[RPGWiZaRD]

Realtek ALC889 which is newest chip except on the latest Intel boards (that has ALC898 chips) isn't that bad, Realtek's certainly gotten better than it used to be. I've got that chip on my mobo as well and I was suprised how good it sounds if you give it some amping. Without amp it's not that impressive as it lacks a bit in output power it seems. However there's a little audible electrical noise when there's HDD etc activity for me which is enhanced when I use the amp tho which is slightly annoying.
 
 

 

[sonci]

Because capacitors manufactered for audio are not solid capacitors,

 
Quote:

Do you know why ?

 

 

[mark2410]

to generalise
 
 
motherboards NEVER have good audio.  on board audio is to audio as on board graphics is to GPU's
 
 

 

[buffalowings]

Quote:

to generalise
 
 
motherboards NEVER have good audio.  on board audio is to audio as on board graphics is to GPU's
 
 

 
that's absolutely absurd, with integrated graphics, often times a modern game can't even start up let alone run with smooth framerates while with audio, I bet most people can't even tell the difference between onboard and a seperate card
 
i recently upgraded to a 560 ti running in sli mode and its a bid difference compared to my intel hd graphics card.
but between my ipod classic, ibasso t3d, lineout, dba-02, hd25 or ad700, I honestly don't hear a difference between the realtek 889 and my rig

 

[Handy Ray]

Quote:

have you even listened off a gigabyte motherboard and carefully compared it to another "superior" source? especially the gigabyte ud3 990fx which is a rather high end motherboard 
 
 

I haven't heard exactly that model.  Although I did buy that board for my friend as a gift.  It says right on the board that at best it does 108db SN.  That says a lot given most DAC's and soundcards do more than that given 24 bit sources.  For reference, in the mid 110 db's are the semi-pro products for recording like EMU 0404's 0204's and so on. 
 
Generally based on my observation, the power regulation is extremely poor for onboard.  They have to contend with loosely regulated (at best 1mV fluctuation) power supplies in the PC, and then they are subjected to a lot of electrical and electromagnetic interference inside the computer, some high switching noise from the power supply again, and then switching noise from the multi-phase power regulation circuitry for the CPU, RAM, and so on.  I have heard a lot of onboard sound cards that hums when you move the mouse (when data is being exchanged over the USB bus).  To top it off, the DAC chips used in the CODEC's onboard are never the best and newest, and the output stage is compromised between able to drive a headphone (unsatisfactorily) and as a preamp out stage.
 

 

[Willakan]

Quote:

I haven't heard exactly that model.  Although I did buy that board for my friend as a gift.  It says right on the board that at best it does 108db SN.  That says a lot given most DAC's and soundcards do more than that given 24 bit sources.  For reference, in the mid 110 db's are the semi-pro products for recording like EMU 0404's 0204's and so on. 
 
Generally based on my observation, the power regulation is extremely poor for onboard.  They have to contend with loosely regulated (at best 1mV fluctuation) power supplies in the PC, and then they are subjected to a lot of electrical and electromagnetic interference inside the computer, some high switching noise from the power supply again, and then switching noise from the multi-phase power regulation circuitry for the CPU, RAM, and so on.  I have heard a lot of onboard sound cards that hums when you move the mouse (when data is being exchanged over the USB bus).  To top it off, the DAC chips used in the CODEC's onboard are never the best and newest, and the output stage is compromised between able to drive a headphone (unsatisfactorily) and as a preamp out stage.
 

I'll agree that there are plenty of theoretical problems with onboard audio, but these do not always translate into audible ones.
 
 

 

[driftingbunnies]

I recently sold my modded PSA digital link 3 so I'm using my onboard at the moment to hold me over. I can honestly say that it's such a large difference that i'm scrambling to find a decent DAC to really hold me over. Everything is just worse. Voices are scratchier, soundstage is smaller, bass is more bloated, etc etc. However, if all you've heard are onboard soundcards, I guess you wouldn't know the difference.  

 

[Willakan]

Nobody is saying that integrated audio is always reasonable, let alone all you need.  But it certainly isn't the OMG MAH EARS that some would have you believe.

 

[buffalowings]

I haven't heard exactly that model.  Although I did buy that board for my friend as a gift.  It says right on the board that at best it does 108db SN.  That says a lot given most DAC's and soundcards do more than that given 24 bit sources.  For reference, in the mid 110 db's are the semi-pro products for recording like EMU 0404's 0204's and so on. 

Generally based on my observation, the power regulation is extremely poor for onboard.  They have to contend with loosely regulated (at best 1mV fluctuation) power supplies in the PC, and then they are subjected to a lot of electrical and electromagnetic interference inside the computer, some high switching noise from the power supply again, and then switching noise from the multi-phase power regulation circuitry for the CPU, RAM, and so on.  I have heard a lot of onboard sound cards that hums when you move the mouse (when data is being exchanged over the USB bus).  To top it off, the DAC chips used in the CODEC's onboard are never the best and newest, and the output stage is compromised between able to drive a headphone (unsatisfactorily) and as a preamp out stage.

I think that also dependant on your power supply, currently I have a 850 psu, day and night difference in terms of audiophiles

 

[sonci]

There are no audiophile pc PSUs, there are some crap ones and some good ones, a gold 1kw psu its still a pc psu.
 
I think onboard audio is a good start, you can spare for speakers or headphones which are still a bit more important in SQ, at least for untrained ears is easier to distinguish phones than Dacs,
this way you can enjoy later upgrading, buying immediately a good dac, while saving your money, takes away half of fun..

Just get a board with good digital out, so youll have more options for external dac,
 
btw Signal to Noise ratio printed on the boards dont mean a ****, audiophile speaking

 
Quote:

I think that also dependant on your power supply, currently I have a 850 psu, day and night difference in terms of audiophiles

 

 

[buffalowings]

Quote:

There are no audiophile pc PSUs, there are some crap ones and some good ones, a gold 1kw psu its still a pc psu.
 
I think onboard audio is a good start, you can spare for speakers or headphones which are still a bit more important in SQ, at least for untrained ears is easier to distinguish phones than Dacs,
this way you can enjoy later upgrading, buying immediately a good dac, while saving your money, takes away half of fun..

Just get a board with good digital out, so youll have more options for external dac,
 
btw Signal to Noise ratio printed on the boards dont mean a ****, audiophile speaking

 


 

of course, lets throw those numbers out the window too 

 

[Elysian]

The Realtek 889 on most of the more recent Gigabyte boards is fine.  I've bought 3 of those mobos (P67A) now.  The board you linked only has Toslink out.  I like the Gigabyte boards with both Toslink and coax out in case you buy a discrete DAC in the future, so you can test Toslink, coax, USB, and see which one you prefer.
 
Onboard audio used to be horrific, but it's fairly close to the better entry-level PCI sound cards now.  Creating an analogy of onboard audio to a PCI sound card, and an IGP to a graphics card, is possibly the most disingenuous statement I've read in awhile.

 

[leeperry]

 

The onboard of that motherboard appears to be pretty good, would it be a good source? I tend to give more detail then is needed.

Prolly not as good as your X-Fi, we're talking about a jellybean ASIC that does everything, but poorly.
 
I ran some RMAA on my Realtek a while ago, it's very very poor: http://www.mediafire.com/?tuy3myzu1my
 
Here's what a good RMAA looks like: http://www.firestone.idv.tw/rmaa/spitfire.htm
 
Good RMAA doesn't tell you anything about it'll sound subjectively speaking, but a bad one means that you'll be listening to as much interference/noise as your audio.
 

Realtek ALC889 [..] there's a little audible electrical noise when there's HDD etc activity for me which is enhanced when I use the amp tho which is slightly annoying.

That's because these audio ASIC's share the audio ground w/ the mobo ground, which is very dirty in a computer due to the shared ground amongst all the components...where they basically all flush, so you can happily listen to your HDD and GPU bidi bidi ^^
 

it certainly isn't the OMG MAH EARS that some would have you believe.

OMG MAH EYEZ

 

I think that also dependant on your power supply, currently I have a 850 psu, day and night difference in terms of audiophiles

It's all about ripple, Corsair and Seasonic are pretty much the leaders in that department. More and more hardware websites measure the ripple at 20% and 100% load, but some of them also get golden review samples...
 

I like the Gigabyte boards with both Toslink and coax out in case you buy a discrete DAC in the future, so you can test Toslink, coax, USB, and see which one you prefer.

 
Indeed, onboard is great for troubleshooting purposes...and for this, nothing beats the Realtek.

 

[sonci]

If you want to see an audiophile psu, just open up your grandpa receiver, hope it was built in the '70 s.

 

[mark2410]

Quote:

Onboard audio used to be horrific, but it's fairly close to the better entry-level PCI sound cards now.  Creating an analogy of onboard audio to a PCI sound card, and an IGP to a graphics card, is possibly the most disingenuous statement I've read in awhile.

why?
 
they both originated as separate components that were slowly added to the mb to save cost and the remit was be good enough but above be cheap.  when nvidia went out of their way to create a capable apu (soundstorm on the nforce 2) they ended up dropping it as mb makers didnt want it and wouldnt spend the money to implement it properly.  cheap has always been the order of the day for on board. 
 
im not saying on board always has to be crap but im saying unless the maker is screaming about how good the audio is on it then its likely to be a cheap afterthought.