Ask HN: Whatever happened to dedicated sound cards?
During the &#x27;90s and the early &#x27;00s, dedicated soundcards were in-demand components in much the same way GPUs are today. From what I know, Creative won, on-board sound became good enough sometime between Windows XP and Windows 7, and the audio enthusiasts moved on to external DACs and $2000 headphones. Today Creative still sells soundcards, but none of them appear to be substantial improvements over previous models.<p>So what other reasons could have caused the decline in interest? Was there nothing that could be improved upon? Were there improvements on the software side that made hardware redundant and&#x2F;or useless? Is there any other company besides Creative, however large or small, still holding the torch for innovating in this space?