Usenet Newsgroups Re: On-board Sound Card From: arnyk@hotpop.com (Arny Krueger) "gjsmo" <gabjsmo0@gmail.com> wrote in message news:4bddd7c1-f68f-4328-a7bc-53c898674853@j30g2000vbr.googlegroups.com On Sep 8, 5:54 pm, mcp6453 <mcp6...@gmail.com> wrote: To solve the problem, I hooked up my Griffin iMic as an output device. The difference is night and day. I'll probably go ahead and get another DIO-2496 or at least install a Creative Audigy that's in a box around here somewhere. While the input side of the iMic leaves a lot to be desired, the output side is approximately CD quality. This sounds a bit like the thing with video cards and how the on-board  ones are always crap. Depends on your needs and point of reference. Given that off-board graphics cards can run like $500 each and some motherboards support  2 of them with their coprocessers siamesed, on board graphic interfaces can't possibly compete. OTOH, if all you want to do is business graphics or even playing a few Blu Rays, on-board interfaces can get the job done. But I'm wondering how bad it really is. Mine sounds fine, though admittedly it's only a set of JBL's (not anything expensive). I'm wondering if the sound card's "hiss" could be getting picked up from various PCB paths on the motherboard. Because I'm not really sure an iMic would be so much better. Download the Audio Rightmark program freeware measurement program and run it. It produces a fairly complete technical report in a few minutes. All you need is a jumper cable from the output to the input of your audio interface. Subject