You can still get discrete sound cards (both internal and USB), though they’re more for audiophile stuff. With the PS5 touting big 3d audio improvements and HRTFs I half expected manufacturers to make a push to bring them back or at least feature sound features more prominantly in motherboards but I guess CPUs these days can just spare the cycles if you want fancy audio.
You can still get discrete sound cards (both internal and USB), though they’re more for audiophile stuff. With the PS5 touting big 3d audio improvements and HRTFs I half expected manufacturers to make a push to bring them back or at least feature sound features more prominantly in motherboards but I guess CPUs these days can just spare the cycles if you want fancy audio.
Generating music still benefits from offloading to discrete devices though. Like using a synth or multitrack stuff.
Modern CPUs can do all the audio processing you’d ever need (maybe barring some professional use cases like making music or editing a movie).
Audiophile external audio devices are just doing the conversion from a digital signal to an analogue signal.