any difference in quality from a PCIe vs USB external sound card??

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TickleMeRifle Jul 24, 2015 @ 11:36pm

of course this depends on the quality of the PCIe and USB sound card but in general does hooking up a USB sound card degrade the quality in any way compared to PCIe? or is there no difference?

Last edited by TickleMeRifle; Jul 24, 2015 @ 11:37pm

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Showing 1-8 of 8 comments

SundownKid Jul 24, 2015 @ 11:42pm

I am guessing there is a difference, since USB compresses the audio data (for that reason USB mics are lower quality).

TickleMeRifle Jul 25, 2015 @ 12:02am

Originally posted by SundownKid:
I am guessing there is a difference, since USB compresses the audio data (for that reason USB mics are lower quality).

i really wont be using the external card's mic i'll just be using it to output to a reciever via the optical out port.

_I_ Jul 25, 2015 @ 1:12am

usb will be very limited bandwith
use a pci-e card or onboard sound card if you care about quality

videogames Jul 25, 2015 @ 1:22am

A proper asynchronous USB device will not degrade sound quality, or compress the audio stream for that matter. A USB mic is NOT lower quality than a comparable analog microphone (unless talking about proper studio gear plugged into an interface); it's usually quite the opposite since they use their own ADC chip instead of relying on the onboard.

Plugging into optical will use the receiver's own DAC, so either onboard or a soundcard will make no difference. If you don't have an optical port in your motherboard, any cheap soundcard with one will suffice. If you're only using stereo audio, a good external DAC with RCA outs is a better idea than one of these "gaming" sound cards.

Last edited by videogames; Jul 25, 2015 @ 1:24am

Bad 💀 Motha Jul 25, 2015 @ 1:56am

If your Motherboard Onboard Audio doesn't have Optical Out, I would suggest this:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0044DEDCA
Under $60 and supports both analog and digital 5.1

TickleMeRifle Jul 25, 2015 @ 3:22am

awesome thnx for the replies guys

Originally posted by Bad-Motha:
If your Motherboard Onboard Audio doesn't have Optical Out, I would suggest this:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0044DEDCA
Under $60 and supports both analog and digital 5.1

finally made a decision and decided to go with this...im assuming its just an updated version of the card you suggested above?: http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Performance-Headphone-Integrated-Microphone/dp/B00EZT7RE4/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8

the reason why im using an external usb sound card is i have no PCIe slots left and my onboard sound is only so-so in quality

Last edited by TickleMeRifle; Jul 25, 2015 @ 3:58am