[ahartmetz]

Regarding onboard audio:

About 10 years ago, it became "common knowledge" about mainboards that onboard sound has become good enough for almost anybody. It has never been true for me, maybe because my recent mainboards have been lower middle class (AMD B350 / B650) largely chosen for good CPU power converters.

Because my two (PC) laptops since 2020 have both had really damn good headphone outputs, I can believe that some good / expensive mainboards have it, too. It's not exotic technology anymore. Meanwhile, my desktop PC has a 20+ years old M-Audio prosumer card that also sounds great. (Now rigged with a PCIe -> PCI converter card off AliExpress)

[DiabloD3]

This common knowledge is still incorrect.

Good news, though, there are a lot of inexpensive good external DACs out there. Over the past decade, an entire industry grew up to fix this problem.

[ahartmetz]

Between these DACs and / or Chi-Fi class D amps (some of them with built-in DACs), nowadays you can spend 90% of the Hi-Fi budget on speakers. It's incredible how good electronics you can get for how cheap these days.