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The State of PC Audio
jonesy writes "The Tech Report has put together a pretty decent six-card sound round-up that covers the most popular audio controller chips around. DACs, ADCs, DSPs, and the other important acroymns are explained. One interesting revelation: Creative's Audigy card doesn't do 24-bit/96KHz sound, despite Creative's claims. Gaming benchmarks are provided, and the authors even take a crack at the subjective side of audio, although they seem aware of the difficulties in doing so."
I was just thinking about the limits of sound cards the other day. What features are still in demand from them, considering they can play damn near any sound that we can possibly hear already, and do it directionally? Seems to me that there's really not much more to squeeze out of them, other than maybe making them faster for more advanced applications and cramming them full of memory so any of them can be used professionally. More speaker jacks might be nice, so you can have some really surround sound.
It's good to see sound getting some of the attention that has always been given video in the past.
I've always been impressed with the sound card drivers on Linux. They are usually up to date and reliable, much more so than video cards, especially new ones.
If this article is indicative of a growing interest in PC audio, then I don't see how that can be anything but good for Linux. This is one area where Linux can truly compete against Windows.
Open source, victorious once more!
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
What I'm intrested in is 16-bit, 48kHZ sound out ether a Parallel Port or PCMCIA card (for soundless laptops). So far, the only thing you have is 8-bit sound that the computer itself has to make sure it runs at the right speed. I'd like to offload that a bit.
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# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
The only drawback in my mind is you cannot use the USB interface for 24/96 audio. That, and some issues like jitter and delay, should be solved by the next generation of IEEE-1394 interfaces.
I still run an AMD K6-450 for a single reason: it's got 3 ISA slots that I can put my dual-port joystick board, my Advanced Gravis Ultrasound MAX and my SoundBlaster AWE32 in. Those 2 sound boards kick this living [explative] out of everything else I've heard in the (affordable) PC sound dept. And, the AWE32 has 8 megs of RAM for something useable: putting sound samples into for MIDI/MOD playback.
Sure, I don't get 18bit, 48KHz playback (which, I'll admit, may be nice for homestudio stuff) but all my 16bit, 44.1KHz stuff (practically everything, since that's what CDs are) sounds fantastic. Nice CODEC chips, nice analog output stages, descrete amps, etc. And, yes, I do listen to it through something worthy of playing back good sound.
I'd like somebody who has a good A/B comparison rig, good ears and a newer whiz-bang audio card to campare it to a GUS or AWE32 and tell me if they agree. Have these newer everything-on-one-piece-of-silicon cards caught up in sound quality? Keep in mind, also, that I payed only $35 for both of these cards (having dated hardware is nice on the wallet :).
-Josh
I'll repost (most of) the comment I put on TR this morning. TR's comments don't get much feedback usually, and I'd like to get responses/pointers on the points I bring up.
The review is completely oriented toward gaming though, with only a slight nod toward music listening or DVDs (and the cards reviewed aren't particularly good toward those). With that in mind, the review isn't all that bad. And it brings up several nasty issues with Creative Labs - their drivers continue to suck, they seriously overdo reverb in EAX (uh, guys... you wrote the standard... why can't you do it right?), bloatware on a massive scale, and some of the comments indicate possible spyware.
Anyway, my original comment is now below, sans a few bits that pertained only to over there.
Sigh... well, not what I was hoping for, but still a decent review (as soundcard comparisons go at least). Should've marked this as a review for gamers though - for those looking to build a Home Theater PC it's reviewing the wrong cards (the M-Audio 6-channel is pretty much the standard nowadays, but there are competitors).
It would've been nice to get a few motherboard chipset reviews in with the cards. I know, you were already in review hell. But to whomever is going to try this next, do include a review of the cheapo AC97 codecs, the upgraded ones (such as CT5880), nForce, and such.
There are also sampling/playback issues - CL has long had an issue with automagically resampling from 44.1 KHz to 48 KHz. This introduces errors during playback. Testing to see which cards do this (on either record or playback) would've been nice.
Testing to see if the connectors provided are actually standard conforming would've been nice too. The digital output jack on the SB Live series, for instance, conforms to no standard known to man. It will work with most Dolby Digital decoders, but not all of them - it runs the voltage far, far, FAR too high, has absolutely no noise protection, and a few other issues. CL deciding to label their IEEE1394 connector as a "SB1394" makes me suspicious of it as well.
I still have a Sound Blaster 16. That card is about 7 years old (Give or take a year) It was origianally on my 486 50mhz and then I just moved it to each adional PC that had the 16 bit ISA Port. It still works greate it plays the MP3 and Wav files fine. Sure MIDI sounds a bit comicical compared to the new cards but But with software rendering it still plays nicly. I am not a big gamer but I do have a good ear. And the sound I am getting out of that Sound Blaster 16 is as good as it would come out of those little speakers.
Odly enought unlike vidio cards sound cards dont have the same obsolete rate as other gaming intended cards. They still work with modern games.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I have an ibook and work with G4s at work.. The sound capabilities suck compared to what you can get on the pc side. I have Dolby Digital, DTS, 5.1, EAX 3D running on my Thinkpad.
What I want to know is when the PC sound card makers are going to build something that can encode a Dolby AC3 stream on the fly like the nVidia n-force motherboard and xbox do. This is a useful feature for HTPC's attached to a nice Dolby decoder in the livingroom... I didn't like the n-force chipset so I hunted all over for another solution... with no luck.
Have any of you slashdot geeks built a compelling livingroom solution that does this another way? And I'm not talking analog-ins for six channels to your receiver here but rather a real AC3 stream over coax for the receiver to decode.
not.
If you have $9800.00 each legacy audio studio monitors they will sound like crap if you have a crappy amp and crappy source. speakers are the 3rd most important. AMP with very low THD and clean transients is the number one most important component of an audio system. anyone who says otherwise is faking it. Second your audio source has to be clean and handle the dynamic range. and finally the speakers.
a pair of 100 watt speakers on a 5000 watt amp will sound better and last longer than a pair of 500watt speakers on a 10 watt amp.
in fact I can blow any set of speakers on this planet with a 10 watt amp. (DC clipping is NOT your friend)
So if you want really good audio out of your computer, have your soundcard drive a nice amp and then some decent speakers.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I thank my lucky stars that I don't have "golden ears". 128k MP3 sounds fine to me. If I need music to sound better than that, I'll perform it.
God save me from a discerning ear...it'd be way too expensive.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I don't trust USB completely. I've had problems with hubs deciding not to supply power, and the bandwidth is too narrow. From what I've heard about USB CD recorders, I'm not alone. For $450, you can get Digidesign's Mbox, which is firewire-based. It samples at up to 24-bit/48khz, has focusrite mic pre-amps with phantom power, and most importantly, zero latency. It also comes with Pro Tools audio recording/editing software. No, I don't work for them, I've just been drooling over this thing lately. The idea of having a decent home studio with one of these and a laptop...
c-hack.com |
I feel like a guru over here because I built an HTPC in August of 2000, which makes me feel like I'm two years ahead of the curve ;-)
I'm using a Realmagic Hollywood Plus DVD decoder card from (www.sigmadesigns.com) in my PC. It has outputs for S-video and coax digital out, which I send to my Sony Wega and the ADS-2000 decoder which comes with my Midiland S4 8200 5.1 surround speakers (www.midiland.com). This is a dedicated DVD setup.
For PC audio, I have a SB Live Platinum, of which I use the headphone jack 90% of the time, and the coax S/PDIF out for when I want to play a game with Dolby Digital sound. If I want to play a EAX or non DD game, I use the analog ouputs on the back of the SB Live connected to the ADS-2000 decoder (it allows for simultaneous digital and analog connections which can be switched with the included remote control).
I'm thinking of upgrading to the SB Audigy Platinum and the new Realmagic Xcard, which has component video ouputs and hardware Divx decoding.