A different driver may help if the problem is digital processing, but not if the problem is with how the analog signal is being generated and transmitted to your transducer. First check the transducer (speakers, headphones or whatever) connected to a known good source. If you still get the noise there is probably not much you can do with your motherboard/sound chip to correct the leaky circuit, and even the cheapest of sound cards most likely will work better. It is not too likely that the problem will be found in the digital bus interface that you plug the new card into. Most cheap audio cards will produce listenable signal, they fall down when you try to use them for recording because of a lack of features, and cheap AD conversion.

Onboard sound can be noisy, especially if the board layout/circuitry is not well done. PCs are notoriously noisy places (which is why many pro interfaces have long isolated their noise-sensitive bits in outboard boxes connected via an umbilical).

Dunno about Sound Blasters (haven't used one since the ISA days), but do use a HiTec card in my gaming/disc watching/general purpose box. Think they are branded Auzentech (or something like that). A bit expensive (maybe $70 back when iirc) but it is very nice and clean sounding, has analog and digital I/O and the op amps are socketed so as to be easily upgradeable if desired for even better audio (never felt the need).

One thing you might try, if your onboard sound has an S/PDIF out, is using that connected to speakers (or an A/V receiver or a DAW interface) with an S/PDIF input (n my setup, my cheapo surround speaker system has both analog and digital (coax and optical) inputs).

One thing you might try, if your onboard sound has an S/PDIF out, is using that connected to speakers (or an A/V receiver or a DAW interface) with an S/PDIF input (n my setup, my cheapo surround speaker system has both analog and digital (coax and optical) inputs).

That's a good point actually, you can pick up one of those little DACs for peanuts these days and just use the onboard codec to drive it via SP/DIF

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