Need a new sound card for Acer 5532

I broke the speaker/headphone jack in my Acer 5532 laptop. I was moving things around and everything got unsteady and the laptop fell and was hanging by a plug which screwed the jack up. I can no longer plug anything into that spot.

Besides that..the sound card sounds like crap anyway which is usually typical of laptops..cheap ones anyway.

I don't know much about sound cards for laptops. Is it possible to just take this one out and install a better sounding one? Or are good sound cards only for desktops?

Is it even worth it to fix? I mean, this was a $400 laptop and wasn't meant to be used for music in the first place. But my desktop died and now this is all I have. But not sure I want to spend $120 on a sound card for a $400 laptop if that makes sense.

I tried one of those Sound Blaster external sound cards taht plug into the USB port. But the sound sucks and it's bad enough this laptop only has 2 usb ports, with that in there I am now down to one.

Not sure what to do. I'm not really ready to buy a new laptop, but this sound thing is driving me crazy. I don't think I should have to buy a new laptop either just because of a screwed sound card..that also sounds stupid.

 

You can’t replace an audio chip because it's embedded in the motherboard. BTW laptop audio controllers are not bad- these are exactly the same controllers found on desktop motherboards- it’s the speakers that are bad.
If you don't like the quality of an external Sound Blaster USB card you're left with basically either another USB card like Asus Xonar because from what I gather this notebook doesn't have either PCMCIA nor Express Card slot.

It might not be that expensive to replace the audio jack though.

 

I ditto on trying to replace audio jack,then your back in business,thats going to be your best bet.

 

Thanks. Wow..I didn't even think that was possible to just fix the jack. I Google'd it and it doesn't look like something I could do myself. I think I'll call around and see if I can find somewhere that can fix that. At least if it's cheap enough, it could hold me over until I'm ready for a new laptop.