Winter Audio Reference: On-Board, Consumer, and Pro Solutions
by Derek Wilson on February 3, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
The Anatomy of a Sound Review (User Experience)
The factors included in an end user experience are much more straight-forward than the technical electrical performance of audio hardware. Of course, they are highly interconnected. The listening experience and quality of audio recorded by hardware is a direct result of the electrical capabilities of the hardware as discussed in the previous section. Talking about listening on a qualitative level is very difficult, especially when trying to give others good advice about what to buy. We can sit here and say that: if a device with one set of numbers (dynamic range, THD, etc.) is played on $50000 speakers, it will sound different than a card with worse numbers. What we can't say is how great this difference will be (because the speakers will still likely introduce more distortion).
Random PC speakers are not going to show many differences unless a sound card is essentially broken.
Again, it's difficult to listen to hardware and know what you're hearing. Our approach was to listen to a track over and over and over on one device and then immediately switch to another in order to listen for differences. If there are any, we try to determine what they sounded like, and why they are there.
For high quality audio testing, we used Sony MDR-7509 studio monitors (open air headsets were evaluated, but since we're testing near computers, and henceforth noise, isolation was desirable). For surround and gaming testing, we used Logitech Z-5300 speakers.
This brings us past audio quality and into something that AnandTech readers will be familiar with: performance. We tested how many direct sound channels that we can run (and at what CPU overhead). We will also look at how much of a performance hit it is to enable audio in Unreal Tournament 2004. We had run numbers for Doom 3 as well, but the fact is that there just isn't a performance difference - these newer games are simply too bound in other areas to exhibit any performance difference on different audio cards.
We also need to look at audio API support. As Creative is the mover and shaker in the industry, they bully most companies into using their EAX for audio in some way or another. For example, they forced Id to incorporate EAX into Doom 3 by leveraging John's "Carmack's Reverse" shadowing algorithm against him - Creative holds the patent on depth fail stencil shadows through 3DLabs. Then there's Sensaura, which Creative now also owns. The latest versions of Sensaura include support for EAX 2.0. In our look at Unreal Tournament 2004, we will see performance under software 3D, hardware 3D using OpenAL, and hardware 3D + EAX.
We like the idea that Id has in playing audio straight to surround channels through DirectX. You get better results than using DS3D (or any other 2 channel) positional audio and it's more accurate than upmixing using features like Creative's CMSS 3D. When actually creating true surround sound, the developer has full control, and since Id did it with no performance hit, there's obviously more than enough CPU power to go around these days for doling out audio. Of course, in implementing audio this way, the game developer must give up the comfort of the built APIs and the HRTF (head related transfer functions) that they implement, and build a sound engine to keep track of everything themselves. The major problem of implementing real positional sound then becomes lack of convenience rather than lack of hardware power.
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DerekWilson - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
Sorry for the confusion guys,We had originally just picked on card from each end of the market (onboard, addin, pro) and then decided that we needed to do both the audigy 2 and 4 because they're so similar. It's really meant to be an intro piece on sound and a look at an example of each market segment.
We certainly weren't trying to be all inclusive, and we do want your feedback. These cards will be our "comparison point" cards in each market segment. When we look at onboards solutions, we'll talk about how it compares to the ALC880, and on the Pro side, we'll match up the Gina3G with whatever we're looking at.
And when we do a targeted review as for proaudio we will absolutely spend time setting up a workstation and running some latency tests and we'll talk about asio/gsif support more in depth.
We will be reviewing more sound cards :-)
We didn't want to review all of them at once and spoil the fun though. :-D
MarkM - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
I second #5's request -- esp concerning the onboard, which is more relevant for most new builds>on board nvidia audio would be interesting as well as an older sb live 5.1 card for reference
LoneWolf15 - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
Not a single card based on the VIA Envy24 setup...no M-Audio Revolution, no Terratec, no Chaintech AV-710 (all Envy24-based)...I can't believe Anandtech left one of the largest enthusiast chipsets out of the roundup. There's just not enough representation here of available solutions to make a good comparison, it's either Intel or Creative, and Intel isn't an option for AMD users.If you're going to make onboard comparisons, why not (even if it's a poor solution) add the ALC850 found on most Socket 754/939 boards, seeing as AMD users can't exactly get Intel/Azalia HD audio?
hondaman - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
More cards please!!! Soundstorm, older audigy/Live and m-audio sure would have made this article a whole lot better, as thats what a lot of people are using.bob661 - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
If mid-range cards are an order of magnitude better in objective sound tests than onboard solutions, I might actually go back to buying sound cards.I would like to reaquest testing the onboard Realtek's on the Athlon64 motherboards. I would be interested in seeing how they perform compared to mid-range and high-end sound cards.
EddNog - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
Yep; gotta' have at least a halfway decent setup, from head to tail. I'm pretty happy with my setup:foobar2000 kernel streaming FLAC/Monkey's Audio to
Echo Audio Mia MIDI with sample rate locked to 44.1, out via 75ohm impedance silver coax S/PDIF to
Onkyo TX-SR501, out via silver cabling to
a pair of Paradigm Studio/20 Rev. 3 sitting on
Atlantis Reference stands
"I'm lovin' it."
-Ed
OrSin - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
Most people are not gaming with 800 sound cards.I would be suprised if gamers are using $100 sound cards. When people list out thier RIGS 8 out 10 don't even lsit thier sound card. And the other 2 have $100 or less cards. I'm all for a review of $200+ cards but almost all are not using them for gaming.
Also in order to hear better sound from $100+ card you need a better and better speak system. Not just speaker, but a good in home setup. I threw down $1000 on a speak system and it sound ok. WhenI had my friend come over and setup it up right. It sounded great. It more then just buying them and plugging them in. It take a lot to get a quailty setup. High end sound cards only will not do it, so for some it just not worth going beyond a $100 card.
Araemo - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
[Self-serving]Could we get an onboard audio review for the Soundstorm on the Abit NF7-S v2? ;P[/self-serving]
Seriously though, good review.. but I'd like to know where my current system stands.
And does anybody know how much "THX Certified" is worth? I have logitech Z-2200s connected to my nForce onboard right now(My Audigy developed an odd crackling noise during gameplay that I couldn't get rid of.)
yodel - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
YellowWing - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
What about AC3 digital encode? The next PC I build will be a HTPC, and digital encode for a single connection to my receiver is of great importance. I doubt if any of the sound systems analog sections would be used.What is the overhead of the digital encode? Does it slow a frame rate or not seem to matter?
Can you hear the difference between the digital and analog output with a good home theater setup?