I had enough of this marketing heap, claiming that this so called "separated section" for motherboard`s onboard audio makes a difference in sound quality. If everyone knew how electronics work, people would not be fooled so easily. But not everyone knows, so motherboard manufacturers take advantage of this situation. </p><p>A PC is a very "noisy" environment for audio. </p><p>Don`t be fooled, a cutout trace and a little shield for the decoder does not improve sound quality! The onboard sound decoder chip still shares the same power and other connections with the motherboard thus it is still susceptible to noise and other high frequency interference generated by different components located on the motherboard. A cutout trace here and there does not help! The only solution is to move the audio decoding outside the PC, so the decoder only shares the digital output, and in most cases it`s even better for the decoder or DAC (however you like to call it) to receive power from an external power source, and not to be powered by the USB port.
If someone can prove me wrong, then I would take my tophat of for that person.
Your probably right, I mean it sound right, also its funny how they put these fancy metal 'shields' on them and write things like 'SuperXclear sounds' or 'Bigsounds' etc..etc.. on them and they are just realtek controllers. In many ways I wish these motherboard vendors would stop doing some of this nonsense/gimmicks, especially including things like killer NICS on the nicer boards.
BUT I really think it looks nice. Kinda like a Tron look. Would go nice with some of em fancy glowing Maxwells and whatnot :p
Actually alot of these newer boards seem to have very few features. Especially Z97... Will miss my P55 board when I migrate to broadwell/haswell. It has everything :p. Multiple SPDIF, Multiple pairable nics, like a dozen USB ports, a crapload of useless external ports like Esata, firewire. I mean it litterally has everything, even IDE and the connector for floppy drives :D. Its crazy >.< It really is.
Yes they do. But the unfortunate thing is that they are marketing lies, or maybe they don`t know that they are marketing lies, maybe even the manufacturers believe that this new way in designing the onboard audio actually makes a difference. It`s they are like those "audiophile" people who thing that buying fancy cable worth thousand of $$$ makes a difference in sound quality :))
Lol I have to put a pic of my IO panel from this motherboard on here, it is so full of stuff there is no room for anything else. Really makes the modern intel boards look sad...
The guy from mayflower already came on and discussed this in a video with Logan. He said the trace separating it was bullshit, and the only way to protect against noise is a FULL shield over the sound card area.
(at least I think that was him that said it. Meh.)
I did watch both of those videos but I don`t remember him talking about onboard audio. The shield does help a bit for PCI and PCIEX soundcards but there is still noise injected in the circuit from the motherboard power rails which are powering that given soundcard and maybe even from other connections
The shield blocks RF signals, so yes without shield noise comes from a lot more places, however shielding the motherboards onboard codec does not help (maybe just only a little) as noise gets picked up by other external components which make the complete audio circuitry. I`m not totally sure bit I think even the capacitors can pickup RF noise.</p><p>And talk about capacitors, another gimick is to add audio grade capacitors to the codecs analog output. I see some onboard audio codecs without capacitors because they don`t need them. An output capacitor is there to block DC to flow trough the audio signal and the fact that some onboard codecs don`t have them is a clear evidence that they don`t need them as the codec can be directly coupled to the amplifier input.
he fact that some onboard codecs don`t have them is a clear evidence that they don`t need them as the codec can be directly coupled to the amplifier input.
Yes, but those are lower quality.
You don't need tubes for audio, either. But having them in a DAC makes a ton of difference. I would look up how audio cards work if I were you; get some insight on why those caps are there.
I`m not quite sure about that, maybe your right, maybe no, or maybe they are there to reduce pop noise when pluging and unpluging devices. Maybe I will try bridging my onboard codecs output capacitors to see if it needs them ;)
PS: I am not a believer in tube sound, they do sound different from transistors, but my opinion is that not in a good way different.
There is an article on a website called Lenard Audio Institute that explains why solid state and tube amps sound different, that is if you are interested