Is an onboard sound chip suitable for music production?

[Zombie Queen]

Those specs look good on paper, I have 889 chip in my kids comps, I once plugged headphone amp and my old studio cans into it. There is huge perceptual difference compared to my Echo Audio breakout box, or old M-audio audiophile I had before it. This thing here is simply noisy, nowhere near those SN specs and on top of it, it's apparently catching some interferences, so it's buzzing too. Maybe it performs better depending on motherboard, but I'd really say, it's worth upgrading to anything made with actual music in mind.

[Tricky-Loops]

Depends on your demands. If you want to build a high-quality professional producer studio, you should buy a special soundcard. But for making some songs, an on-board soundcard is okay... Keep in mind that nobody will listen to your songs to notice "oh, that must be an on-board soundcard!" There were even some people who made (good) music with a SID chip...

On the other hand, if you have 170 EUR for speakers, you should have some bucks for a soundcard, too...

[chk071]

You're right. After reading a bit about the ALC887 on the net, i decided to build my Asus card into the new computer. Why live with worse sound, when you have a little better option.

@ Zombie Queen: I can confirm there are a lot of cards/chips which are not properly shielded against electro static (if that's the right term). I had a Terratec sound card once, which was so terrible in that regard, that i had to put it in a PCI slot further away from the fan of the CPU, but it still was buzzing like mad.

[tooneba]

Macbook Pro has odd chip that wastes CPU and increases latency when using headphone.

[glokraw]

You're right. After reading a bit about the ALC887 on the net, i decided to build my Asus card into the new computer. Why live with worse sound, when you have a little better option.

@ Zombie Queen: I can confirm there are a lot of cards/chips which are not properly shielded against electro static (if that's the right term). I had a Terratec sound card once, which was so terrible in that regard, that i had to put it in a PCI slot further away from the fan of the CPU, but it still was buzzing like mad.

keeping accurate notes, and saving your project files
means you can redo them every time you make
a significant gear upgrade. Re-render them, re-master them,
and view the old/new waveforms side by side in an editor. In the meantime,
save up, do some odd jobs, extra shifts, and in short order,
there will be a choice home studio growing.
Cheers

[4damind]

I would buy a cheap card for <100€. The converters on the on-board sound cards are IMO not so good that I would use them for recordings/monitoring. There is also the problem with latency if ASIO4All is not working or cannot achieve the expected low latency.
With my testings the resolution is not so good and I missed a lot of details (but I have not tested this with newer on-board chips).
I would use a on-board sound chip only as a temporary solution.

[juffi]

I tried an onboard Sound chip as well, i have a realtek also on my Compaq . There was one day my EMU 1820m had no lights on and looked like it died.

So i tried the onboard chip with 1024 samples. As long you have only a few tracks in your cubase it is ok. Then i tried a big Project , beyond 30 tracks and lots of VST instruments, and the crackles begin.

My EMU Card could handle that easily. So depends what you are doing.

Another thing i heard that onboard Intel HD Audio Chips are not that bad.