Why sound card instead of line in ?

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cowboy14

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Hi , I am from Bangladesh and new in this forum..

I think i am in right section to post my query .... ? I want to know why i should buy a sound card if line in is working on some software like fl studio or Audicity or for simple playing .. ? I searched this on google but not got any answer ...

I think its a poor question :facepalm: but i want to know that ... Can you please help ?? :D
 
Aside from the quality difference, the short answer is that your built in sound card (line in) only has one input. A sound card that is intended for recording will have at least two, more commonly eight.
 
TBH, ADC/DAC technology is mature enough and cheap enough that modern onboard soundcard's aren't really all that bad. They pretty much have to use the same monolithic chips as some of the cheaper external interfaces. As long as the onboard does 24bit it wont get a whole lot better as far as the actual electronics until you get up into the $$$/channel interfaces.

I think the biggest problem today is the fact that the onboard sits inside the case, very close to all the EM/RF hash that the rest of the motherboard is spewing out. Also, since it shares the power supply and probably doesn't have particularly robust filtering, you might pick up some noise there.

Obviously, it won't have balanced connections which might also compromise noise specs. Most run at --10dbV (consumer standard), but that is just a little lower than the +4dbu you'll get out of any pro-level gear you try to connect. So, turn it down a little before it hits the soundcard! That'll add noise again, of course. Even with all that it's better than tape.

There is also something to be said for the convenience of some of the cheaper external devices. Many of them have both a mic preamp and a Hi-Z instrument input so that you can plug a mic or guitar directly into the thing without need for any other boxes in between.
 
What are you trying to record? As ashcat says, if it is a microphone or electric instrument (which need a preamp to produce a decent signal), you will need an audio interface or preamp.
 
Sorry, but all on-board soundcards are made with less than a dollar's worth of parts for beeps, boops and light gaming.

Just because it 'kinda works' doesn't mean it's good for making critical decisions.

For simple playing it's useful but just resign yourself to getting a better music-production soundcard.
 
Thank you for all of your help ......:D :D :D

Makes sense .. Every one have a sound card here in my circle .. but they cant give me proper answer why they are using that ... lol .. so i asked this to know why that is important ...

Thanks again to you ... you are so helpfull.
 
TimOBrien said:
Sorry, but all on-board soundcards are made with less than a dollar's worth of parts for beeps, boops and light gaming.

Just because it 'kinda works' doesn't mean it's good for making critical decisions.

For simple playing it's useful but just resign yourself to getting a better music-production soundcard.
Click to expand...
Exactly how much do you suppose M-Audio or Presonus spend on parts for the actual conversion section of their lower end products? They may put some research/development into designing the analog pre-amps somewhat differently, but at a certain point those things likely end up going through the very same "off the shelf" ADC/DAC chips as you get in from RealTek or Creative or whatever is stuck to your motherboard.
 
No they don't but if you want to record on a crappy onboard, please go right ahead.
It's your choice.

...but there is a reason that no one seriously uses them...
 
TimOBrien said:
...but there are reasons that no one seriously uses them...
Click to expand...
Fixed that for ya! ;)

I mentioned a number of those reasons above. There's also the fact that the manufacturers have spent considerable marketing budgets to convince folks that their boxes of cheap parts are better than the cheap parts built into the computer.

Some of my favorite recordings ran through a consumer grade converter (either on-board, or a PCI card) at some point in the production process. You might not consider them sonically perfect (though they sound just about exactly the way I intended) but I defy you to tell me that the converter was the problem. There are still a whole lot of folks who swear by 4-track cassette [shudder] and even some people mastering to cassette. If it's a question of waiting for months or years to save up for a "decent" interface or recording right the fuck now, I say jack into that laptop and go!
 
TimOBrien said:
No they don't but if you want to record on a crappy onboard, please go right ahead.
It's your choice.

...but there is a reason that no one seriously uses them...
Click to expand...

One, nuts and bolts reason is noise.
Designing the analogue drive to a D/A converter is not a trivial exercise*. Most converters need less than around 1.5Vrms for FS and so the drive amp must have a noise contribution of much less than some 17MICRO volts if a 100dB dynamic range is to be obtained. But then we don't record to 0dBFS or anywhere near it so the noise has to be even better than that!

Much the same argument obtains for designing good quality amps for the D to A! Such quality costs.

*See D.Self "Small signal Amplifiers".

Dave.
 
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