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$50 Sound Cards Impress Versus Integrated Audio
crookedvulture writes "Most PCs have audio integrated right on the motherboard. There's much to be gained from upgrading to a discrete sound card, though. This look at a couple of sub-$50 sound cards from Asus explores what can be found at the budget end of the spectrum. In blind listening tests, both cards produced better sound than an integrated solution. They also offered superior signal quality, but neither had an impact on gaming performance. The days of hardware-accelerated game audio seem to be behind us, with developers handling positional audio processing in software."
a DIY I wrote on how to open up a cm102 (cmedia usb audio dongle) and find the 3 solder pads you need to connect in your own toslink (TOTX) opto transmitter for your home stereo:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4086/5052505190_07d7ec5903_b.jpg
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4148/5052506250_c71b26586a_b.jpg
it was just that simple. there was already an onboard cheap-o toslink sender but I prefer the standard square block style.
the TOTX part is a dollar or so at digikey or mouser (suppliers). the usb dongle is $15 or less, often much less. make sure its cmedia and cm102. it will work very well then.
usb powers it and you know its working when you get the red light out of the toslink end ;)
I'm not sure it passes dts or dolby digital but its fine for 44.1 cd audio (and mp3) as well as 48k dvd downmix to stereo 2.0
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
These are not audio people and did not have an audio-expert look at their write-up. Why. They got the very well known very-low-cost / not-very-good audio OpAmp NE5532 P wrong as NE55329. No audio-expert would make that mistake. It is not a number, it is an identity that experts immediately recognize.
I have to say that this puts a big question-mark on the whole test for me.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Well, yes, that is true, it can be bad to drive a big amplifier with high frequency noise. Very bad, in fact - the excess load can do anything from distorting the output to causing extra heat dissipation and killing the transistors. (My guitar amplifier was meant to drive a speaker directly, and it had a low-pass filter between the gain and output stages. The tube was just for the clipping distortion sound; the output stage was a BJT class AB push-pull with a much cleaner power supply.) I was talking more in the context of this article, though - most people who own an amplifier with flat response to 100kHz are not going to be bothering with $50 sound cards, or for that matter even considering integrated audio.
Though, a couple questions (despite some vacuum tube stuff, audio is only a minor interest for me) - 1) What exactly do you mean by "don't like LP filtering"? I can't imagine how a low-pass filter could cause a problem in this case, especially if you just attenuate about 20-30kHz and up. 2) WHY do people even bother with an amplifier that has flat response to 100kHz?? That seems a bit excessive, unless you're playing music for your pet bat... Is there an advantage I'm not aware of?
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