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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)"
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?
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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 a part-time DJ, running audio through computers and MP3 most of the time; on-board audio is good enough. 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. The difference is that the Audigy is capable of doing proper surround (which is not normally a concern at a disco, but we use it to separate speaker and headphone sound coming from the same computer, and thus reducing delay coming from using two separate soundcards).
The onboard sound is quite good enough, you have to have a heck of a stereo to think it is "unusable", which I've heard a few people say IRL. As long as you are playing MP3s/OGG/, this will be the degrading you hear, not the onboard chip.
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.
So you'll pay $20 or whatever for a sound card, and would prefer them *not* to put in a 20 cent onboard chip?
At least you're supporting the local economy.
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I have to respectfully disagree. With you being a DJ, I don't doubt you know good sound when you hear it, but...
As a comparison, I played the same tracks through a VIA Eden M6000 with onboard sound, and an M-Audio Revolution in the PCI slot. It was chalk and cheese, and this was just using some pretty average Creative/Cambridge SoundWorks 2.1 speakers. The purist in me prefers FLACC, but even with MP3 or Ogg at (around) 256 bitrate, I can hear a big difference. Maybe a lot depends on the individual mainboard and PSU etc, but in this instance the sub-$100 M-Audio card kicked it's ass.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
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.)
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You know, that is the funny part. This system is a picture editing system which spends most of its time running Adobe Photoshop on Windows, but which I used to test a recent distribution (SuSE 8.2) as a dual-boot. The SuSE installer found _everything_ in the way of hardware and configured it to work fine on the first try. Even the SanDisk flash-card reader works. Life is good!
This system is based on a Gigabyte GA-7DXR+, and yes, the sound is on board - a Creative CT5880 chip. Perfect? Well no, but certainly more than adequate for my actual needs. And yes, it works under Linux.
Soli Deo Gloria