Event Coverage

HardwareZone's 10th Anniversary Special

10 Years in PC Audio

10 Years in PC Audio

It's strange to see how our audio needs have evolved over the last ten years; while 1998 and 1999 saw a slew of sound cards in the market for discerning audiophiles and for our review labs, the next few years saw a much quieter (pardon the pun) sound card market with the much more convenient on-board sound solutions being found on the motherboard. While it was often commented upon that these on-board sound solutions lacked the sound quality found on discrete solutions, they were much cheaper and did the job decently.

 Reviewed way back in 1998, the Yamaha WaveForce 192XG PCI Sound Card brings back some fond memories of the past where we had plenty of sound cards to choose from.

It was therefore no surprise to find that the once plentiful market of sound cards has devolved into a quieter one dominated by Creative Technologies with their introduction of their Sound Blaster Audigy series in 2001 and their Sound Blaster X-Fi in 2004. Competitors were rare and hard to find, though in recent years, some attempts have been made to compete in the market from ASUS with their introduction of their Xonar range of sound cards, specialists like Auzentech and a few others. These are mostly aimed the at the professional-consumers and audiophiles who don't mind spending more on dedicated sound cards that usually offer better connectivity options that are of better quality and better signal to noise ratio (SNR) specifications among others that try to ensure better audio reproduction than onboard solutions.

 The Creative Sound Blaster AUDIGY Platinum eX scored a perfect 5 from us. Seen here clockwise from top left are the Audigy card, the External Audigy Drive and Audigy Extension Card.

However, onboard audio has been making greater inroads to the mainstream consumer group ever since the introduction of Intel's High Definition Audio standard in 2004 that featured higher quality multi-channel playback as compared to the older AC97 standard that was often shunned in the older days of onboard audio. These days it's not rare to find most standard systems relying on onboard sound for all audio needs though dedicated gamers and audiophiles will probably still spend that little bit more for a discrete sound solution.

 

Join HWZ's Telegram channel here and catch all the latest tech news!
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.