Compare internal sound card and external

In fact, all the dif­fer­ences between an inter­nal sound card and an exter­nal one lie in the loca­tion of the device. The first ones are either sol­dered on the moth­er­board or con­nect­ed to it via the PCIe inter­face. The sec­ond ones are placed out­side a com­put­er or lap­top (it’s not for noth­ing that they bear their name) and are con­nect­ed via USB.

This could be the end of the mate­r­i­al, but there are a cou­ple of extreme­ly impor­tant points regard­ing the oper­a­tion of inter­nal and exter­nal sound cards that would be nice to dis­cuss.

Integrated and discrete sound cards

The first thing to note is that “inter­nal” audio cards come in two types: inte­grat­ed and dis­crete. The for­mer are sol­dered direct­ly on the moth­er­board and usu­al­ly have rel­a­tive­ly low per­for­mance. They are enough to con­nect speak­ers or head­phones to the com­put­er — well, so as not to leave it “dumb”.

With dis­crete solu­tions, things are a lit­tle more inter­est­ing. They are extreme­ly var­ied. There are both very sim­ple solu­tions that can only be used as a replace­ment for a bro­ken or miss­ing built-in one at all; as well as pro­fes­sion­al con­fig­u­ra­tions capa­ble of han­dling 5.1 or 7.1 sur­round sound, spe­cial feed­back tech­nolo­gies, or record­ing vocals or music.

And, what’s more, since dis­crete expan­sion cards are con­nect­ed via a high-band­width PCIe inter­face, pro­fes­sion­al audio pro­duc­ers and musi­cians pre­fer them over “out­door” ones. Gamers will also like such mod­els. For exam­ple, Asus releas­es spe­cial edi­tions of the ROG gam­ing series that pro­vide a 360-degree audio space for deep immer­sion in the vir­tu­al world.

“External” does not mean “good”, “Internal” does not mean “bad”

As is clear from a cou­ple of para­graphs above, there are both sim­ple and high­ly pro­fes­sion­al dis­crete inter­nal “zvukovu”. What’s worse than exter­nal ones?

1. 1. There are extreme­ly sim­ple USB sound cards. They are sold by the kilo in online stores, cost mere pen­nies and offer just audio out­puts. That is, if the built-in audio card is bro­ken, you can buy a USB-con­nect­ed one for a cou­ple of hun­dred rubles and use it.

1. 1. Pro­fes­sion­al exter­nal “zvukovuhi” also exist. And in some cas­es they are even more con­ve­nient than inte­grat­ed ones. So, they can be placed on phys­i­cal con­trol ele­ments through which you can con­fig­ure the oper­a­tion of the device (but­tons, “twists” and oth­er “wheels”). This will help you quick­ly adjust the qual­i­ty of play­back or record­ing.

1. 1. USB-con­nect­ed pro­fes­sion­al-grade audio cards have many per­for­mance require­ments. The inter­face over which they are con­nect­ed can­not pro­vide the same through­put as PCIe. There­fore, “out­door” “zvukovuhi” must encode the sig­nal in such a way as to ensure its high qual­i­ty — but at the same time small vol­umes.

Conclusion

Choos­ing a sound card it is worth focus­ing not on the type of its place­ment, but on the planned use. If you want to install 5.1 or 7.1 sur­round sound speak­ers at home, both built-in and exter­nal are suit­able. To record sound from an elec­tric gui­tar that is con­stant­ly over­loaded, it is bet­ter to use an exter­nal one with con­trols. And if just the inte­grat­ed “zvukovuha” broke down, the cheap­est one will be enough, regard­less of the type.

And only when choos­ing a sound card for a lap­top, the ques­tion “Remote or built-in?” does­n’t get up. Con­nectable via USB only. The built-in install in it sim­ply will not work.