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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."
Most of the improvement is likely due to increased distance between the amplification circuits and the noisy AC/DC power supply.
$50 sound card produces better audio than a 50 cent onboard chip.... You don't say.
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
there, done in one.
cheap cmedia usb sound dongles (not all dongles are cmedia, in fact most are not so you have to shop carefully) and also the burr brown PCM series all do a decent job of converting 44 and 48k audio (including dvd audio downmixed to 2.0) to spdif.
everyone's avr, today, has opto in. the sound card dongles send out usb audio over opto to spdif-in of your home stereo. if its 5.1 or newer, it will accept opto just fine. (aka toslink).
nothing else to care about, pretty much. let your stereo (or DAC) do the heavy lifting. usb audio is the way to go (for future, use UAC2, usb audio class 2 which works fine with linux and some hacks on windows at 24bit and 192k, personally verified to be bit-perfect).
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
it would be on a cheap video card before a sound card. I never bought any sound cards after they started puting them on the mobo. Sure the sound could be better but I have a stereo for playing tunes and if i'm playing games at night I'm using headphones anyway. A better soundcard is a non-issue for most users.
I dumped my Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 for Realtek ALC888 and never looked back. I never heard such clarity until I went with this onboard chipset.
Also, I tried to compare a $99 Razer Barracuda AC-1 with the ALC888, all I could make out is that the back channels get more bass than the front. I'm guessing there's a placebo effect in play here with the little DSP cards...
I have this for studio purposes, but this thing sounds beautiful.
If I chose to, 96khz 24-bit. 2-in, 2-out, SPDIF support if I chose to use it. (technically 4 in 4 out, but that's mono.)
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
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."
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Many people use headphones straight on the system, or PC speakers. For that, a soundcard can be a cheap benefit. Is a receiver better? Sure, but then they are more expensive. You can always find better for more money. I'm quite partial to my 7.1 setup on my computer but I'm not going to suggest it to most people on account of the extreme cost.
So if you are a headphone type, a cheap soundcard can be a very worthwhile upgrade.
Also if S/PDIF is your thing you've no need for an external soundcard in most cases, generally the onboard ones have it these days. Since that bypasses any converters, there's no reason not to use it if that's all you want.
Further if you've a newer receiver that can do LPCM audio over HDMI most new systems can too. All the newer Intel, nVidia and AMD videocards can do that.
When you've a receiver, there are many choices. However for those that don't wish to spend the money, $50 on a soundcard (internal or external) is money well spent.
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.
Just a guess, but I'd say it's because there's stories just like yours for every manufacturer out there*.
Case in point: hard drives. Ask 20 people what hard drives they've had trouble with, and you'll find they pretty much average out as all of the companies having issues. I use Seagate, but you'll find a lot of people here who swear they're the worst drives on the market.
Another example: T-Mobile. I had nothing but trouble with them. They would, for no reason, forgo the automatic draft from my Visa and then shut me off for non-payment. Their customer service was horrible. When I called them at the end of my contract and told them I wanted my service cut as soon as the contract was over, the sales drone threatened me that if I didn't pay the final bill, they'd sue me. I hadn't said anything about it up to then, so this was just out of the blue. (Of course, I knew he was full of shit, and intentionally didn't pay my final bill because of it.)
With all that, T-Mobile has an excellent reputation for customer service and very few people I know have issues with them. Go figure.
The article was about the difference between soundcards and integrated sound, and just happened to use Asus cards for the testing. Your last paragraph was on topic, but the rest of your post wasn't.
* There are a few manufacturers that have earned widespread derision, like PC Chips for its fake cache chips or SCO for judicial douchebaggery. Asus isn't anywhere near that level.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
Discrete sound...Is farting silently
No, that is a soundless indiscretion.
I bought a nice 520W Corsair PSU has lasted well for years now, only audible if you stick your ear next to it.
With a ASRock Z77 Extreme4 - has THX certified sound out, which I was a little skeptical of but it does seem to eliminate motherboard interference noise
Previously when using a cheap mobo audio, a browser page being scrolled up and down would cause noise, maybe not noticeable with small speakers but very obvious when connected to an amp + large speakers.
Not a cheap mobo / you get what you pay for.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
this will give you the highest return on investment if your receiver is capable of 24/96 and 5.1. No hardware changes necessary.
sudo vi /etc/pulse/daemon.conf (this is Ubuntu)
and change following entries this way:
default-sample-format = s24le
default-sample-rate = 96000
default-sample-channels = 6
...a stunned silence fell upon the hall.
The ability to compress and stream music proved to be far more important than high fidelity sound. So a better sound device is kinda pointless.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
DG is the PCI version of DGX. I bought a DG, but the headphone amp is not supported on Linux, and there is no hardware volume control, but that's OK because you have 24 bit to play with. It was also branded heavily as a "gamer" card, but I suspect that's just to get the music fans to buy the more expensive cards. Anyway, it sort of worked for me, I got the ST as well. That's more like € 160, but it sounds much better on my 80 ohm headphones, and it's great on my stereo speakers too. I would like to get the Dolby Headphone effect on Linux, but the Headphone Spatialization effect in VLC is also pretty good, and more subtle.
So Linux users beware, the headphone amp on DG(X) is not supported on Linux
This is semantics anyway. Most amplifiers have some form of power supply rejection. You never get the switching noise passed fully through the gain stages, and the actual switching signals are typically very small when you look at a SMPS waveform. If you have are affecting your possible SNR by more than a completely trivial amount you should redesign your amplifier or replace your powersupply.
PSR (power rejection ratio) is spec'd at various freq's.
at lower ones (60 and 120hz) its usually good.
but NOT SO GOOD at mhz class noise.
that's what switchers put in and you almost cannot take it out once its in the audio stream.
audio systems that use switchers almost always do it for cost reasons, NEVER for audio cleanliness. also to save weight (cost).
given a choice, not one single audio designer would ever WANT a switcher anywhere near his gear. not even feet away from it, turned on, on some other item.
look at the spectrum if you ever get access to such gear. you'd be amazed. and then look at the PSRR rejection. its not enough! good starting point but not high enough. and psrr on discrete designs is even harder (if you avoid opamps).
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
distance generally won't matter MUCH on toslink cables.
yes, jitter matters but only at very high end. your avr system, even if its a $2k monster, is still never going to be 'good enough' to care about picosecond level jitter in the spdif stream.
toslink does blur the digital audio and it changes timing slightly, randomly. that's jitter.
shorter cables do less damage.
at least on plastic toslink, there's no concept of reflections. back-energy does not happen on toslink. but it DOES happen on coax/spdif. shorter does matter here. think of it this way: you send a signal to the far end of the coax (again, not opto, but coax) and it sends most of its energy there but reflects back some. that takes some time to travel along the cable back to the start. it then bounces back again, along with new energy from the last pulse of the transmitter. this goes back and forth and blurs the 'location' or timing of the 1's and 0's.
now, if your DAC system fully and completely locally (!) reclocks, you are fine. if not and if it DEPENDS on the timing of each and every 1 and 0, it would 'dump out' the 16bit audio word at the wrong time since one of those 'clock edges' was off by a bit, due to the reflection blur. it happens but its test-equip level, not 'wow, that sounds horrible' level. very subtle but once you have $10k-class spkrs (etc) you CAN hear blurring of the timing.
long answer: but in real world, you don't care about cable length in digital audio. best to stay 6' or 10' or less. if you go farther, you MAY want to consider a bridge (like data link bridge; fully receives spdif stream then recreates it via a receiver/transmitter combo; not a repeater but a full recieve, digest, regurg, retransmit pair of rx/tx chips).
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."