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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SkillS - Friday, June 13, 2008 - link
Pleas Do not review audio cards here,your knowledge of the subject is highly limited,
your testing methods with adapters for christ sake are more then questionable,
your pairing of pro audio cards with "demands" like EAX are laughable ,
and it all leads to one thing - Confusing Buyers,
Please stop this nonsense.
Stick to something you DO have a clue about.
NEVERwinter - Monday, April 11, 2005 - link
so..., where's the roundup?I'd like to see these cards (compared to those already in the article):
envy24 (terratec DMX xfire 24/96)
envy24ht (terratec aureon universe, audiotrak prodigy 7.1, m-audio revolution 7.1)
realtek alc850 onboard
nvidia nf2 soundstorm
turtle beach santa cruz?
lynx, emu, motu and digi002 is also a good addition
by the way, i read somewhere that revolution 5.1 has better DAC than revo 7.1. is that true?
flachschippe - Thursday, March 10, 2005 - link
That should be "head-related *transfer* function" (HRTF), not "head-related transform function". The transfer function of a signal-transferring system is the reaction of the system's output signal to an impulse input signal.S0me1X - Saturday, February 5, 2005 - link
#83For the pure digital out card, go with AV710 because it can be flashed with Prodigy 7.1 firmware. Then you can install Prodigy 7.1 drivers (which are much better than Via's OEM drivers). This gives bit-perfect digital out for only $25.
Note that the AV710 only supports digital out via Toslink. So if your receiver does not accept toslink, then EMU0404 is the only choice.
Link to AV710 on newegg
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?desc...
Link to info about flashing to Prodigy firmware
http://www6.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=75...
The AV710 has decent 2 channel analog out (in high res mode), but the EMU0404/1212 better.
DerekWilson - Saturday, February 5, 2005 - link
Disdain for 2 channel?I actually mentioned that I prefered listening to the dream theatre dvd in 2 channel ... i prefer all music listening in 2 channel actually ...
There are not many good 2 channel 24/192kHz DVD-Audio offerings out there ... does anyone have any good suggestions? Most of the stuff I like is mixed into 6 channel. Which just feels wrong for anything but techno or orchestral stuff that tries to put you at the prime listening point of a music hall or something.
Also, note I used rather nice 2 channel headphones while the sonic quality of my surround solution was no where near as good. It was more to test compatibility.
We are certainly open to suggestions on what and how to test to better suit our readers though :-)
Derek Wilson
sparky001 - Saturday, February 5, 2005 - link
#70 - S0me1XThanks for the comment on what I should use. I thought I should clarify. I need two seperate PC's (HTPC's) one is for my room and needs analog out. The other is for a the lounge room and will use digital out into an Onkyo 701 reciever.
What cards should I use for this?
#80.
Correct I would like to see the reviews a little more accomodating to 2 channel audio. All CD's are stereo and they are still the dominant format.
Maleficus - Saturday, February 5, 2005 - link
CSMR - Saturday, February 5, 2005 - link
Everyone's asking for so many things to be reviewed. It makes more sense IMO to do a general article on how to get good sound from a PC. Something for beginners, like the excellent articles on taking pictures which have appeared recently. PC audio is really quite simple; but you won't know how it works without digging for information.Gooberslot - Saturday, February 5, 2005 - link
I'd like to see the AV-710 and the Revo 5.1 reviewed. That emu 0404 doesn't look too bad either.I do wish the reviewer didn't have such disdain for 2.x solutions. Not everyone has room or money for a surround sound system.
LocutusX - Friday, February 4, 2005 - link
For those of you with Audigy 2's who want to get the highest quality possible from 44.1KHz sources - you don't necessarily need to spend the $$$ buying a new sound card.Instead, configure either Foobar or Winamp to resample to 48KHz in the output plugin. Both have versions of the high quality "SSRC" plugin available. For Winamp, you need to search for DirectSound 2.0 with SSRC output plugin. There is also an ASIO plugin with built-in SSRC resampling. The results of ABX double-blind tests seem to suggest that going this route is an effective substitution for one of the better Non-Resampling cards...