onboard sound is fine for many/most average users.
I personally can have nothing less than a high quality breakout box on my desktop, refuse to touch anything from creative, and need and use both optical in/out connections for my stereo component system. Nothing but Hercules soundcards for me here on the main audio workstation.
My crash box has a cheap $30 old hercules muse card and my *nix box has adequate seldom used shitty onboard AC '97 sound.
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