The mobo HD audio stuff

[Lonbjerg]

Or, and this is a remote possibility, they may not have exactly the same motherboard as you. Crazy, I know.

Onboard sound is like onboard LAN, onboard RAID, onboord graphics ect.
It's cheap, crappy and just...just useable.

Hell I can't even stand to listen to a 196Kbps MP3...I think people have never heard good sound.
I am serious here..."loudness wars" and lossy MP3's have gotten people used to subpar quality.

 

[Grall]

Any consumer audio stuff costing a couple hundred bucks tops isn't going to meet your expectations, Lon... Onboard stuff has become dominant because people simply aren't willing to pay for anything better.

Sure, it's crappier than the best that's out there, but if it fulfils peoples' needs then why would you pay more for something that isn't neccessary?

Btw, not sure what exactly you have against onboard LAN stuff. There's nothing really particulary wrong with the stuff we have today...

 

[swaaye]

Onboard does vary widely. Some implementations are quite acceptable but some are really bad. My Gigabyte P35-DS3R mobo's Realtek warbles with CPU load. It's freaking terrible. I'd like to see it hit the ridiculous SNR ratings the board makers usually claim. There's equal noise to signal with that board.

Like has been said though if you run HDMI/optical/coaxial digital audio it gets you past the shitty board design. That doesn't help much if you just want headphones or computer speakers. That's when I get out the big guns and drop in the SBLive! Value and install kx drivers lol. Free, effective.

 

[nutball]

Onboard sound is like onboard LAN, onboard RAID, onboord graphics ect.
It's cheap, crappy and just...just useable.

Christ, you live in a black-and-white world. Maybe if you pulled your head our of your arse you'd realise that actually there are on-board sound, LAN and graphics solutions that are perfectly adequate for what they're intended to do. And that what they're intended to do a is hell of a lot further up the food-chain than you may expect.

It's quite possible to build an extremely competent HTPC using only on-board sound and graphics. With digital-everything-out it doesn't matter how crappy the DACs and stuff are on the board, because they're out of the loop.

As for loudness wars and compression, compression and compression, some folks have been crucified here before for going off on one about that whilst not really understanding what they're talking about. So, you know, turn it down from 11 yeah?

 

[Albuquerque]

Hell I can't even stand to listen to a 196Kbps MP3...I think people have never heard good sound.

Don't go down this road, because I'd wager you can't tell the difference.

Some dork named "2008 IQ is Unacceptable" started a similar line of nonsense a year or two ago, and I sacked up a challenge: five sound bytes, all the same section of music, one of them was lossless, the others were all varying degrees of compression, and then all of them reverted BACK to raw WAV files.

I posted all five samples as randomly named letter sequences, and linked them.

There wasn't a single person on this forum who picked the 'pure' sample as the best sounding one. Nobody. You can't tell the difference either outside of an oscilliscope paired with the original media, I'm 100% certain. In fact, if I recall correctly, he chose the 192kbps VBR MP3 file over the rest.

 

[willardjuice]

One sample is hardly scientific. Perhaps you just happened to a pick a sample that doesn't exhibit compression artifacts from the given codec.

Having said that, iirc a mp3 file properly encoded at 192kbps VBR is essentially transparent (only in the most rarest occasions is it noticeable to a few people).

 

[swaaye]

MP3 encoding has improved amazingly since the beginning too. There have been some really poor encoders.

 

[Albuquerque]

There's a pretty old C'T article somewhere out there that did a big double-blind test with MP3's versus raw audio and found pretty much the same exact thing that my little impromptu forum test did. Even with trained and tenured audio experts, the 'pure' audio sample was not chosen as the favorite in the majority of tests. And this spanned multiple types of music, dozens of both trained and untrained testers, and using very high end audio equipment for playback.

Every time someone tells me that they can unequivocally tell if it's an MP3 gets automatically distrusted by me.

 

[Npl]

Onboard audio chips can be quite good these days, certainly beating my old SBLive Card. Course not all are equal, but get a brand-name board with an ALC 889 and you should have fine quality. Just dont expect to get no noise from the front-audio connectors, the wires typically arent shielded.

If thats not good enough you will likely need to use the digital output for further improvement, in which case you wont need a soundcard either.

 

[I.S.T.]

There's a pretty old C'T article somewhere out there that did a big double-blind test with MP3's versus raw audio and found pretty much the same exact thing that my little impromptu forum test did. Even with trained and tenured audio experts, the 'pure' audio sample was not chosen as the favorite in the majority of tests. And this spanned multiple types of music, dozens of both trained and untrained testers, and using very high end audio equipment for playback.

Every time someone tells me that they can unequivocally tell if it's an MP3 gets automatically distrusted by me.

What if it's a 32 kbit MP3? </smartass>

 

[Lonbjerg]

Don't go down this road, because I'd wager you can't tell the difference.

Some dork named "2008 IQ is Unacceptable" started a similar line of nonsense a year or two ago, and I sacked up a challenge: five sound bytes, all the same section of music, one of them was lossless, the others were all varying degrees of compression, and then all of them reverted BACK to raw WAV files.

I posted all five samples as randomly named letter sequences, and linked them.

There wasn't a single person on this forum who picked the 'pure' sample as the best sounding one. Nobody. You can't tell the difference either outside of an oscilliscope paired with the original media, I'm 100% certain. In fact, if I recall correctly, he chose the 192kbps VBR MP3 file over the rest.

I'd like to hear those files?

 

[Blazkowicz]

Onboard audio chips can be quite good these days, certainly beating my old SBLive Card. Course not all are equal, but get a brand-name board with an ALC 889 and you should have fine quality. Just dont expect to get no noise from the front-audio connectors, the wires typically arent shielded.

If thats not good enough you will likely need to use the digital output for further improvement, in which case you wont need a soundcard either.

I had trouble understanding your post, it seemed contradictory (is it noisy or not noisy? ).

until I understood that front-audio meant connectors on front of the PC case. (maybe you can wire them up yourself). front audio also means to me front channel, i.e. green mini-jack hole, i.e. what you use for analog stereo.

I still use the SB live in analog stereo with swapped front/rear outputs (gives the better signal/noise ratio).

 

[entity279]

I'd like to hear those files?

Me too.

 

[hoom]

I've been using onboard audio since Nforce 2.
My Nforces were fairly inclined to crackle but later mobos I've had have been perfectly adequate for my needs.

I think the audio on my new mobo is a bit better than my old one but marginal if at all.

I'm no audiophile though <shrug>

PS: I use the headphone jack on the centre unit of my Logitec 5.1 speakers, mainly simply because its closer than the case.
Eww, just actually tried plugging headphones into my front jack, squeal & wail yuck (though I may have put the wrong header on, the case header has two options, mobo manual not clear, I'll try swapping them later).

 

[Npl]

I had trouble understanding your post, it seemed contradictory (is it noisy or not noisy? ).

until I understood that front-audio meant connectors on front of the PC case. (maybe you can wire them up yourself). front audio also means to me front channel, i.e. green mini-jack hole, i.e. what you use for analog stereo.

should have said mean Front-Panel Connectors. Using headphones through the FP I can easily hear noise when the audio is muted, cant hear that when I use the connector on the back.

I dont know of any case that has shielded wires for the FP, and changing them can be tricky as the connector typically is a "single piece" with the wires.

 

[Colourless]

Got an old Antec Sonata case (which i use as a media centre pc) that has shielded front panel connectors. I'm sure there are more out there that do too.

 

[Lonbjerg]

Interesting link..from 2006 to 2010..20 pages...

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=174494

 

[swaaye]

I've been using onboard audio since Nforce 2.
My Nforces were fairly inclined to crackle but later mobos I've had have been perfectly adequate for my needs.

Yup I've used the endlessly touted NVAPU/Soundstorm too. That hardware had some serious problems with some games. One of my friends was playing EQ2 on it and it would crackle and pop like crazy. The drivers were very rarely updated. The analog quality wasn't so hot but if you used the digital output you were ok. However, as few seem to realize, DDLive is lossy.

I still think that Xbox was the only reason NV built that sound processor. It works flawlessly in Xbox so probably could blame Windows and the game APIs for its issues on the PC. The AGP video cards could cause PCI problems too actually because the drivers will crank the PCI latency of the AGP slot to maximize video performance.

 

[gongo]

This is my experience of onboard vs standalone.....not sure if it is agreeable..the difference in onboard is the lack of punch...depth...warmth..you can say the 3D expressionist of sound..that is understandable.... IIRC, standalone has more opamps and cap-filters to bold up the sound....

But i also experienced my older Audigy..while sounding more expressive, do not sound to be playing more simultaneous instruments..the sounds are not expansive..not enough panning width compared to my new ALC889 codec...so to speak..latest onboard HD is not a total lose. You have more realtime processing (via CPU) but loses out on the individual quality.

 

[Tchock]

I trust my Marantz and Monrio/AE set in a properly set up room more.


*Personally* I find it pretty futile to be so serious on audio quality while you are at the comp. Fans, bad cans (and I still like good bookshelf speakers more than good cans), and the possible notion that your PC is essentially a lot of interference even with shielding... who really cares about the source at this stage?

Oh and not to mention the majority of the time I find it hard to go into the music while multitasking, like now on the keyboard. Saving the elitism for good music in good situations.