Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Motherboard Audio Comes Of Age

Posted by michael on from the master-blaster dept.

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)"

5 of 367 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It's all in the speakers by afidel · · Score: 5, Informative

    And much better than speakers is a decent set of headphones. Cans will beat speakers costing several times as much. Get a pair of cheaper Sennheisers (HD487's) or Grado's (SR 60's) which come in well under the $100 mark but will just blow you away with their awsome sound quality if you are used to anything but an audiophile setup. From there you might get into some of the more expensive models but these are great for me and I'm used to studio monitors.

    --
    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  2. Performance hit? by Realistic_Dragon · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
  3. Noisey Anyway by Book16 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  4. Re:Not on a Mac it 'aint by BiggerIsBetter · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not necessarily. If the signal path from the Mac into the stereo amp is electrically noisier than the signal path from the stereo's CD player to the amp, it could easily sound worse from the Mac. The source signal would be very much the same, but it's getting fux0red along the way.

    --
    Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
  5. Re:My Experience by bigman2003 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I was wondering when/if someone was going to mention Nforce 2.

    Here is a page with good info about the sound on an Nforce 2 motherboard. http://www.3dvelocity.com/reviews/nforce2/nforce_2 .htm

    All of that looks impressive for ON BOARD sound, and I really think that 99.9% of the people out there would find that this is good enough.

    --
    No reason to lie.