A couple weeks ago, right before I went on vacation, I decided it was finally time to upgrade my Klipsch Promedia Ultra 5.1 set that I bought ages ago. I’ve used a number of sets of high end computer speakers from the Monsoon M2000 4.1, then to the Logitech Z-680 5.1, then to the Klipsches that I was using until last week. Actually, while I still owned the Klipsches, I picked up a used set of Creative S700s to see how well they held up against the Klipsches. They were close, but not quite there.

I have used digital output with the Logitech Z-680s running off the onboard “SoundStorm” audio on my nForce2 motherboard back when that was what all the cool kids were doing.

That’s not the only audio solution I’ve used though. Since then I’ve tried the Chaintech AV-710, Auzentech X-Mystique, Creative Audigy 2 ZS, Creative X-fi XtremeMusic, and Creative X-fi XtremeGamer since switching back to analogue outputs.

So why talk about all of this? Sound in music and games is a very subjective thing, and unless the writer has had experience with a variety of different solutions, then his or her experience can’t be taken seriously. I could say my $1 store headphones are the best thing ever, and if they were the only thing I had ever used, then I would not be wrong necessarily, I would simply be inexperienced.

Well, right before I left on my vacation I picked up (on sale of course) this Onkyo recevier and this set of KEF speakers. The difference is stunning. I find myself in a situation where I have enough experience listening to computer audio equipment to know that this is a whole other ballgame, but I lack the technical expertise to properly explain it. I’ll do my best to put it in layman’s terms.

Compared to my Klipsches, the sound is not “louder, but it is more “full”. The bass, instead of being easily distinguishable from the rest of my music like “oh that’s the bass” is just “present”. Everything works together much better. I wasn’t even aware of how much separation the channels could have when listening to a music CD. I’ve heard talk of a “sound stage”, but never actually had a set up that properly created one before.

I have to confess that I’m living in a smallish place right now and I am running in stereo surround with the surround channels sitting next to the front channels, but I will report on the gaming performance once I have chance to try things out a little more.

Basically the point I want to make here is that there are a few different major steps in terms of music & movie listening quality at your computer. There’s onboard. People will argue night and day about good onboard versus bad onboard, with “HD” onboard in there somewhere. Whatever. It’s all completely inadequate. Any time someone tells you that you need “$500 worth of speakers to tell the difference”, ask them how many sound cards they’ve ever owned because 95/100 times the answer will be “zero”. I can tell the difference with my low quality MP3s between a $30 sound card and onboard sound with $1 store ear buds, and I’m no audiophile.

The next step is obviously a dedicated sound card. It’s not about CPU utilization or 3D effects anymore to be perfectly honest. Much of that can be done in software and we’ve got quad core CPUs! What can a lowly sound processing chip do compared to a Q6600? It’s about the fact that when you get down to it audio is an analogue thing. Speakers are analogue devices. The file you’re playing or the CD you’re listening to are digital mediums. You need to convert that digital signal to an analogue one for speaker output. Analogue devices are ALWAYS affected by cleaner PCB layouts, higher quality components (DACs, capacitors, etc), and anything else that can reduce electrical noise. The difference is night and day, even between a dedicated sound card and motherboards that come with sound riser card.

The next step is moving to a receiver. That means I can take a purely digital signal from my computer (in my case the optical output from my onboard sound - not affected by digital to analogue conversion, since it’s not doing it.) and run it to an AV receiver, then out to my speakers. You can’t really compare a $30 sound card to a $500+ piece of video/sound processing equipment until you start to step up to something like an Auzentech X-fi Prelude (which I will move to once I have some cash again so that I can take advantage of EAX being encoded via DDL (theoretically) and sent to the receiver), so for me it’s like taking that step from onboard up to a dedicated sound card all over again. Also, I may switch over to analogue outputs again once I have a Prelude and the receiver will run amplifying/video switching duty for my Wii/Computer.

You might be reading this with a skeptical eyebrow raised, so I want to share a story from when I was working as a sales rep at the NCIX Langley location. I had a customer come in who was deaf in one ear and had very little hearing in the other. He wanted to buy a computer, and I said “grab a dedicated sound card and some great speakers, it’s a part of the experience that really doesn’t get talked about enough, despite how VERY important it is”.

He said, “It’s all fine and good for you to talk about it, but this is my money”

The conversation continued from there, but in the end he bought a sound card and a set of speakers totaling about $500.

The point of this story is not my sales prowess, but rather what he said to me after the sale when he came in a couple weeks later to pick up some blank media.

“You were absolutely right. I LOVE the speakers. It makes a HUGE difference in my games”. He didn’t have any feedback for me as far as music was concerned. He didn’t listen to a lot of music, but he just wanted to let me know how much better it was for games (which I personally have a harder time telling the difference in to be perfectly honest) it made to use some good quality sound equipment instead of onboard with cheap speakers.