Is this industry dying or just become more narrow? Sound cards nowadays are mostly built into the motherboard (brand comes to mind is Realtek) and they’re already good enough with some having 5.1 surround sound while others have up to 8 channels.
Back in the days, people would buy a separate card for their sound card. The ones built-in to the mobo aren’t recommended because they allegedly consume CPU cycles by around 10-15%. Thus a separate chip was better.
Now, we got plenty of CPU power to dispense so that’s no longer an issue. The last time I bought a PCI sound card was like 6 years ago. Creative Labs was for the gamers, Yamaha went for the music geeks and musicians (does Yamaha still make any sound cards?).
Seems like the hard core gamers are the ones buying the newer sound cards. Any body else have any special use for a separate sound card?
I most certainly will put this website to my favorite features, it can be good.