Internal Sound Cards.
AgitatedRiot
Posts: 4,437
Internal Sound Cards
Internal Sound cards are not usually needed in today's world. With optical out on motherboards, why buy one? Well, it's when you mess up and order a motherboard with no optical out. What would it be if you had a choice of any card you could buy? No matter what the cost, what would it be?
Comments
To me, Creative of course ! I still have a Sound Blaster Zxr in my PC. I think a Creative Audigy will do, if you do not have very high demand in terms of "sound quality".
I was looking at Creative; it's just been a while since I bought one; my first one was the Sound Blaster 16. the last one was the Sound Blaster Audigy around 20 years ago. That was the last internal sound card I bought.
there is something called asio4all but I cannot find a safe site to get it
however I do actually have it I just need to find the installer
that link in the PDF goes somewhere questionable now, it didn't used to, think domain changed ownership
but maybe reading the PDF will tell you if it will do what you want
you would need a usb microphone and speaker though
https://asio4all.org/ is the official website where you also will find the official downloads. Well, the website has a pretty "weird" design...
Asio4all itself unfortunately is not really worth much - especially on Windows 10/11. It is limited to use low-level Kernel Streaming mode (KS). And since Windows 10 there is an important restriction: as soon as one KS instance is active, any other access to the sound card is blocked! Means if an application is configured to use asio4all, as soon as this app is started, only this app has access to the sound card, any other apps ar blocked, also internal Windows sounds. And you also can start only one instance of asio4all, a second instance (from another app) will cause an error on Windows 10/11. And my personal experience with asio4all: it is also pretty unstable, partly ignores configuration settings and even may crash the Windows sound system.
If you really need low-latency access to your sound device, I recommend FlexASIO!
https://github.com/dechamps/FlexASIO
Configure it for WASAPI in shared mode and all apps will have access to the sound device, also multiple asio instances. I use FlexASIO since meanwhile 3 years (Creative SB Audigy and SB Audigy RX 7.1, both with the alternative kX-Project drivers), works without any issues.
Ok, configuring FlexASIO is not that simple - there is no UI, you have to edit the configuration file manually. But if you follow the instructions from the website, it's not a rocket science.
Software? I need Hardware First. I will look into that software, though. I guess Creative never had a bad experience with their product.
I just went to Creative, and my old account and password remain in their system for 20 years. I haven't bought or been there since they flushed their old accounts.
Yeah ~ I can recall Sound Blaster 16 and old version Audigy... latest version Audigy is still old but also good.
I love the 16 because it comes with a keytar Program; pick up the keyboard and start jamming. It had minimal functions, but it messed people up. Be sitting around having a get-together, walk over to the computer, and begin playing Smoke on the Water with the keyboard. Such laughs would erupt.