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The answer is simple: Who benefits from a soundcard? For your average consumer, built-in audio is plenty good. Not much reason to get any extra hardware at all
by pdpi 4y ago
The answer is simple: Who benefits from a soundcard?
For your average consumer, built-in audio is plenty good. Not much reason to get any extra hardware at all.
For audio enthusiast consumers who want better than what onboard offers for some reason, an internal card is only useful for desktp computers, whereas external DACs are uasable on mobile devices and laptops - and that's what most people use.
For audio producers, an internal soundcard can't physically fit the I/O you need. 1/4" jacks, XLR, that sort of thing, so older professional cards all had breakout boxes. If you're going to have a breakout box anyway, might as well have the whole device be self-contained and plugged in through Firewire (or, more recently, USB or TB). Depending on your setup, you might even have these things rack-mounted.
- otherme123 4y agoIn the early 90's, if you wanted audio you had to buy a card. Of course, you compared and you wanted the best for your bucks, so instead of the cheapest $30 you could get a Sound Blaster for $50 with full duplex and a MIDI port, it sounded like a great deal. Never used the MIDI, rarely the mic. We bought cards with capabilities we never needed, so when motherboards came with integrated audio that allowed us to plugin the headphones, we forgot about audio cards. It's now a product for pros. I remember buying extra cards for ethernet, for interfacing SATA drives, for USB ports... All of them got integrated in the motherboard. The only card that seems to hold strong is the graphics.