"Conventional Wisdom" is that for broadcast work, it is preferred to have a professional grade or at least a "pro-sumer" grade sound card... or in this day and age where sound is built into so many motherboards, sound device as opposed to sound card. So, in the world of semantics, there can never be a sound output from a machind gthat has the "sound device" built into the motherboard that really is fully trustworthy... fully "discussable".
That having been said, that philosophy was developed a number of years ago when the early built-in sound devices were THE PITS. I can tell you from experience that many of todays built-in sound devices are not all that shabby.
The wording of your question is interesting. You say that "the jack for the little thing works only sometimes". Do you really mean and know that the jack itself is the problem? Does the jack have dirty contacts? Has someone tried to force the wrong plug in and maybe bent the jack?
Or are you saying that somewhere in the guts and entrails of your machine, sound is not delivered to the jack.... meaning the jack is only the portal and the jack itself is not the problem.
Any good computer shop or technician should be able to help you make sure you have figured out whether the jack is the problem, or the problem is actually up-stream somewhere on the motherboard before it gets to the jack.
Of course, there is another possibility: is there a software problem? I am an experimenter. I have multiple programs on my personal computer that use sound in different ways, and I plug in a variety of sound devices such as external USB sound cards devices. My M-audio (pro-sumer grade) sound card expects a perfect seedbed when planting a sound garden and often burps and refuses to function after I have played with some new eternal device and some try-before-you-buy software package I wanted to try.
So, you see there are multiple reasons why you may not get sound delivered to the little cord you plug into the computer. Think you way through when you experience this problem and see if you can narrow down your question. Maybe we can help you.
