On-Board Sound or Sound Card?

I've just bought an Asus motherboard which has on-board sound (SoundMAX ADI
AD1986A). However, I'm scrapping an old PC which has a PCI Creative SB Live
1024 card - would this give a better quality than the on-board sound?

--
Halmyre

What in Swansea are going on here?!

On Thu, 29 Nov 2007 09:55:40 GMT, Halmyre wrote:

I've just bought an Asus motherboard which has on-board sound (SoundMAX ADI
AD1986A). However, I'm scrapping an old PC which has a PCI Creative SB Live
1024 card - would this give a better quality than the on-board sound?

SoundMAXes tend to have fairly noisy inputs at least, but the SB Live
1024's were very much built down to a price. OTOH, I'm using one here
and it's not noticably hissy on playback.

Your OS of choice can probably handle multiple soundcards. Stick the
SB in and try both.

Cheers - Jaimie
--
"If you're not able to ask questions and deal with the answers without feeling
that someone has called your intelligence or competence into question, don't
ask questions on Usenet where the answers won't be carefully tailored to avoid
tripping your hair-trigger insecurities." - D M Procida, UCSM

"Halmyre" wrote in message
...
I've just bought an Asus motherboard which has on-board sound (SoundMAX
ADI
AD1986A). However, I'm scrapping an old PC which has a PCI Creative SB
Live
1024 card - would this give a better quality than the on-board sound?

Depends what you are doing? For Windows' bings and bongs, no. For most
games, no. For music recording and mixing, maybe. Tell us what you will be
doing with the PC (besides MS Office, and internet porn).

On Thu, 29 Nov 2007 09:55:40 GMT, Halmyre
wrote:

I've just bought an Asus motherboard which has on-board sound (SoundMAX ADI
AD1986A). However, I'm scrapping an old PC which has a PCI Creative SB Live
1024 card - would this give a better quality than the on-board sound?

Yes, while a SB 1024 isn't a high end card with all the
bells and whistles of some, it's sound quality is
significantly better than that onboard sound.

There are at least two mitigating factors.
1) Creative drivers tend to be overly complex and poor, and
their cards tend to hog the PCI bus which can cause reduced
bandwidth for the card and/or other PCI devices... sometimes
causing reduced performance of the other PCI device or
interruptions in the sound from the Creative card.

2) Depending on the quality of the sound file and
sensitivity of the amp (or headphones?) coming after the
sound card before the (physical) speaker, any differences
might be masked to the point of being inaudible.

In short, try the card because if it works w/o hitches in
your system then it will sound at least as good and
potentially better.

Halmyre wrote:
I've just bought an Asus motherboard which has on-board sound (SoundMAX ADI
AD1986A). However, I'm scrapping an old PC which has a PCI Creative SB Live
1024 card - would this give a better quality than the on-board sound?


The driver for Soundmax on my computer, adds reverb which cannot be disabled.
There were bugs in the EAX implementation. The Soundmax chip also gave a click/pop
about every 10 minutes or so, at random.

This is why you have to test each potential sound solution. The Analog Devices
CODEC may be fault free, but the software might make the built-in sound less
than useful. It all depends on whether Analog Devices has put any effort into
improving their drivers, whether their solution has merit.

I use a separate sound card now, and it has none of those faults. The performance
of the card is not "amazing", but neither is it as annoying as the Soundmax
driver issues.

Paul

Jamie I have always valued your opinions, indeed still do, you are
obviously a knowledgable man and have given me cogent and sensible
answers in the past. I was very surprised at your quote at the bottom of
the page from one D.M.Procida which more or less - in my opinion -
implied if you can't stand the heat of the kitchen etc - manners,
consideration and civility are expected not the opposite. I also observe
that Connor who in the past was trying to emulate Kadaitcha man seems to
have 'grown up'.

D.M.Procida is not one of Cardiff's greatest sages.

archierob wrote:

Part 1.1 Type: Plain Text (text/plain)
Encoding: 7bit

Please do not use html in Usenet. Articles should be in pure text.

--
Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)
http://cbfalconer.home.att.net
Try the download section.



--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

On Thu, 29 Nov 2007 23:55:41 GMT, archierob
wrote:

Jamie I have always valued your opinions, indeed still do, you are
obviously a knowledgable man and have given me cogent and sensible
answers in the past. I was very surprised at your quote at the bottom of
the page from one D.M.Procida which more or less - in my opinion -
implied if you can't stand the heat of the kitchen etc - manners,
consideration and civility are expected not the opposite. I also observe
that Connor who in the past was trying to emulate Kadaitcha man seems to
have 'grown up'.

D.M.Procida is not one of Cardiff's greatest sages.

It's still a usenet truism. Thanks for the compliment, btw - it's
appreciated.

Hey, does this mean I can take Conor out of my killfile now?

Cheers - Jaimie
--
If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.

"CBFalconer" wrote in message
...
archierob wrote:

Part 1.1 Type: Plain Text (text/plain)
Encoding: 7bit

Please do not use html in Usenet. Articles should be in pure text.

--
Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)
http://cbfalconer.home.att.net
Try the download section.



--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

He happily provided both plain text and HTML, perhaps you should use a
competent newsreader? You, however - please reduce your sig to four lines or
fewer, with a single delimiter. As the second is assumedly enforced due to
advertising from your free usenet account, I'd suggest removing your
personal one - I can't imagine it would be of use to anyone, anyway.

On Fri, 30 Nov 2007 03:04:54 -0000, "BluePlanet"
wrote:

"CBFalconer" wrote in message
...
archierob wrote:

Part 1.1 Type: Plain Text (text/plain)
Encoding: 7bit

Please do not use html in Usenet. Articles should be in pure text.

--
Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)
http://cbfalconer.home.att.net
Try the download section.



--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

He happily provided both plain text and HTML, perhaps you should use a
competent newsreader? You, however - please reduce your sig to four lines or
fewer, with a single delimiter. As the second is assumedly enforced due to
advertising from your free usenet account, I'd suggest removing your
personal one - I can't imagine it would be of use to anyone, anyway.



Wrong, this is not a HTML medium this is usenet.

Many competent newsreaders will show BOTH the HTML and plain
text, and many competent users of those news readers will
not have HTML working because there's no reason to invite
that security risk (how well are newsreaders really
patched?!) when everything is supposed to be plain text.