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)"

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?

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.

My Experience

[EpsCylonB]

I built myself a new pc about 6 months ago, after doing some research I went for an NForce 2 based board with on board sound and could not be happier with it. I'm not an audiophile (deaf in one ear) but I do use it for games, music and for watching telly and movies.

My previous pc's soundcard was a soundblaster pci 128, and it doesn't compare well. The NForce 2 on board sound worked flawlessly as soon as I installed the driver. The pci 128 had very picky drivers, some of which needed to be installed in a certain order, if not it wouldn't work with my tv card. It was always a bit flaky but that could just have been my card.

As for bad things about the NForce 2 sound, well I haven't tried setting up 5.1 because I don't need it (and don't have the speaker equipment to support it). I'm glad tho because after reading the mobo manual it looks very complicated. I reckon this is where seperate sound cards have an advantage over on board.

Motherboard Audio Comes Of Age...

[Anonymous Coward]

Try telling that to a Mac user... that'd be fun...

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.

If I didn't have the Audigy, i'd use it

[KingDaveRa]

I bought the new MSI 865 NEO2 FSIR board, which includes the wonders of 6-channel sound, Optical in/out, Coax in/out, and pin headers so I can plug the front audio ports in too. I bought my Audigy when I was using the Abit TH7II which only had pretty basic sound. Now the Audigy seems a bit excessive. I do use the Audigy Drive a lot though, mainly for music recording. But I do that so rarely its not all that much of a concern.

As for quality, onboard sound is pretty good these days. I've not tested the onboard stuff with this board, but other boards I've seen (heard) have been on a par with the Audigy. I know a lot of people are quick to badmouth Creative soundcards, but I like them. the ASIO support is very good for latenty-less recording/playback. I'm not sure this is something the onboard sound chipsets could manage so well.

Re:must be a PC thing

[afidel]

Look at the THD numbers and you will understand why discrete components are better. In fact doing the A/D conversion outside the RF noisy PC case is even better, which is why Pro and semi-pro boards have the adac's on breakout boards and just do the DSP stuff in the case.

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.

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.

What about soundfonts?

[Progman3K]

The article doesn't seem to mention that soundfont capability is a good feature to have.
I know soundfonts might be a proprietary thing, but for many musicians, they constitute a must-have.

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.

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:If I didn't have the Audigy, i'd use it

[KingDaveRa]

Yeah, I did mean Latency :)

The main problem I've found is trying to record along to another track. For example, I might record a track in Cubase or something (the app is irellevant), then go back and record a second track alongside it. As far as I'm concerned, i'm in pretty good time to it. I'm no metronome, but its as good as. If you then play back, the second track is out by as much as a second sometimes. Its then a case of moving stuff about until its all aligned. Its annoying to say the least though, as you're always chopping audio to make it fit.

We had terrible problems with the original SB Live 1024, as neither creative's drivers nor some open-source ones were very good at fixing it. The Audigy drivers on the otherhand have a tiny latency, as I've not encountered any of the old latency problems I used to have. And its not only a driver issue - some hardware just isn't up to the task. The other option is a Protools Rig, or spending hundreds on professional soundcards, which I don't fancy doing.

Re:must be a PC thing

[trompete]

Onboard Audio is good AS LONG AS you can disable it if you want to. I know a bunch of people whose boards came with it but have it disabled for some sort of other audio card (myself included).
If they start making drive bay extensions for onboard audio like my SBLive Platinum has, I'm game. Until then.....bios->advanced settings->Onboard Audio=off.
On another topic: Onboard LAN is fantastic!!!

Re:The bigger surprise

[freeio]

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.

Re:must be a PC thing

[Daemonik]

In my experience, I've had 6 or 7 motherboards with on-board sound and all of them developed problems over time that required me to disable them and add a PCI sound card.

To me, the trend to condense all the peripherals onto the motherboard means that eventually everything will be like the notebooks. Integrated, oem supplier only parts that are totally non-upgradeable and useless if one component fails.

Give me the freedom of PCI slots and add-on cards anyday.

Re:MB audio can definitely be a great thing.

[Gavin Rogers]

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.

It's interesting that you've been succesful building a home cinema machine (DivX box/whatever) using onboard motherboard sound.

I would be the first to admit that my home audio setup isn't going to win any THX awards any time soon, but I like to get decent audio out of the meagre budget I have for these things...

When building the computer I used a 1Ghz Celeron CPU with a Soltek S370 motherboard, and the generic "AC97" chipset audio, into a Pioneer Pro Logic amp. So not new gear, but not old.

The result was that it sounded okay, but the centre channel was distorted sometimes and the rear channels experienced a sort of "waving around the room" effect.

I dug out an old SoundBlaster PCI 64 and put that in the machine. The problems with the surround channels disappeared and there was a noticeable lack of hiss in playback.

New motherboards crammed full of features? Sure. Quality? Not yet. Do people plugging $15 speakers into their computer care? No :-)

MB sound - good enough for many uses

[Artful Codger]

It's the same situation as onboard video: onboard sound is now good enough for most basic PC uses. Reality check- if you're happy using two small beige plastic no-name PC speakers powered by a tiny wall-wart, you will not be disappointed by onboard sound.

However, for anything that involves doing alot of audio playback (jukebox, DJ/broadcast, audio/video editing, theatre FX, intense gaming) you will very likely appreciate the quality of a better audio card.

On my PC I run two soundcards - a SB Live Value into some beige speakers mainly for Windoze & game sounds, and a M-Audio 2496 into a mixer, power amp and JBL speakers for doing editing, music-making and album transcription.

A7N8X Deluxe - clearly inferior to Audigy 1

[funkdancer]

I've manage two computers here at home, mine and my partner's. My partner does multitrack sound editing, I'm a programmer who listens to music whilst coding plus uses soundboard for gaming (F1 2002 current fave). Mine is the most powerful one, hers get my old components. 16500 winmarks 01, fwiw.

Now, when updating our motherboards with the purchase of said Asus motherboard, I moved the Audigy into hers so as to replace the old SBLive she had before thinking the Soundstorm would be as good or better than the Audigy. Also, she needed quality of sound more than I so I thought it would be a good thing.

However, an Audigy 2 is now on the shopping list for her so that I can have my Audigy 1 back. Why? The Soundstorm sound quality is just BAD. This is especially from a hifi point of view. My Grado Labs SR325s picks up hisses and noise from moving windows, programs loading etc, something that never happened before. My Audigy was just dead silent. And worst of all, the equaliser settings make everything sound distorted; in fact, music is flat out crap with a nasal metal sound with equaliser off; with EQ on I can get the nasal quality down a bit but it never approaches the natural sound of the Audigy.

Going Dolby Digital to my Cambridge Soundworks 3500 removes the hisses but the extremely poor equaliser (as compared to much more natural sounding base and treble of the Audigy) remains.

I've tested this using A-B comparisons, which is possible as the Audigy hooks up to the same miniamp by the 5.1 DIN whereas the Soundstorm uses Coaxial. Source is lossless compression ripped CDs - with the computers next to each others it's easy enough to press play at the same time and then just press the mute buttons as fit. And yes, the soundstorm _just can't match_ the natural sound of the audigy. No way.

I'm a bit of a hi fi nut, not terribly so compared to some but I've put in about A$20 000 into a Rotel hifi/home theatre system over the past 6 years and my Grado Labs are fantastic. Using the Audigy I could hardly pick the difference between that soundcard and my high end Sony Discman player, however with the Soundstorm there's just no point comparing - it's not high fidelity, at all.

In addition to playback, the microphone quality is clearly inferior to the Audigy, lots of hisses and just plain bad quality. This is tested with the help of Teamspeak and Plantronic's top of the line analogue headphone/mike (can't hold a candle to the Grados but it's comfy enough for gaming).

I really wonder what those who say motherboard based sound is comparable to standalone soundcards were smoking. They can't have that good ears, that's for sure! If it is a bad batch of the A7N8X Deluxe, please let me know. I'm extremely doubtful though.

Sorry for my long windedness, moderators - hope you find it somehow informative though.