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Motherboard Audio Comes Of Age
darth_silliarse writes "ExtremeTech have thankfully confirmed that I am not completely deaf - onboard m/b sound is not as bad as it sounds. Is onboard sound for the poor, needy or completely bone idle? What are other peoples opinions of m/b sound? If nothing else, it frees up a PCI or ISA slot... ;o)"
I spent so many years with no audio on any system, that the first hardware that had it was a shock: KDE starts with a bongo riff?!
All those years I thought those gears made a different sound.
Soli Deo Gloria
BTW, how many slots do we really need? With so many USB peripherals, PCI and especially ISA slots aren't the important resources they once were.
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
Try the following:
1) play mp3 through decent stereo straight from (Quicksilver) Mac.
2) Burn same Mp3 to CD and play through same stereo.
from CD is quite a lot better.....
Why?
Find Japanese addresses in English on Google Maps Japan: http://diddlefinger.com/
"onboard m/b sound is not as bad as it sounds"
Oh, and buy this monitor too... I know it's scratched and can't seem to show the colour blue... But trust me, the picture's not as bad as it looks.
My comps have always had good onboard sound. I never understood why anyone would make a motherboard without it in the first place. I realize some of today's really high quality sound cards have some things you just wouldn't find on a built-on, but there's really no excuse for lack of at least basic audio support.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
As far as I'm concerned, it makes no odds these days whether you have the latest soundblaster or some cheapo onboard beast. Unless you have high quality speakers (which I imagine the average computer user doesn't) the difference is neglibile.
:-)
Of course, I can't tell the difference between a 128 and a 160 mp3, so who am I to speak?
We're so happy together...
Not only can you save a pci card, it is also cheaper and less of a hassle a lot of times. Some motherboards have excellent on board audio, such as the P4S8X I think it really depends on if you think its worth it. I can do fine with just the bios speaker going beep beep beep.
ISA slot? I didn't know newer boards still had those.
Anyways, I was never a fan of onboard sound but my next mobo will have one of those.
.. MB sound i perfectly fine. I build a computer for my parents and they just dont listen to music at the computer... stil they want to have sound vor voice chatting and simple sounds.... So i just bought a DFI board with onboard soundcard. No problems so far.. the board runs fine and i bet i will never get any complaints about sound quality because its just not of interest. Soo.. every product has its own niche... btw: at work you dont need HQ sound anyway too. Play well Carsten
Spelling errors were made for your amusement only...
I've got AC97 onboard audio, and it's as good or better than anything else I've heard. What on earth do you have to spend to get a card good enough to call AC97 bad?
I built myself a new pc about 6 months ago, after doing some research I went for an NForce 2 based board with on board sound and could not be happier with it. I'm not an audiophile (deaf in one ear) but I do use it for games, music and for watching telly and movies.
My previous pc's soundcard was a soundblaster pci 128, and it doesn't compare well. The NForce 2 on board sound worked flawlessly as soon as I installed the driver. The pci 128 had very picky drivers, some of which needed to be installed in a certain order, if not it wouldn't work with my tv card. It was always a bit flaky but that could just have been my card.
As for bad things about the NForce 2 sound, well I haven't tried setting up 5.1 because I don't need it (and don't have the speaker equipment to support it). I'm glad tho because after reading the mobo manual it looks very complicated. I reckon this is where seperate sound cards have an advantage over on board.
It was good enough when I was a kid, and it's good enough now!
I have a mobo with the CMedia chip on it and it does sound just fine. Previously I had a SB128 PCI, and the onboard does a better job than that old card did... That said, sure, you'll have better sound out of an Audigy card or the like, but then it's a question of whether or not you really have to have top-notch sound.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
...to freak out about another crappy flash animation with sound :(
Try telling that to a Mac user... that'd be fun...
The main issue with on-board sound is not the sound quality (nowadays, even cheap hardware sounds good enough for games and Oggs) but the possible lack of drivers. Does Linux have free drivers for most onboard sound chipsets?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
THG did a nice rundown a while ago on (still-)existing audio chipsets on Mobos and sound cards, comparing bells&whistles, CPU usage and IIRC quality.
Cheers.
-
I bought the new MSI 865 NEO2 FSIR board, which includes the wonders of 6-channel sound, Optical in/out, Coax in/out, and pin headers so I can plug the front audio ports in too. I bought my Audigy when I was using the Abit TH7II which only had pretty basic sound. Now the Audigy seems a bit excessive. I do use the Audigy Drive a lot though, mainly for music recording. But I do that so rarely its not all that much of a concern.
As for quality, onboard sound is pretty good these days. I've not tested the onboard stuff with this board, but other boards I've seen (heard) have been on a par with the Audigy. I know a lot of people are quick to badmouth Creative soundcards, but I like them. the ASIO support is very good for latenty-less recording/playback. I'm not sure this is something the onboard sound chipsets could manage so well.
I just recently purchased an ASUS mobo w/onboard sound and was very pleased with the sound quality - was thinking I should have tried one years ago when PCI and ISA real estate was at a premium.
I bought my first motherboard with onboard sound recently, ECS K7SOM+ (it's also got onboard networking, graphics and even a built-in AMD processor that's soldered in (only on some of these boards... the k7som is also available as a normal motherboard) because I want a cheapo one faster than my current P233 (go on... laugh... it runs Dreamweaver, Word, Paint Shop Pro, Counterstrike and everything else along those lines so I don't care) that I can upgrade later.
:-)
I was impressed with the onboard audio, given that I am still a SoundBlaster fan. The only problems I have are driver problems with some ancient games (i.e. ones where you still have to SET BLASTER=). Can you believe that I can't get the original Syndicate running with sound? Disgusting.
Given that I'm used to running P233 / P500's with decent VooDoo's, the built-in sis740 3D graphics also impressed me, the sheer brute force of a 1.2GHz processor means I can run games that the P500 with Voodoo 3500 can't handle as well.
I see built-in audio & networking as identical to the convential... after all, audio cards are just fairly low speed Digital-Analog or Analog-Digital convertors. Built-in video is good enough for business/office use, as far as I can see but for HalfLife 2 I can of course see that you're gonna need a decent, up-to-date, DX9 card.
My next upgrade to this computer will be to remove the motherboard and make a router out of it, buy one that has built-in audio + networking + an AGP slot + 6 PCI slots and put in the fastest processor I can afford. That way, I can use all of my existing bits from this computer.
Finding a MB with that many PCI slots isn't hard but it isn't every board that has it. Considering that I need to continue to use my existing 2 PCI network cards (Intel EtherExpress Pro's), at least one PCI RAID card (onboard RAID would be used as well), possibly a PCI TV card, I wouldn't want to have to use up another for a Soundblaster card when I can just use the onboard audio.
If you're a serious audio user (i.e. work in a recording studio), I can see that onboard audio is like telling a photographer to use a disposable camera. Otherwise, I really don't see the point.
What is this ISA you speak of?
One of the biggest things I like about modern PC's is that they're just like lego. You can buy the motherboard, CPU, sound card, video card, etc... you want, stick them all together, and hey presto! It works! And more importantly it gives me choice.
Motherboards should have nothing on them except lots of slots. I like my computers modular.
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
I had 2 Dell's (Dimension 4500 and 4550). One had onboard sound and one had whatever sound card was the base model. I have a set of 3 piece Cambridge Soundworks speakers. I started the same mp3 file (one with sufficient bass) on both systems and just plugged the speakers into each system and my wife and I could not tell the difference. That is when I knew that it wasn't worth it for me to shell out the extra dough for the seperate sound card.
Have to say this should be a matter of a survey
I run the last games, and software
motherboard audio is lousy for even the non-demanding games.Graphics with gforce 2 are choppy and not good enough for modern games but you can at least run them.
SO for gamers audio and video on motherboard are no more than garbage
I think gamers need and want high end computers and veen if some people dont accept the fact.
Judging by so many gaming companies, so many gaming sites, and so many magazines about games.
What really sells computers at home is gaming
so motherboard sound and video is for bussines only. nad few not gaming homes
I have said
API
probably need an adapter in the near future.
If your main computer still has a ISA slot you :p
need to upgrade.
yes my p3 board has a isa slot in it. DO I use it?
Not at all.
Get a job! hell goodwill probably will sell you a computer without a isa slot
for quite some time now and I mean I've sure found the same thing. I can't seem to hear the difference between audio out and the rest of the hardware plugged into my stereo. Seems like 5.1 onboard is coming of age being analog^W digital and all ... erm ...
... nevermind
*thud*
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
There were some articles on Tom's Hardware a while back (can't find them now) which gave anything up to an 18% performance hit (frame rate wise) for onboard sound with EAX enabled.
Turning on EAX with my audigy or SB live platinum makes 1-2% difference.
Presumably the onboard sound chips are using the CPU for a lot more of the grunt work - not a great thing for a gamer, or indeed for a Linux user* unless they are _sure_ that there will be (good) drivers for that chip.
*Yes, yes, you can be a gamer _and_ a Linux user you know.
Beep beep.
why not high quality on board sound? im sure this would sound better than an audigy http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/aopentube/
My mobo has onboard sound. I bought a cheepo sound card to replace it, for two reasons; 1), Quality was shite, and 2) System bells got routed through my rather loud speakers, so if the speakers were on and I then booted up, I got knocked off my chair by an almighty BEEP!. Quality issues may not have been apparent under Win*, but I was never in a position to try it. I've still got 4 PCI slots left, after NIC and 3D card, so WTF.
In most situations I don't think it actually matters. A computer produces so much EMI which in turn creates noise in the audio regardless of whether you are running on-board sound or otherwise. Unless you are getting the signal out of the computer digitally, there is going to be noise. The only real reason I can think of for buying a high-end peripheral sound-card is if you need it for use as part of a digital audio workstation (high smaple-rates, resolution etc... or because you want multi-channel surround. -- Book
-- Book
The article doesn't seem to mention that soundfont capability is a good feature to have.
I know soundfonts might be a proprietary thing, but for many musicians, they constitute a must-have.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Especially when Amigas had built in audio in 1984!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How complex are DA circuits? Intel should have had a clue in 1995.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Usually, it seems that the motherboard soundcards are very very good when used with the crap speakers that come with computers - bad sound all over is tolerable. Put in a good sound card and you need to get better speakers - or the other way around.
Telling your friends you have a "Sound Blaster Audigy 2 with Inspire 6.1" speakers is more impressive then preaching about the quality of an on board card.
MSI actually has a few boards with high quality 5.1 surround sound cards on board.
For 75% of users on board is going to be just fine...they won't even notice the difference.
I've built 10+ PCs for people around town, but I can't say that I have defaulted to onboard audio more then just a couple of times. I don't know why, just seemed like such a cheap way to go. My users wouldn't have ever known the difference though.
For the 25% of us who are music enthusiasts or at least wannabes, we can spend ridiculous amounts of money on better equipment...and there is always the added bonus of bragging rights.
You hear that you stupid on board audio users?! My sound card is freaking better then your crap.
Ahh..that felt good.
Clif
clifgriffin > blog
I think onboard sound is adequate because most people plug in cheap speakers that aren't able to take advantage of any recent technilogical advances in audio
Audio has reached a point where cheap is good enough for most people. (sorry for bad grammer or bad spelling but it's 7:49 am, I haven't slept yet, and I'm quite drunk)
----
Squirrel
So let me see, I save on not buying a sound card... save again on a network card... save again on not buying a separate AGP video card... sling in an onboard modem riser and now all I need to do is spend $300 more on my CPU to get the same performance - wonderful! Why didn't I do this sooner!
Plus if I do want to upgrade my board/my board develops problems, I need to think about replacing it with another all-in-one, reinstalling drivers etc. etc.
In all seriousness, we've all read the stats. With onboard peripherals stealing as much as 3-5% up to 20% of your CPU usage. Is a mobo with the lot really all it's cracked up to be?
What happens if I want to build a system WITHOUT said items? I'm gonna find myself short a PCI slot or two, even if I can free up the resources in the BIOS.
Sure there is a better choice of onboard chipsets and the audio quality suits MOST applications. Yes - the drivers actually install now, but you can't replace a PCI sound card/modular solution for overall practicality.
At the very least we need to keep the option of VGA-less, sound-less boards going so there is a choice.
Both things are ICs. Chips that do some work. Mobos these days have an AC97 chip on board (it's just a mixer and ADC/DAC. It's not that bad tho. 18bits...) What if it was an SB audigy 2 on board? Or
Doesn't matter where it is located.
It DOES matter tho, if the DAC/ADC circuits are isolated.
so onboard DSP processing with external (or at least very well isolated DAC/ADC) is the best deal.
However, do note some people like to listen to their computer working... (you can hear all those funny noises in the electrical circuits due to resonance. It's very interesting.)
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
You can get direct hardware acceleration in OpenAL under Linux with an emu10k1 class card. I don't know if that justifies the purchase but it sounds good to me.
I got an A/C running, 4 pc's, kids screaming, etc. I'd have to have it massively cranked up to the point of brain damage to drown all that stuff out so I could tell the difference. If I had an audiophile environment I'd pay the extra bucks. It's like having a killer stereo in the car with a bad wheel bearing - you can't tell the stereo's better than stock until you turn it up enough to drown out the road noise.
Vote Quimby!
Nowadays with so many people having home theatre systems capable of taking digital input, I predict a big rise in motherboards with onboard S/PDIF audio outputs. Let's get analogue signals and amplification away from all that RF interference inside the PC case. Just wait for the first set of PC speakers that uses one S/PDIF connector instead of between 1 and 3 mini-stereo jacks.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vdmsound/
The program allows you to emulate sound for older dos games that you would like to play under Win2k or XP. I use it for playing some old Space Quest games. The driver works so I have no need to go get a newer version of the game. (I am using the origional .exe)
I appoligize for not putting in a proper link, but it is 9:05 AM on sunday morning, my hands don't want to work that hard, off to get some coffee.
If your not getting noise from the CPU or other devices, then onboard is fine for listening to music.
If you are are a musician doing recordings, spend some dough and get a high quality external sound D/A converter.
There really is not difference between pci sound cards and onboard sound. External sound is where the real difference is made.
is that you got audio working on Linux.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
Really, there isn't just one universal onboard audio chipset that you can compare. The nVidia Soundstorm APU found on some nForce2 motherboards provides EXCELLENT quality. The Realtek ALC650 chip used as an APU in others (most Soundstorm boards will use the ALC650 as a DAC) provides crap. The Via Envy24HT APU is so good that even the best discrete consumer audio solutions (the M-Audio Revolution 7.1, for example) use it. The older Via "AC'97"-labelled APU was utter crap. The C-Media controller used on many motherboards is decent. As the article describes, the solutions that are included with modern motherboards ARE beginning to rival the quality of discrete soundcards, even good ones.
I'm running onboard audio and video. I'm not a gamer, I don't even play solitare on this machine, it's strictly web/email and video editing. I've got a new Abit mainboard with the nVidia chipset. I have no problems with it. I did throw a demo of a 3D game on it, and it looked pretty cool. Played it for 5 minutes then wiped it.
I see people making blanket statements like "on-board audio is not good enough" - I'd have to believe that there is a WIDE range of quality in on-board audio. After all, there's no reason a manufacturer couldn't build an Audigy into a mainboard if they wanted to. There's nothing magic about having the chips on a separate board.
Most on-board audio is pretty lousy but there are better ones. The newer ones even have SPDIF outputs so you can run digital into a 5.1 surround system; both the last couple of mainboards that I bought have this.
I'm very happy with the output quality of the onboard AC97 (Analog Devices 1881 Soundport codec) on my a-few-years-old Asus K7M motherboard. However, the other input channel is noisy. Perhaps recording quality is compromized in other motherboards, too? Most users never have a need to use this feature anyway.
Any board that has to rely on having a tube amp onboard as a gimmick can be trusted to provide, at best, mediocre audio quality, as the article attests. To address your main point, it's just not worth it to integrate high quality sound chipsets into motherboards. The number of people that care enough to spend the extra $50 for a motherboard with great onboard audio as opposed to merely good audio is rather tiny.
The only thing I know about the nForce2's sound part is the connection to the RealTek ALC650 audio CODEC/a?. If it's not the best chip out there for throwing MCP-T output to the analog connectors, then that's too bad.
I think the best thing to do is use the nForce2's SPDIF output and work from there. What receivers are good with a non-home-theatre PC setup?
Audio is always put down near the bottom of the list in most applications, usually just a few pegs above MIDI which is always one of the lowest ranking features to improve or add to a program (unless you are talking about Cubase/Logic Audio etc). One reason for this is that our ears are not as sensitive as our eyes. Most people cannot discern between a high quality sound and a really high quality sound, our ears just don't need to be that precise. There are some of us though who train our ears to hear such discrepencies. We are the ones for whom the high end sound cards are made for, because for some it does make a difference. Especially when your PhD involves studying discrete particles of sound.....So you take your mb sound cards and play your games, I have some serious high quality audio to analyse :)
Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
I am a pretty serious audiophile. I have a high quality surround sound system in a home theater and decent quality pc speakers. I often connect my PC to my sound system for parties and the like. I use my pc as a jukebox and I listen to music 24/7.
I have always used Creative sound products because back in the day they were consistantly better than everything else available. I still use a Soundblaster Live 5.1 in my PC, but my latest motherboard (ASUS P4PE) came a pretty serious audio system on board. I have compared the two and found that when using the optical/coax digital out from the motherboard sound I get consistantly better quality than out of my Soundblaster on my surround system. This isn't just the reduction in noise, but an overall better processing of the sound before it hits my system.
That doesn't mean I prefer the onboard sound. For games the Live performs considerably better than the onboard system.
I think that unless you are a serious audio professional and are willing to fork out the big dollars for a ultra high quality soundcard you wont really notice the difference.
Considering you can pick up a soundblaster live value for almost nothing now. I would disable the m/b audio in a second for anyone's system that has better then a $20 pair of speakers.
For the past 18 months, I've been making the same argument that onboard audio is as good as an SBLive or Audigy. On a gamers hardware forum though I've lately got a lot of response suggesting that Audigy2 has made big strides with EAX2 and 6.1 support. The idea is that if you've got the full surround speaker setup, the Audigy2 is head and shoulders above most onboard sound, for games. Now I'm married and can't game with anything but headphones if I want to stay that way. Are there any slashdotters who actually HAVE an audigy 2 and a 4.1 or 6.1 setup and can attest to the quality? So far only a lot of testimony to the quality of onboard without 1st hand experience of an A2 gaming setup, and I don't think that music playback is the contention.
it doesn't make much difference. Try listening to a classical piano sonata and you can tell a difference.
If your sound card/motherboard sound is bad, try turning down the mixer levels on the computer, and turn up the speaker volume to compensate. Some simply can't cope with the levels set to 100% and distort badly - I suspect this is due to poor audio circuitry, but it may be a limitation of the mixer chip. Experiment to see whether turning down the master volume and/or source level controls give the best results.
My home-built system is running an Asus A7N8X Deluxe, which handles 5.1 on hardware. If I wanted to turn my computer into a home cinema or have surround sound for my games, I wouldn't even *need* one of them there fancy sound cards.
MB audio really depends on what mb you have, but these days they manage to cram so much on motherboards it's insane... Back in my days you didn't have motherboards! You just had boards of woods and you madez furniture out of them!
Call me paranoid, but isn't this just part of a really bad trend? That is, moving more and more functionality onto the "motherboard", until the motherboard _is_ the computer, it will come with a cheap plastic _sealed_ case around it, because there's no point in opening it up - no user servicable parts inside...
I'm a musician - I assembled a new PC for myself last December, and couldn't transplant my ISA SB16 to the new machine (no ISA slots, of course).
Sure, it works fine for games. But when running programs that are actually useful and/or CPU intensive, the sound will skip every now and then. It's completely unaccepable.
The board uses the VIA KT400 chipset, BTW.
What is an ISA slot?
I've got an MSI KT3 Ultra2 motherboard, and tested its onboard audio through Harmon/Kardon speakers (to see if I could use my Sound Blaster card in a second PC). The results were extremely disappointing, both in terms of the much lower quality of the music being played from MP3's and music CDs, as well as the poor performance of its microphone port when attempting to use a speech recognition system (NaturallySpeaking).
In fact, that's the primary reason why I invested in a quality Sound Blaster card many years ago, because the sound cards that I tested from various manufacturers had high-quality audio output, but quite lame microphone performance. I must have tested over five sound cards within a couple of months, and discovered that an astonishingly large portion didn't even have functioning microphone ports! I suspect that many PCs out there do not have working microphone ports -- but the PC owners will never discover that, because they don't have a need for using those ports, and will never try. Most people just use their sound cards for playing recorded music and game audio.
On my normal browser window size (probably about 800 pixel high) each of the pages in the article was a least three and a half 'screens' long, even for pages which only held two paragraphs of text.
What is this idiocy? Okay, I can understand the ad in the middle and the banner ad, but they've got just *so* much shite around the sides - only about 20% of the page is the article itself.
Oh, and just to stay on-topic, I've got an IWILL motherboard with C-Media onboard sound on my home PC, and it sounds fine to me. The speakers are reasonable (Cambridge Soundworks I think) and are fine for all my needs. For playing music on (which I don't do much) the sound seems like its lacking a little richness, but I think that's probably because the speakers aren't really designed with music in mind.
FOr me on board sound is not going to work. I have a 1000+ CD collection and have ripped many cd and songs to MP3. All my ripps are digitial extrationsand encoding. Compare a analog ripped song to one that has be ripped digitally you will notice the sound difference. FOr those rare ocasions that is becoming more common with each cd released. The software can't do a digital rip/ or the cd won't play in the computer. I play the CD in one of my home stereo CD players (most are over 6 years old and use the digitial SPDIF (TOSlink) outputs and use my digital I/O duaghter board connected to my soundcard to capure the digital stream. I haven't met a CD yet that i could not make into a digitally ripped MP3.
Also with the digital outputs on my daughterboard I can playback use the fiberoptic cable to play back the music on my home stereo system. So if you doa lot of recording an always have music playing from your computer a seperate soundcard is the only answer. until optical inputs/outputs become standard on motherborads
Just my 2 cents
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Apple brought us those fruity iMac's, why not have the "Yellow Screen `O Death" or "Green Screen `O Death" for once?
Want a green screen of death? Have it!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Sound insulation is your friend. Wrap your gaming room in it.
That's the only real issue I have with (most!) onboard audio chips. The sound quality should satisfy most people on this planet (at least the chips I have had the pleasure of hearing), but if you need low-latency sound, you will run into problems. :)
But then again. If you do need low-latency audio, you are probably looking for a (semi)professional solution, and onboard audio was not designed with that in mind, I guess...
I recently bought a whole computer off of EBAY that had great specs, but a noisy MB. I don't remember what make/model ; it only came with a one page manual. The damn thing is noisy as all get out. Today I'll be replacing it with a good ole PCI soundblaster. I have always thought that modular was better ; If anything on that MB fails you are out the whole she bang.
"Action is the thing that escapes most people. Great ideas are a dime a dozen. Great actions are few and far in between.
I know soundfonts might be a proprietary thing
Software sound font support is not a proprietary thing anymore. Any program using the Allegro library can use Gravis-format sound fonts; the web site has a tool to convert .sf2 format to Gravis format.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Later I attached audio speakers and was surprised to hear announcements to the effect of "System finished power on self-test, booting from media". Very surprised. It was late, all was quiet and this message arrived loudly.
But further I have a nagging complaint. The boot process for this mobo and BIOS revision stops for the most trivial things like a disconnected (or non-existant) floppy drive. But we have a basic difference worldview that is evidenced by the following message sequence "Memory failed. System booting from media". Excuse me, did you just tell me that nothing is stable and reliable and therefore you start to boot?
I understand that back in the days of just AX,BX,CX, and DX registers, AX was really important for the integer math -- but when they upgraded to the 386 EAX register, they also made it pretty redundant, with the other 3 registers. Nowadays with the Pentiums, I just don't see what's so special about having EAX.
Perhaps you could set me straight?
I'm of the opinion that a motherboard should have no extras like sound/video/LAN. That's what AGP/PCI slots were made for. Then you have more control over the design of your PC. Question: Are there any high-end motherboards that don't have the extras included? I have a Graphics card / sound card / lan card already. I just want a stripped down Board (P4 800 mhz). Every fast board I see has integrated sound and other crap.
Conserve Oil, Recycle, Boycott Walmart
I've never had issues with onboard sound quality issues. Granted, my motherboard has an SB128 onboard...
of course the thing (embarrasingly enough) doesn't hardly work under windows so I had to get an SBLive to get rid of the crackle...(The card worked frone on Linux 2.4.17/18/19/20 from day one)
The real problem with onboard is those AC97 chips that (like a winmodem) depend on CPU cycles to do their work for them. Whether quality is good or bad, you don't want CPU load determining whether sound is working at this particular instant or not...
Brian
Anyone out there own one of those Aopen "Tubesound" motherboards?
Talk about a marriage of different technologies..
Could you explain this? I have a high-end microphone [okay, signal in, not signal out], and it looks to me like its cable is thick enough that it's heavily shielded.
It then goes into a plug [again, probably shielded], and straight into the sound card [short wires, so inductive noise should be minimal, and card, so capacitive noise should be minimal].
Can you tell me where, exactly, that electrical noise gets in?
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
No, I'd agree that MB sound isn't not too terrible... but it never comes out of that little speaker loud enough for me to be able to hear anything..
-fatty
For most purposes anyway.
:-)
Let's face it, most computer speakers are the limiting factor, plus most people aren't audiophiles.
There are some utterly crappy onboard chips out there, but there's no reason Creaf's audigy (for instance) can't be put on the motherboard.
Most non-ac97 soundchips outperform plugin "budget" cards. I proved that at work and saved us a bunch of extra configuration issues on linux desktops.
FInally, as as been said by others, if you want high quality sound, you need to convert it outside the computer. There are several high end cards which will do this, some using PCI + fibre link, and some using USB or firewire. If you need minimum noise and audiophile quality, this is the only way to fly - but only if it's done properly. My first experience of USB sound was the philips stuff and while it's OK, it's definitely not something to write home about (I'd run out of PCI slots running multiheaded video...)
Look to see more and more perihperals using firewire. It has great potential and best of all it doesn't tie up slots.
When I first got this motherboard a year or so ago, I knew it had AC '97 on it and I was leery of that, so as soon as I had Windows installed, I had to run it through its paces. Just playing MP3s was fine and sounded perfectly adequate for my needs. Then I tested MIDI. It had wavetable. Not very good wavetable, but I wasn't expecting any at all, so hey.
Then I went to play a game. Sound went insane. It turns out that their DirectSound support, at least for me, was complete crap. And at the time I still had the onboard video. The only card in my computer was my NIC, so I doubt it was a conflict. Tried updating and switching drivers, no go.
I eventually had to break down and buy an SB Live. And I felt that was a waste because it seemed as if I'd just paid for working DirectX drivers.
I'm using an old AOpen MX3L mobo that can only handle up to 600 mhz (currently using a 366 mhz I OC'ed to 548 mhz at the moment)... It has on-board sound, it's ok I guess but it lacks one thing, upgradability... If you want better sound, you need to disable the on-board and use up a PCI slot (not so bad I guess). What stinks about the on-board though is that it can't handle twin output simultaneously (WAV sound effects at same time as MP3 playback) like all my friends have... Oh well, sue me for being stuck on the oldies :)
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
Speaking as an audio-recording guy and an audiophile (one of those really annoying ones that bitches about cinemas having subwoofers turned up too high) I can't say as I have much use for an on-board sound solution. They are extremely useful, however, in some situations. It doesn't make much difference to Joe Gamer with his Logitech satellite 2.1 jobbie whether his MP3s are 128 or 320 kbit, whether his audio's Dolby or DTS or whether his sound card's SNR is 70 or 100 dB - with one link in the chain (in this case, his speakers) which is weak, the rest don't matter a damn. If he's happy, though, who cares?
Joe Studio, on the other hand, is probably not going to be satisfied plugging his monitors (geeks: that's the flashy word for accurate speakers) into anything that doesn't have an Aardvark Audio logo on it. That's not because he's a snob, it's because your average consumer sound card has a hopeless (if any) ASIO implementation (yes, Creative, I'm talking to you) and lacks features such as 24 bit/192khz support, external clock sync, ADAT support or halfway decent A/Ds.
At the end of the day, it's different strokes for different folks - most people couldn't care less whether or not their sound solution sounds good or great, as most of them sound pretty good these days and with your average speaker solution (generally the chain's weak link) it doesn't make any difference anyway. The machine I use at work has an old Yamaha sound card and it's noisier than AM radio, whilst the on-board sound on my motherboard (which I use when I'm in Linux as there's no driver for my main sound card) is great. On-board sound definitely has its place, even if it's not for everyone.
It's almost imposible to have only -0.3dB stereo crosstalk (look at RightMatk Audio Test Results for Via Envy24 or Aopen TubeSound). Seems to me these guys don't understand what they are doing. I am almost certain that there was something wrong with test setup or cables.
I tend to (dis)like anything onboard as much as the next slashdotter, but I've tried many soundcards, on and offboard (PC only, dunno about Macs), and the sound difference I feel is tiny enough to say that 90% of all regular PC users wouldn't even know the difference.
I would say that the big difference to sound quality lies on the amplifiers, and of course, on the speakers.
Myself, I use a Delta44 into an Alesis RA-100 which provides very low noise, and JBL speakers. Sound is as close to perfect as I would wish, meaning that it would only get better if I built new walls around here.
That is what I think makes the difference. There is no way a decent amplifier and good speakers can compare to the crappy $5 PC "amplified speakers".
There is one last difference: Impedance. But then again the crappy speakers wouldn't work with good cards.
But for Joe 16bit, onboard sound and SBLive! are just the same. (and yes, I own both of those too).
I remember back in my XT as well as the 486 before I had a SB pro that there were a couple of games that sounded decent, i.e some golf game where you could hear birds and clapping. Tried it on a later model and the sounds was not quite right. I think they have reduced the dynamic range on the pc speaker to making beeps since it is unheard of not having a sound card in some form if you want sound.
What I would really like is to have found software that would take PC Speaker output and force it through the sound card. There were some old games that were great but sound like crap on new pc speakers.
The number one reason is being able to play multiple wave files at once without pieces of crap like arts or esd. Hopefully there are some onboard sound cards these days that fix this issue.
The second is I have found that it is normally tougher to get a working linux driver for my onboard sound card. When I first got my current motherboard the driver was in the kernel but failed to work. It required hunting for a patch from Alan Cox.
Currently I have a SB Live! MP3+ in both my computers, and I am happy with them.
Havoc Penington, the bane of my Linux desktop.
On a related note, there is a book called "windows 95 annoyances" that gives instructions on how to change the "start" button text. I found that flipping through the book at a bookstore once.
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
The absolutely hottest in onboard sound:
AOpen Tube Motherboard
One thing I haven't seen anybody mention is that onboard sound tends to be very crappy for recording. My experience has been that anything that goes through the mic input ends up coming through very quietly and sounding like crap. That's probably why there's a separate "mic boost" option in the Windows mixer. Even using that though, it's still too quiet for most sound sources (for example, my acoustic guitar) and even when loud enough, still sounds like crap.
On the other hand, the separate sound cards (the ones I have tried run around $70 and up) all record mic input very well regardless of what they were labelled for (i.e. gaming, playing mp3s, or actual recording). I can get extremely crisp recordings from my guitar, mic ($70 - not a cheapie computer mic), and analog from my synthesizer.
Oh, and off topic, but I'd just like to say that Audacity rocks.
It's the same situation as onboard video: onboard sound is now good enough for most basic PC uses. Reality check- if you're happy using two small beige plastic no-name PC speakers powered by a tiny wall-wart, you will not be disappointed by onboard sound.
However, for anything that involves doing alot of audio playback (jukebox, DJ/broadcast, audio/video editing, theatre FX, intense gaming) you will very likely appreciate the quality of a better audio card.
On my PC I run two soundcards - a SB Live Value into some beige speakers mainly for Windoze & game sounds, and a M-Audio 2496 into a mixer, power amp and JBL speakers for doing editing, music-making and album transcription.
I used to be a big skeptical of motherboard audio, then I bought an ASUS with an onboard CMPCI chip (which I was also a bit skeptical of) and it changed my opinion completely. Not only is the sound perfect, but best of all it was fairly inexpensive compared to buying a sound card, and it saved me a slot.
This is with onboard sound (Intel 82801DB-ICH4, Avance Logic ALC650 rev 0), but I've also heard it with some PCI cards on a different system. I think next time, I'll stick with onboard sound until I get an external USB DAC. (Must work with Linux!)
Litigious bastards
If you're looking to get sound, then MB sound is just fine. I use it for filler/background noise all the time and love it.
If you're looking for music, they still have miles and miles to go before they will compete. Check out products by Lynx,M-Audio,,RME and Digital Audio Labs
Also check out this thread in a forum for a list of just some of the cards that are worth looking at.
HiFi Sound Cards
And don't be fooled by statistics and numbers, even the best DAC in the world can get messed up by some 2bit clown laying it down with the wrong analog circuitry to support it.
I'm not saying that the people who lay out all these cards are 2bit clowns, just that people look at the numbers and don't use their ears all too often.
The most important thing is do you like the sound that comes out of the system. If yes, then who cares what else is out there. Be happy with it.
I've experienced lower quality as well, depending on the machine. My current Powerbook seems to have a stereo-mini plug that is not quite as long as many cables' plugs, so I wonder if it's making great contact.
BUT, the G5's have TOSlink built in for optical surround capability out of the box. Woo hoo, that changes everything.
Any signal cable which is not balanced is bound to pick up noise from any EM fields nearby. But because most soundcards are unshielded, they pick up noise from everything inside your box, switchmode PSU, hard drives, processor, everything!
-- Book
Because if you're serious about audio then just about any sound card will disappoint you, onboard or no. It's about whether or not it's a pain in the ass. A PC doesn't usually need studio-quality audio, when it does you can get 24kz/96bit or what have you, you can do digital, which oddly enough my c-media onboard sound (Asus A7S333) has. In fact you can get a breakout for this board that will do optical and coaxial both.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The C-Media chip on my Abit board is hooked up to an optical SPDIF, which runs out to my surround system. All the DAC is done in on my receiver, which has better DACs than any SB or Turtle Beach and probably most cards except the M-Audio variety. Bonus: Dolby and DTS pass through mean the receiver also does the decoding, so I get full 5.1 sound for DVDs. Also, you don't have to use the cheap-o jack/plug/headphone style connectors; the analog signal is entirely inside the receiver until it leaves the amplifier stage.
I think the point of the article was that the DACs on onboard chips are getting pretty good, but I've been very happy just using the digital out to my reciever for a long time.
In my opinion, any card that properly works with SPDIF digital out will give you the same quality as any other card (since the DAC is on a reciever instead of inside the computer), i've been using such cards for years now and have no annoying low level hiss, other than that, i'm not sure i can tell a difference.
woot! exactly the same for me.
I have an optical out from my Abit board running to my Sherwood surround sound amp. It sounds beutifull, and was a bargain to boot.
Only problem I found was I couldn't get the optical out to work under linux, so I've had to revert back to Windows.
Unfortunately not only are they testing the audio chipsets, they're also testing the analog sections on the respective motherboards, which has the potential to screw up the sound much, much more than the sound chip ever dreamed.
I was shocked at the poor noise floor and stereo separation of the VIA Envy24PT chip - its older brother, the Envy24, has been used in pro and semipro audio I/O cards from the likes of M-Audio and Terratec. I believe the problem is due to the signal jungle that is a modern motherboard.
I'm a little dismayed at their lack of a recommendation for the Envy24PT - it performed very well in the audio tests and continually had the least CPU usage. Software bells and whistles are useless -- it's the sound that matters in the end. In any case, pardon the grumblings of an Envy24 fanboy.
"The slightly degraded quality of the MP3s make it impossible to hear a difference between a onboard chip and a Sound Blaster Audigy, which we recently upgraded to."
When I hear the amount of people who listen to low-quality mp3's, and iTunes AAC saying "it sounds just like the CD", it makes me despair that we'll ever have good PC solutions.
Hell, just the other day, I downloaded a voice recording that people absolutely *butchered*. The guy ripped a CD at 44.1khz, and just used some program to change it to 48khz -- his theory is that now it sounded better because the sampling rate was higher. Well, anybody with any knowledge of what's going on knows that at best it will sound the same, and at worst it will sound horrible. Well, it sounded horrible, with so many birdies, artifacts. It was unlistenable.
Guess what. People were telling the guy it was a great sounding rip.
Don't get me started on the Mac fan-boys who keep telling me that 128kb AAC's sound just like the CD.
I keep explaining that even 192kb MP3's are bare minimum quality, and that you need to get to 256kb to have something approaching the CD. But they don't believe you. They listen on those 1" speakers on their iBooks, and they think they have hi-fi.
I wondered for *years* on how people could get by with 32/64M MP3 player; 64M is the minimum you need to store an album at 160kb rip quality, and now it makes sense. People are ripping at 64kb (which is bare minimum for *voice*), listening to crap, and telling each other "sounds just like the CD".
Cripes. I hope they go deaf and stop buying this crap. This explains why everything you download from Kazaa or Grokster sounds like crap. People can't tell the difference!
The problem is that 33MHz 32-bit PCI slots (which are still the only available PCI variant on practically every mainstream motherbord currently available) have a limited bandwidth (133 Megabytes per second in total, if I'm not mistaken). Every PCI card takes up some of this bandwidth. Since bandwidth demand in most interfaces and other devices just keeps on increasing, this is becoming more and more of a problem, and it will remain a problem as long as PCI Express is not yet a common standard.
PCI bandwidth scarcity already led to the introduction of the separate AGP port, which already relieves the PCI bus from the most bandwidth hungry category of interface cards, namely graphics cards. A motherboard can have only one AGP port however (that's why AGP is a port, while PCI is a bus). Also, the use of AGP is limited to graphics cards only.
Another way to save PCI bandwidth is to integrate certain functinality otherwise implented through separate PCI cards directly in a chipset's southbridge (either that or by connecting interface chips to the southbridge through another faster internal interface, such as Hypertransport or VIA V-Link). We're talking about IDE controllers (plain old ATA as well as Serial ATA), USB 2.0, Firewire, etc.
Integrating a sound subsystem of high (or at least acceptable) quality directly in the chipset frees up precious PCI bandwidth even further.
This saves bandwidth for additional IDE controllers, SCSI controllers, video editing cards, additional graphics cards (for multi-monitor setups) and high quality sound solutions.
In other words, this will buy us more time while PCI Express is being introduced gradually into the mainstream market.
One important thing: if you purchase one of those "Deluxe" motherboards with all kinds of extra functionality integrated on-board, keep in mind that only the functionality integrated in the southbridge or connected to it through a high-speed internal interface will actually bypass the PCI bus. Many separate chips (such as on-board Promise or Highpoint softraid controllers) tend to be connected to the PCI bus internally, therefore still consuming PCI bandwidth. I'm not sure about many separate LAN-chips on many motherboards, though, because they might be connected to the southbridge through a separate bus, I'm not sure. Could somebody else here provide some more accurate information on this, please?
"Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"
I just picked up an Asus board with C-media sound built in. Absolute garbage.
The audio slows down when playing high intensive games. Is that supposed to happen on a P4 1.8Ghz system? I seriously doubt it.
Is it just me, or is anyone else clutching onto thier AWE64 still?
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
"128 bits STILL fucks with the bass quite a bit as well as the siblances. "
I don't care if its MP3, AAC, or ATRACS. 128kb is not good enough. Its just not enough bits to store the music given today's state of the art.
In fact, I suspect it will never be enough; more likely the cost and density of storage (and bandwidth) will improve so that these lossy compression solutions will become irrelevant.
I am not an audiophile. Far from it, actually. I'm *proud* of the fact that I am happy with relatively cheap sound systems.
However, I do know someone who is both an audiophile/DJ and works with computers, and he claims that some of the onboard audio systems have lower latency then non-onboard systems. [Unfortunately, I forget the specific motherboard he was referring to]
Don't know if its true or not, but I believe he uses at least one onboard audio setup, since he claims its not the poorest link.
I only listen to music on my computers, but I dont like real loud music or thumping bass. So, although I used my Soundblaster Audigy for awhile, it got left uninstalled on an upgrade cycle. I like AC97 onboard sound through $30 speakers just fine. I just write BASH scripts to play mpg123 playlists. Beats any stereo component system I ever had over the last 3 decades. 30 GB of MP3 on the HD replaces God knows how many stacks of CDs. AC97 just continues the happy trend of real simple, affordable music. Having bought many expensive stereos and albums, cassettes, and CDs, I LOVE THE NEW WAY!!!
HenryJamesFeltus.com
The path would have to be significantly worse; perhaps if you have a impedence mismatch that would introduce some hum.
Either that, or there is a weird equilization curve applied somehwere in the Mac to make it sound good through the crappy built-in speakers that don't sound good through the CD path
But other than that, I suspect it is mainly psychological.
"Vorbis and AAC are a whole lot better"
Perhaps at high bit rate.
But at 128kb, AAC's aren't that good.
I suspect the people arguing otherwise are Mac-fans that are simply defending what they see as the true faith of Apple.
Personally, I don't want a bunch of wires running everywhere, so I'd rather have the stuff in the case. And USB is OK for some things, but (especialy for USB 1) the bandwidth is a tad low. So gimme a big, ugly case with a lot of PCI slots. And better yet, put some things on the board so it doesn't take USB *or* PCI space.
I've used a lot of systems that utilize the ES 1370 or 1371 chip, and it works well enough. I'm not an audiophile either, and my main requirement for an audio chip isn't fidelity but rahter that I can easily get drivers for linux and any flavor of windows. Linux (slack 9.0 with 2.4.20 kernel) configures sound out of the box with that chip, and its common enough that, despite the fact that windows (98 or 2k) doesn't recognize it, I can easily find a driver.
I've manage two computers here at home, mine and my partner's. My partner does multitrack sound editing, I'm a programmer who listens to music whilst coding plus uses soundboard for gaming (F1 2002 current fave). Mine is the most powerful one, hers get my old components. 16500 winmarks 01, fwiw.
Now, when updating our motherboards with the purchase of said Asus motherboard, I moved the Audigy into hers so as to replace the old SBLive she had before thinking the Soundstorm would be as good or better than the Audigy. Also, she needed quality of sound more than I so I thought it would be a good thing.
However, an Audigy 2 is now on the shopping list for her so that I can have my Audigy 1 back. Why? The Soundstorm sound quality is just BAD. This is especially from a hifi point of view. My Grado Labs SR325s picks up hisses and noise from moving windows, programs loading etc, something that never happened before. My Audigy was just dead silent. And worst of all, the equaliser settings make everything sound distorted; in fact, music is flat out crap with a nasal metal sound with equaliser off; with EQ on I can get the nasal quality down a bit but it never approaches the natural sound of the Audigy.
Going Dolby Digital to my Cambridge Soundworks 3500 removes the hisses but the extremely poor equaliser (as compared to much more natural sounding base and treble of the Audigy) remains.
I've tested this using A-B comparisons, which is possible as the Audigy hooks up to the same miniamp by the 5.1 DIN whereas the Soundstorm uses Coaxial. Source is lossless compression ripped CDs - with the computers next to each others it's easy enough to press play at the same time and then just press the mute buttons as fit. And yes, the soundstorm _just can't match_ the natural sound of the audigy. No way.
I'm a bit of a hi fi nut, not terribly so compared to some but I've put in about A$20 000 into a Rotel hifi/home theatre system over the past 6 years and my Grado Labs are fantastic. Using the Audigy I could hardly pick the difference between that soundcard and my high end Sony Discman player, however with the Soundstorm there's just no point comparing - it's not high fidelity, at all.
In addition to playback, the microphone quality is clearly inferior to the Audigy, lots of hisses and just plain bad quality. This is tested with the help of Teamspeak and Plantronic's top of the line analogue headphone/mike (can't hold a candle to the Grados but it's comfy enough for gaming).
I really wonder what those who say motherboard based sound is comparable to standalone soundcards were smoking. They can't have that good ears, that's for sure! If it is a bad batch of the A7N8X Deluxe, please let me know. I'm extremely doubtful though.
Sorry for my long windedness, moderators - hope you find it somehow informative though.
ISO certified == THX certified
Is on board sound good?
If you are into quality, NO.
If you are just looking for something to make a sound while you work, YES.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
I love my Pegasos's onboard audio, beats my SB32 easily for sound quality.
Of course it doesn't have power-out, so need to use speakers with an internal power supply for it to work. No cheap-o walmart speakers for it.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Computers are for computing. Stereos are for playing back music. Stop trying to make a purse from a sow's ear.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I had a Gigabyte MB that had onboard audio which was good enough. I primarily listen to internet radio at 24kbs so my needs aren't anywhere near audiophile level.
When the Gigabyte died (I keep my computer inside a box to squelch the noise from the fans and hard drives -tends to get a bit toasty) I replaced it with a DFI motherboard. Its onboard audio was atrocious - very scratchy as if it was playing an old vinyl record that had spent the past 10 years gathering dust in the Mojave. To give you an idea of how lousy it was, the $3 sound card I picked up on ebay sounds great by comparison.
Back in the 60s and 70s most people couldn't not
differentiate the quality between ceramic and
magnetic cartridge turntable. You would have
people listen to different systems and they would
for the most part not be able to say which one
sounded the best.
The sound quality is so different that you'd have
to be partly deaf or a complete moron to think
that either one sounded just as good.
When it comes to MP3 vs CDs, in many cases it is
virtually impossible to be able to differentiate,
even with people with good hears.
But, if what you listen to ressembles more noise
than music. If all you want is some stuff that
compares more with subway noise or crashing frying
pans than music (like most modern so called rock
music) then there might not be really noticeable
or important differences. Rap recordings would
also be hard to differenciate either way.
Onboard audio chips have been good from day one for what they're supposed to do.
Only stupid nvidia fan boys think that their nforce2 onboard sound have got "professional quality" asio drivers. (And why on earth do they care? It's not like Quake is any better with a professional audio card)
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Certainly onboard audio is acceptable for
many uses (office desktop etc) but a decent
sound card can be bought for a ridiculous
amount of money so it may be worth it.
I recently bought an Audigy Player (OEM)
for roughly 50 Euros and it is great. You
get an effects processor, real 5.1, a load
of utilities that are quite nice and MUCH
better signal quality than most onboard
cards for the price of 3 CDs. Many CPU
coolers cost more than this and they
are just blocks of metal!
You should definitely stick with onboard
if you own cheap speakers and don't
play a lot of music or many games but
in my opinion a decent card is worth the
small extra spending and it will last
many years. As a matter of fact I also
suggest getting decent speakers (like
Cambridge Audio 2400). For less than
100-120 Euros/$ you can get very
respectable (computer) sound quality.
P.
The quality of the onboard sound on most computers I have used is plenty good. The motherboard I have has a Creative 128 chip soldered on, and it works beautifully through my Klipsch Promedia 2.1 setup or the stereo.
The only difference I notice between the built in sound and many seperate audio cards is the volume. My last computer did not have built in sound, so I got some $30 PCI card. While it was pretty cheap, it had good sound and had no problems driving my Sony studio monitor headphones plugged straight into the back of the computer.
The built in Creative chip on my new computer, with all volume settings maxed, was no quiet loud enough. I have to turn on the Klipsch speakers and use the amp in there to get enough volume for the headphones. Luckily the amp in those speakers is really good, so no noise is introduced that I can pick out.
I think it boils down to the fact there just isn't enough room on the motherboard to include a more powerful amp and the other components to support it. Heat may be an issue too. I remember that PCI card was pretty crammed full of stuff.
I run my computer's audio through a receiver. When I added another component, the computer started generating really bad RF noise. It's the computer doing it, but it shows up on the other device.
I finally realized that the computer is grounded, while the other devices aren't. Adding a ground lift box instantly killed the RF noise.
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
Who cares? If I want decent sound, there are real sound systems to get, designed specifically to make "nice sounds". My sound cards only serves the purpose of presenting "nifty error messages", spit out some background noise (mp3s) while checking my SETI@home stats, check out some "free music downloaded from the net" to decide wether to get the CD or not, but most of the time it's just a place to keep that jack plug in the end of that cable from lying on the floor.
This message has been ROT-13 encrypted twice for higher security.
I've been playing with my friend's nForce2 rig for awhile now, and nVidia knows their stuff. The sound quality isn't quite as good as, say, an Audigy or a Hercules Game Theater XP, but for onboard sound it's pretty damn good, and for the record sounds a ton better than the Bose system in my brother's car.
Their calculation of ideal SNR is down by 2dB.
16 bits (ideal) gives an SNR of 16*6.02 + 1.76 = 98dB, not 96dB.
The mistake you and the parent poster committed to is the lack of acknowledgment of the integrated motherboard sound hardware's primary fault:
DIMINISHED FILTERS OR LACK THEREOF
The majority of integrated motherboard sound hardware's lack in quality is the fact that the motherboard manufacturers intentionaly do not install good filtering hardware. Creative Labs builds verry good audio filtering hardware in their audigy and generally anything SoundBlaster 16 and beyond as long as it wasn't integrated on the motherboard; was excellently filtered by design of Creative Labs. When companies integrate it onto the motherboard, they do so to SAVE MONEY. Nowdays, when you plug amplified speakers into a sound subsystem of which is integrated onto the motherboard by manufacture, you get verry noisy audio. Installing filters between the speakers and the output sockets does not help because the problem happens before the sound is output. It is flawed manufacture.
Don't call me an audiophile; I am simply capable of exceptionaly good hearing and I depend on such when I'm hunting animals. You don't actualy think I can make a flawless mimicry of an animal's vocalization without hearing my self initialy?
Skwawk -good noise filtering
Stwawcht -motherboard-induced noise not filtered
Yes, noise from sound output is caused by interference from other devices on the same motherboard.
_Do_ you know that a a CDROM drive has an audio connecter that connects strait to the mixer of a soundcard? Audio quality from a CDROM drive is not diminished.
All noise originates from the motherboard and its other devices.
ummm, never mind.
I actualy do have hearing problems. To many years of riding Harleys without a helmet, and listening to racks of equipment with muffin fans.
I still don't like on-board sound, even though I can not realy hear the difference. The problem, in my opinion is architectual. I like modular designs, not integrated ones. Integrated serial, parallel, and USB, I can live with. Integrated NIC, getting iffy. Integrated video no way no how!
I believe the new nvidia audio chipsets are thx certified and come with digital out (optional).
Hmmm... Pie...
I have a standard PC with some AC97 on-board sound, and a laptop with some ESS thingy in it. Both work well for playing sounds (at least, for basic things like listening to an MP3 or playing games). But let me say, quality of recording is absolutely ridiculous. For example, one time I wanted to record a CD for someone, so I made a connection from the Line Out of my electric piano to the Line In of my desktop PC. It just didn't work. Although all the levels were properly setup and I tried various programs and drivers, there was A LOT of noise (sounded like a very old cassette), and the higher frequencies were also distorted very much. With my notebook, things were a little better, but I only got acceptable quality at a specific sample rate (I think 32kHz or something), and even then the noise introduced could clearly be heard. I have now bought an (external) Soundblaster Extigy, and recording quality is probably ten times better than I'd need it, and I never had problems with noise anymore.
The best quality improvement for your computer is not your onboard audio or your plug-in sound card.
Is the 2.1 system from Klipsch. I have had all kinds of computer sound systems from Boston, Creative, Cambridge, Altec Lansing. The Klipsch systems beat them all by a mile. They are simply amazing and the 2.1 has an incredible price for the sound you get.
If you want more than 2.1, the Klipsch 4.1 and 5.1's are they way to go.
I have converted numerous other people to Klipsch. You need just seconds to hear the difference.
The subwoofer puts on an impressive show also. I watched mine suck a packing peanut off the floor and into the speaker, and then blow it out again. I've also seen it float suspended in a "bass field" in front of the subwoofer port.
CLEAN... PURE... CHEAP... AWESOME !
I've still yet to see anything that can touch the digital out off a motherboard or USB audio - both of them give the raw digital data stream right to the amp - and at 24bit with some USB - just how good are your speakers ?
I talked to one of Nvidia's audio engineers yesterday about this article(they were doing a presentation here at a local LAN party), and this is what he had to say about the nForce2's performance.
1. The only worse board they could have used to do the test is a Chaintech; the MSI is a very poor board in terms of audio design compared to the higher-end boards.
2. Nvidia's reference boards in the labs use some good SigmaTel codecs which are far superior to anything anyone else is using; so most(if not all) boards are of lower quality than what Nvidia intends.
Nvidia is supposedly going to get in contact with ExtremeTech soon, so it's highly possible that the article will be changed/ammended in the future. They aren't going to sit to the side and let the nForce get a bad rap.
A digital sound is just a series of values. Whether you have a fancy sound card or motherboard sound, it's exactly the same. Period. And it has been like this for a really long time (going back to when the first 16-bit PC sound cards appeared over a decade ago).
The only differences that a dedicated sound card makes are:
1. Less CPU overhead when playing sounds, though this has been negligible since at least 1995 or so.
2. Some fairly expensive sound processing algorithms become "free" with a dedicated DSP. Of course you could preprocess the sound, play it through a motherboard chipset, and it will sound *exactly* the same. But with a dedicated DSP you can do it in real-time for free. You can also do it on the CPU in real-time, and 99% of the time this is good enough.
The quality of sound you hear has much to do with how electrically isolated the sound circuit is and this is a function of the motherboard. The output of a great sound chip can be ruined if there is noise on the power input. As other components on the motherboard irregularly draw power, it can create fluctuations that end up being audible.
I've used motherboards that were so bad that you can actually hear clicks every time the mouse moves or siren like whistles as the cpu does certain tasks.
Its probably better to put a crappy chip on a separate sound board than it is to put a great chip directly on a motherboard -- unless that motherboard maker is being very careful of course.
That's awful. She should sue for malpractice.
Ok, let's get back to basics. When determining what the resultant sound quality is like, you have to consider three things:
1. The quality of the recording
2. The quality of the playback system
3. The environment in which you listen to it.
The third one is something that most people just plain forget. If your environment drowns out all the detail, then there is no point in having a high quality playback system or recording.
Here are a few guidelines for MP3 compression:
96kb/s: At this level, you will notice the drop in all environments except the worst. This quality is only good if you are planning to listen to the music in the car, on a crowded street, or play it as light background music (or if you have a tin ear).
128kb/s: This level of compression is generally indistiguishable from CD quality when played through a typical PA system, or at loud parties. The room acoustics will generally distort the sound more than the compression will.
196kb/s: This compression rate is about the maximum sound quality that matters for standard PC speakers in a room full of white noise generators. High quality PA systems in an acoustically arranged room also fall here.
256 or 320kb/s: You would need a good stereo in a quiet room to tell this from CD audio. Yes, there is a difference, but if this bugs you then you're probably loath to play audio from your computer in the first place.
CD Quality: A good rule of thumb is that, if you've spent more money on your stereo than on your computer, then you should probably pop for the expensive sound card and a really huge hard drive array on which to store your music in a lossless format before considering it a piece of stereo equipment.
Another important thing to remember is that just because the sound is different doesn't mean that it's of poorer quality. Just because onboard audio distorts something differently doesn't necessarily mean that it distorts it more or less.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
First of all, my SB Live comes with a certain amount less sound distorting than the mobo-enabled card. If you have good speakers, you may notice that the internal cards seem to have more feedback or something similar.
Secondly... the Live does a much nicer job of the "surround" options - and supports digital out.
Thirdly - though many may not use it - the EAX panel allows for very interesting effects such as realtime distortions/etc. I'm still trying to figure out if I can create my own, but it's cool to plug my guitar into the inputs and then run it through the "distort" and "chorus" effects for output (cheap dist guitar).
Exactly! The solution is to integrate audio and video controllers to the same AGP card. Unless, you want in addition to AGP to have AAP, Advanced Audio Port, second (after AGP) port designed to break universalism of PCI buss.
Less is more !
Noone builds a paralell port DAC anymore? :)
FRA: STFU GTFO
I usually use a SB Live! in my pc, when I got my new board I tried the onboard & it worked really well. Since I use most of my PCI Slots, and the slots share IRQ's it is very hard to get a good mix so when I burn a CD (through PCI SCSI Card), leech some files of the network (at lan for example)the sound is not jumping. If I put my SB Live! in I start to have problems with PCI Bandwidth. In previous boards the onboard sound was shithouse, and would skip and make "blips" mostly in games. It might be using more cpu, but with a P4 2.8 who cares?
The on-board audio out from my Dell Precision 350 is quite acceptable (though with more noise than most sound cards, and you can hear CPU/bus traffic). But the audio input is something else... Even with a good microphone it produces the most disgusting waveforms you've ever seen - TONS of noise (more than an analog casette tape) and a wacky DC offset of something like 10dB. The same mic plugged into a Mac works just fine.
I hear the best approach is to move the AD/DA conversions outside the computer - this week I'm supposed to receive a sound card with digital I/O and a dedicated AD/DA hardware box.
You need the ABIT NF7-S. It has TOSLINK out onboard, and from what I read in the manual, you should be able to get SPDIF in on one of the IDC headers on the motherboard.
Although, in windows, I must say I'm not too impressed with the reliability of the analog out (it seems to have problems on cold boots...)
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
The Sapphire A3-M275. Only $55 and has everthing except Ethernet, including a quite decent ATI RV100 video chip with TV out (some Radeon variety, perfect for DVD/MPEG4 and even some games), plus now standard AC97 audio. A perfect little starter HTPC mobo.
Everyone here seems to be missing that the the sound isn't the only thing important in a soundcard. Overridingly important, but not the only thing :-)
:-(
:-)
I have recently moved my SB Live card to another PC, and started using the onboard sound (VIA 82cxx or somthing).
I can only play one sound at a time! As soon as I have something not happy with ESD, *argh*!
It's also much more likely to skip under load too
(Technically the card can do two sound streams, but you have to know in advance and use dsp0 / dsp1, AND I can't get 44.1khz stereo on both. ARGH!
Enby in Waltham
However, do note some people like to listen to their computer working... (you can hear all those funny noises in the electrical circuits due to resonance. It's very interesting.)
My father once played a tape for me of computer-generated music from back in the 70s (this was, of course, before the advent of sound cards, or PCs for that matter). It turned out that EMI generated by the computer in question just happened to get picked up by a nearby FM radio, and some clever programmer discovered that using different sequences of instructions would generate different tones on the radio--voila, computer music! And (at least to the ears of a 10-year-old in the mid-80s) it was Not All That Bad either. Though I wouldn't put it up against an Audigy...
Onboard video is much more of a problem in this respect - especially as the manufacturers often sacrifice the AGP slot for it. No chance of ever playing Doom 3 on one of those!
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I've got an Asus board with an on-board C-media chip. The sound that comes from it is decent enough from me, and I suppose for most people.
For the true audiophiles, it provides s/pdif out. As a true audiophile will never use a DAC that's inside a metal case full of fans and power noise, however good it is, I see little use for higher quality DACs on soundcards. You either use the decent onboard DAC, or route the digital output through a bad-ass external DAC. In either case, there is no need for a soundcard.
Hi clitoris chopper, ISLAM supports clitoris carving. You are Islamic, and of course are a fucking animal. I hate you you pull-start camel jockey lover. Towelheads, Camel Jockies, Sand Niggers, Ackmids, Abeebs, Carpet Flyers, Dune Coons, Rag Heads, Sand Scratchers, Habeebs, Abba-Dabbas, Camel-Humpers, Demi-niggers, Fig-Gobblers, Hucka-luckas (hucka hlacka ghalcka ghugh), Lefties (If you steal, you lose the right hand so, since they are thieves...) Ocnods, Pull-Start-ables (imagine pull starting Ossama's dirty rag like a Briggs and Stratton), Roach-Ranchers (habibs cant kill roaches by a tenant of Is-slum), Sand Moolies.
Shut up all you dirty fucking Islamic pigfucking swinehundts and the pigs, the communist fuckin Islamic terrorist supporter.
Take your fucking Koran and cram it up your ass. The sooner the earth sees Islam leave it, the better off it will be. Your Koran is Goat Piss.
I hope if there is a God and a Hell, you have to drink the liquidy shit from a Pig's ass, and Jewish Rabbis defecate on you.
I hate the stupid ISLAM fucks who read into the trash they come up with. Saddam Hussein [who needs to take a dirt nap] is higher on my sanity list than fucking Muslim "clerics." In fact, I like Saddam more than most of the other Arab leaders because he is secular. We should fucking nuke the Saudis and Mecca and Medina and turn it into rubble, then tell Saddam to remove the heads of all the buttfucking "royalty" in the area.
I want to wipe my ass with Mohammad's shroud. I want to grind his body up into bone meal and fertilize my garden with it.
Our tortured dead scream out in HORROR, asking for vengeance:
Nuke their countries to hell.
Nuke them again.
Death to Islam.