Winter Audio Reference: On-Board, Consumer, and Pro Solutions
by Derek Wilson on February 3, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
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Final Words
Intel HD audio quality isn't the highest in the industry for on-board design. This is fine for an average user, but if Intel is pushing on-board audio experience, they should make some enhancements to signal quality. Listening at higher volumes to quiet tracks could sometimes give the hint of a little noise that wasn't supposed to be there. Overall, the listening experience was very good for Intel's solution. And their audio enhancement software by Sonic Focus actually does a good job of delivering on its promises where all other software of a similar sort (that this reviewer has heard) falls short.
The SoundBlaster Audigy 2 isn't the best for straight audio listening. The card has IMD problems at the very often used 16-bit/44.1kHz setting (CD's, MP3's, games), which seems to produce a slight coloration of the audio. This doesn't matter as much (at all?) for movies and games, but for listening to CDs and music files, we would expect better. As a consumer card, where the target is for an entertainment systemm the Audigy 2 offers a good setup, especially when movies and gaming will be a central focus of the machine. For those who wish to dabble in recording, the Audigy 2 is certainly better than an on-board solution and offers 24-bit/96kHz recording of either analog or digital sources.
The Gina3g hits the numbers really well in some cases, but falls short in places where we'd rather see them do better. Our test would have looked better if we had an external balanced device to test against, as our loopback test created a ground loop. Listening to the Gina3g was a very clean experience, although setting up surround is interesting with the configurable ¼ inch outputs, and buying proper converters was interesting. The Gina3g is made more to be a cog in a machine than something to be listened to, but it does very well in a pinch. Of course, if the plan is to listen on the same machine as well as be used in recording, a separate audio card may be desired. The Gina3g can only maintain one sampling rate at a time and will alter all sampling rates to the most recently requested. In other words, if we're recording at 96kHz, and half way through, I double click a 44.1kHz audio track that plays on my Gina3g, half of my recording is going to sound really high pitced and fast when I play it back. This is avoidable if a separate audio card is used for playback while the Gina3g is recording (though, we would still recommend against doing this).
Interestingly, the Audigy 4 is a top performer in our tests, as the improved build quality serve to mask some of the issues that we've seen with the Audigy 2. We would still like to see balanced I/O, and truly reprogrammable sampling rates (to avoid the 44.1kHz resampling issue and IMD problems altogether). But overall, the Audigy 4 Pro is a welcome improvement to the Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro. Not so much that we would recommend upgrading, but if you have to choose between them, we would point in the direction of the Audigy 4.
But that is by no means a conclusion to audio here at AnandTech. The preceding was meant to cut a cross section through PC audio. We've touched on integrated solutions, consumer add-in products, and professional cards. In future audio reviews, we will be using the cards from this review as a reference point for other products in their respective categories. As audio makes a return to the pages of AnandTech, we hope to bring out reviews of products based from the likes of M-Audio, Terratec, EMU, RME, DigiDesign, MOTU, Lynx, C-Media, NVIDIA, Analog Devices, more Realtek, and anything else you can suggest to us. We will also try to include older cards (such as the SB Live! and Turtle Beach cards) for reference in future articles as well.
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EddNog - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
ProviaFan, take a look at the Paradigm stuff, or if you've got decent multichannel power, I also feel that Magnepan's smaller speakers give good sound for the money (MMGs for example). I'm not sure if a Magnepan setup is in your budget (definitely worth the money if you can afford it, though, and comparably cheaper than many other audiophile HT solutions), but Paradigm's midrange (i.e. not Reference series) stuff should be pretty affordable. It's probably no cheaper than Magnepan to outfit your HT with Paradigm Reference, though.Of course there's plenty of other options out there. On the more affordable end, perhaps try some Cambridge Newton Series sats/bookshelves in conjunction with a Velodyne sub.
-Ed
Jigga - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
#26 is right on the mark--need ALC850 and Envy24 reviews STAT!ProviaFan - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
Response to the audiophile that just posted: Yes, good cable is important, but good cable can be made at home for not terribly large amounts of money... Anything that costs hundreds of dollars per foot is not necessarily bad, but is nonetheless a terrible waste of money, because _there is no difference_. If you hear a difference between a $4 cable and a $40 cable, there probably is a difference. If you hear a difference between a $40 cable and a $4000 cable, it's in your head.With that said, I'd like to know of what to look for in a _good_ 5.1 monitor speaker setup (not consumer gaming quality, but not break-the-bank "audiophile" monitors based advertised with endless pseudoscience), as I might be in the market for something like that. :)
Oh, and if Derek has any extra spare time (yeah, sure ;), I would be interested to see where something like the M-Audio Delta 1010LT sits between the consumer cards and the other pro cards that he mentioned in one of his latest posts (MOTU, Digidesign, etc.).
vaystrem - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
Other than Ed I think I'm the only audiophile to post on this and this is my comment regarding your multichannel setup.You used professional monitors for the 2 channel listening, fine Sony isn't great but its ok.
And you used a consumer level speakers, Logitech, for your multichannel experience.
You could hear differences on 2 channel... but not multi channel. What has changed most significantly is... your speakers. As you state, speakers are what introduce the highest levels of distortion.
You can believe me, or not, but on my setup I can hear differences between CD players (Arcam 73t, Cary 308, Creek CD50, Roksan Kandy mkIII, Rega Planet 2000, Cambridge Audio Azur 640c for the curious), cabling and amplifiers.
You need to have better quality speakers for evaulating multichannel. I'm not arguing the speakers are even the most important component, I'm a source first kind of person. But I think that having better evaluatory tools would be helpful.
You absolutely have the right idea of having a 'reference'. Do not change it often. This is something Anandtech has always been good at with your other reviews. You use the same hardware/software tests over a longer period of time than other sites to ensure 'long term comparability'.
Including a subjective element to the tests would be interesting. Some sites to look at.
www.audioasylum.com Post a request on recommended testing methodologies and it might be helpful.
www.uhfmag.com (comparative reviews panel of listeners generally non blind)
www.hifichoice.co.uk (active use of blind listening panels here)
www.stereophile.com www.sixmoons.com
www.soundstage.com (does lots of measurements good comparisons)
Those might be useful.
Also, using some high quality headphones, Sennheiser, Beyerdynamic, Grado might be useful as well.
CSMR - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
There is a general ignorance the basics of what audio systems are composed of. A receiver has a completely different purpose to a PC audio card (Griffin powerwave excluded). You need three things: an analog line-level signal (from a DAC), amplification, and speakers. (Exception: digitally-controlled class D amplification.) A $200 receiver will not have as good dacs as those in for instance the EMU 1212m. A receiver is often a DAC and an amplifier. Sound cards generally do not contain amplification.dev0lution - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
I second that. While it's nice to know how the audio solutions stack up in testing, some real world advice & comparisons would be a lot more helpful. For example, using the Intel/Realtek onboard solution with quality optical cables straight to a Dolby Digital receiver with home theater speakers versus using an Audigy card to a set of mid-high end 5.1 computer speakers.Zak - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
I use SPDIF outputs to hook up my computers to external equipment, a receiver and set of "real" speakers. IMHO a $200 receiver sounds superior to any PC audio card. I get real DolbyDigital and DTS decoding, low CPU overhead. Maybe I miss some of the audio effects in games but I always thought that Creative EAX is way overhyped anyway and most of the time I'd have it turned off because the sound was just plain weird. I think as more games have support for Dolby 5.1 and better EAX will become less relevant.Zak
CSMR - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
The review's title should be: audio for gaming. Apart from gaming you have very many audio cards: E-MU, Ego Systems, Edirol, RME, M-Audio, etc.. For audio playback and recording these are the cards to consider; for gaming the reviewed cards are the ones to consider. (Not that they are bad: the Audigy 4 Pro is a good audio card, but around the level of the emu 0404, which costs less.)Slaimus - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
Including older cards is a great idea as many people are looking for an upgrade. Something I would like to see included personally:- classic SoundBlaster Live using the kX driver and swapped outputs.
- DFI's Karajan audio module with ALC850 compared to the standard implementation
- SoundBlaster Live 24-bit with the Wolfson DAC
DerekWilson - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
#37, bbomb, Good suggestion ...Title changed :-)
I'll add an updated to the conclusion as well that ties together what we were trying to do with the article and explains the point a little better ... I do applogize for the confusion on all this.
For the future, here are some chipsets and cards we want to include in the future:
envy24 boards (maudio and terratec)
realtek alc850 onboard
analog devices onboard
nvidia nf2 soundstorm
pro:
lynx (l22)
emu
digidesign (mbox or digi 002 rack + protools)
motu
rme
It does look like there's a lot of demand for older Turtle Beach and Creative cards, so we'll try to take a look at those as well for reference.