If these were the early 2000s. We would have said that having a sound card is a flex. With good reason, too. You'd slap one into your PC, crank up a media player, and pretend you were mastering audio.

I don't use HDMI audio from a video card and my present card is not good for Linux distro hopping. (nVidia GT630) Almost every install sets my audio as nVidia and ignores the sound card. So I have to ...