Motherboard audio help

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I have a low impedance headset. People tell me that onboard audio is terrible and a dedicated soundcard will improve my audio experience. How much will it really improve?

The short answer is, not very much, unfortunately. 90% of the time, onboard audio chipsets like the Realtek ALC889 are actually more suitable for your favorite gaming headset than fancy add-on cards. WHY?!? The long answer is much more complicated. First of all, most -- if not all -- gaming headsets have a low impedance and a high efficiency, meaning that driving them does NOT take special amplification. While you could certainly plug your headset into a Xonar Essence STX, for example, and it would get plenty loud, you'd only be able to use about 30% of the volume control before it blows your ears off, and if you ever set it too high by mistake it can even damage your headphones or even worse, your hearing. Basically, it's overkill in most cases for low impedance headphones. Second, and most importantly, as you'll see below the output impedance of most dedicated soundcard amps is relatively high, in the Essence STX's case it's 10 Ohms as opposed to the Realtek ALC889's 2 Ohms. That's around 1.6 db of extra distortion, and is AUDIBLY detrimental to the fidelity of your audio. Please take pause before you write off the onboard you already have as inherently worse than a dedicated card which could cost you a lot of extra money. A lack of power is the main issue with onboard chipsets such as the Realtek chips, and higher impedance headphones will be hard to drive with these chips. There are lots of other issues with the quality of onboard audio solutions, such as drivers, latency, and other software-based issues, but as you've seen from posts on this board, NO SOUNDCARD is immune to these issues. The Xonar Essence STX for example, is NOT a true pci-e device, but a pci to pci-e bridge card, meaning that a pci bus is attached to the pci-e card and requires exactly an extra 6 ms of latency to transfer the data across that bridge. The Creative driver problems need no introduction. If you really want hassle free sound, your best bet is a class 1 usb audio device like the O2+ODAC or FiiO E10. These are driven by windows native drivers and are plug-and-play.

So, do I need a better soundcard or external AMP/DAC or is my onboard good enough?

That's a good question, and it depends entirely on your headphones. The test is pretty simple, if you plug your headphones into the back onboard ports and play audio through your speakers or headphones and they sound loud enough for you at a volume under 80-85% and don't have audible noise, then your headphones are well driven by your current equipment. If you have to crank the volume to max or they have buzzing, humming, or popping that drives you nuts, it's probably time to look at a good soundcard or an external AMP and DAC combo.

I think I need a better soundcard. What should I look for in a sound card or an external AMP/DAC?

- A low output impedance under 2 Ohms. Where do you find this spec? It's hard since most manufacturers that don't make products for professional use don't even list this number. Some popular AMPs measure as such:
Asus Xonar STX/STU/One/DG/DX: 10 Ohms (due to the TI Op-Amp)
iPod 3g: 7 Ohms
iPod Classic: 5 Ohms
Realtek ALC885/889/892 - 2 Ohms
FiiO E10: 0.5 Ohms
O2: 0.5 Ohms
Schiit Magni: 0.1 Ohms ----

from this website http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/24774-do-i-need-a-dedicated-a-sound-card/

you're welcome. actually i have a creative sound card. the sound are much louder (with same volume level ) than the onboard audio. but be careful if you have low impedance headset. set the volume to low level before you attach the headset.