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)"

Comments

The surprise of audio

[freeio]

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.

Good Enough

[KingJoshi]

I may be deaf, but I don't think most people are audiophiles. So motherboard sound is good enough. I think nvidia2 graphics cards are good enough for the masses because they don't play the latest and greatest games.

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.

Re:Good Enough

[kilogram]

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.

Re:Good Enough

[BiggerIsBetter]

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.

Not on a Mac it 'aint

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

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?

Re:Not on a Mac it 'aint

[BiggerIsBetter]

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.

Contradiction or tongue in cheek?

[Munelight]

"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.

must be a PC thing

[v1]

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.

It's all in the speakers

[russx2]

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? :-)

Re:It's all in the speakers

[afidel]

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.

Good enough

[ledow]

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.

Sound cards

[nother_nix_hacker]

If nothing else, it frees up a PCI or ISA slot... ;o)"

If you push hard enough an SB live will fit into the AGP slot and still work on Linux! :)

Performance hit?

[Realistic_Dragon]

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.

Re:I hate onboard anything

[tunah]

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.

Noisey Anyway

[Book16]

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

onboard/offboard big difference...

[gTsiros]

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.)

Re:My Experience

[bigman2003]

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.

The bigger surprise

[Compact Dick]

is that you got audio working on Linux.

MB audio can definitely be a great thing.

[LeoDV]

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!