[RPGWiZaRD]

Here's a strange matter with probably an even more difficult answer;

I'm looking  to use onboard audio, specifically I'm looking at the new Intel Z87 boards with the latest Realtek ALC1150 chipset. Some motherboards offer onboard op-amps that usually push up the "SNR rating" from 112dB to 115dB. I have already built a new system but I want to exchange my motherboard ASRock Z87 Extreme6 versus either:

ASUS ROG Maximus VI Gene (mATX) http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/MAXIMUS_VI_GENE/
 

 
or
 
ASUS ROG Maximus VI Hero http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/MAXIMUS_VI_HERO/
 

 
Both use the latest ALC1150 chipset. The Gene features onboard op-amp (TI (RC)4580) and Hero doesn't use one, this seems to be the only difference audio-wise minus the layout differences. What's your thoughts regarding onboard op-amps on motherboards, good or bad from a noise, more specifically EMI noise interference standpoint? I understand an op-amp should even eliminate some noise if configured correctly but what about if the noise is bleed into the chain AFTER the opamp and before the analog outputs? Will it actually also help to further amp up the noise levels then or how does it work?

My ASRock Extreme6 features onboard opamp TI 5532 with the same ALC1150 chip and on this board the EMI noise is annoying me if I'm using my ZO amp, well even without it I can hear a little bit noise (especially popping) but with the amp if turned up high on the volume on the amp the noise is very audible (HDD activity, mouse, high system load etc). On my previous ALC889A audio solution with Gigabyte P55-UD5 it was borderline acceptable also with max amp volume.

Which of the ASUS Gene vs Hero would you put your money on producing less EMI noise if only going by "paper". I really want to buy one of the boards and I'm not too keen to try both to get the definitive answer. For me low EMI interference has higher priority than the output quality in this case. I have no idea about these things why I'm hopefully finding some expert on this board which may have a better understanding about this topic.

 

[jaddie]

The noise limitations of mother boards are rarely related to the choice of on-board opamp.  The problem is usually poor isolation of audio circuits from the rest of the board, which is loaded with high-speed digital signals, poor power supply and grounding design from an audio standpoint, and poor power supply decoupling.  The self-noise of the opamp is usually far below the noise coming into it from other sources.
 
The best solution is an external high performance audio card.  

 

[xnor]

Something like the Xonar DX would be a pretty cheap choice with clean sound too, no?
 
Without reviewing either board I cannot tell you which is better, if at all.

 

[proton007]

A dedicated card would be better, but by how much is hard to say. Between my onboard sound (VIA VT2021) and the ODAC/O2 combination, yes, there's a difference, but its something I notice only in comparative sessions.
 
Its really hard to say which motherboard is better.
 

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

I've already tested Xonar D2, Titanium HD and SoundBlaster ZxR but I keep returning to onboard due to its special way of handling 5.1 speaker config leading to a lot more open soundstage. The ZxR sounds unfortunately much more closed in due to how Creative handles speaker config with an own kind of processing to it.
 
If it was only so easy to find a pleasing 3rd party solution... money is no objection soundcard wise but remember I need a soundcard (not professional music production but more gaming oriented), not USB DAC...
 
Therefore I'm looking for the best Realtek onboard solution I can find (and low EMI noise being priority #1 as I believe all ALC1150 solutions should at least be "decent" in comparison to my old ALC889A chip I used before) that my previous Gigabyte P55 UD5 had bearable amount EMI noise, the new ASRock Extreme6 I got now got so much more noise than the old motherboard.

 

[xnor]

Hmm Extreme 6 you say? I have a machine with the Extreme 4 running here and I cannot hear any noise even during heavy CPU/GPU use.
 
Could you describe the noise? When does it occur?

 

[ab initio]

I've already tested Xonar D2, Titanium HD and SoundBlaster ZxR but I keep returning to onboard due to its special way of handling 5.1 speaker config leading to a lot more open soundstage. The ZxR sounds unfortunately much more closed in due to how Creative handles speaker config with an own kind of processing to it.

If it was only so easy to find a pleasing 3rd party solution... money is no objection soundcard wise but remember I need a soundcard (not professional music production but more gaming oriented), not USB DAC...

Therefore I'm looking for the best Realtek onboard solution I can find (and low EMI noise being priority #1 as I believe all ALC1150 solutions should at least be "decent" in comparison to my old ALC889A chip I used before) that my previous Gigabyte P55 UD5 had bearable amount EMI noise, the new ASRock Extreme6 I got now got so much more noise than the old motherboard.

I think it depends a lot more on the motherboard design than the actual chip being used. There's a realtek ALC272 chip in my laptop that suffers from terrible terrible electronic noise, and there is a reltek ALC892
 chip on my desktop's ASRock extreme3 board that does much much better.


I think in the end, it will depend on the computer configuration, quality of the motherboard design, power supply, additional PCI cards, number of harddisks, etc.. than on the actual sound chip (which will probably always be capable of better performance than that realized, simply because audio is usually an afterthought on MB design)  


Cheers!

@rpgwizard, could you tell us a bit about the peripherals in your case? Gpu/cooler type, power supply, number of fans, etc....?

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

I'm using a very high quality PSU for years with very low ripple, the Corsair HX 750W that I used also with the previous setup. Cooler is just the monster aircooler http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835709011 with 2x140mm fans @ 1200rpm (cools like a champ so don't have to worry with overclocking). The GPU is a Gigabyte GTX 760 OC with 3x fans on it then I also have 2x120mm  fans for my HDD cages and that's it.  I have 5 HDDs... one SSD... (same worked quite fine with even 2x more fans with my previous motherboard though).
 
The noise is the typical EMI noise, if turning up the amp volume you will hear buzzing staticy sound like "frwrwrrrrrrrr" when internet pages are loading and from the Flash videos/ads. Moving mouse around you will hear a very faint a bit higher frequency whine (eeeeeee-e-e-e-eee) too, apart from a more buzzing sound "wrwrwr". When minimizing and maximizing certain windows into certain programs (depends what is displayed) it gives a "pop" sound. Also the pop sound can sometimes be heard before opening up a music file. Turning down the amp volume mostly only the popping sound remains (can be heard also without the amp).  
 
My old Gigabyte P55 UD5 board had no popping whatsoever and the rest of the EMI noise was on a quite acceptable volume level even with max amp volume.

 

[ab initio]

Quote:

I'm using a very high quality PSU for years with very low ripple, the Corsair HX 750W that I used also with the previous setup. Cooler is just the monster aircooler http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835709011 with 2x140mm fans @ 1200rpm (cools like a champ so don't have to worry with overclocking). The GPU is a Gigabyte GTX 760 OC with 3x fans on it then I also have 2x120mm  fans for my HDD cages and that's it.  I have 5 HDDs... one SSD... (same worked quite fine with even 2x more fans with my previous motherboard though).

That's a lot of potentially very noisy hardware going on in there. Also, in my experience building 10's of computers for our lab, that the quality control of computer parts is worse than one would hope. Have had several machines kick the bucket, and a few of those were because of a buggy PSU that was bought new from the 'egg.
 
The fans will be a source of noise. The HDDs will be a potential source of noise and possibly draw a non negligible amount of power. The GPU is a monster (compared to my gt440 passive-cooled )  with three more possibly noisy fans.
 
The reference NVIDIA 760 pulls 338W under load and your card is OC'd, on top of that, you are OCing your CPU (+85W stock?) (i have no idea by how much). With all the extra items you've got going on under the hood plus the overclocking, I think it's entirely possible that the PSU is under heavy stress.
~5W per fan, 2--5W per HDD, etc.. etc...
 
I have a few suggestions.
1) Try the system without overclocking and see if it improves the noisy audio---OC will put extra stress on the components and drawn more power than things are rated for.
2) If you have a spare PSU, try it---I've had newegg ship several PSU that were sufficiently buggy that they killed a few motherboards before we figured out it was a PSU problem---if you just built this system, it's no guarantee that just because you got the same PSU as your old system it won't be a lemon.
 
Quite frankly, when it comes to onboard audio, I really think it's a crapshoot as to the quality, because Audio really is an afterthought on motherboards. It's the same reason you don't use onboard/integrated graphics for gaming---if you want performance, get a standalone device that is designed specifically for the task at hand. In this case, I think any soundcard worth its salt would have some power conditioning on board to provide a modicum of performance
 
Cheers

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

Quote:

That's a lot of potentially very noisy hardware going on in there. Also, in my experience building 10's of computers for our lab, that the quality control of computer parts is worse than one would hope. Have had several machines kick the bucket, and a few of those were because of a buggy PSU that was bought new from the 'egg.
 
The fans will be a source of noise. The HDDs will be a potential source of noise and possibly draw a non negligible amount of power. The GPU is a monster (compared to my gt440 passive-cooled )  with three more possibly noisy fans.
 
The reference NVIDIA 760 pulls 338W under load and your card is OC'd, on top of that, you are OCing your CPU (+85W stock?) (i have no idea by how much). With all the extra items you've got going on under the hood plus the overclocking, I think it's entirely possible that the PSU is under heavy stress.
~5W per fan, 2--5W per HDD, etc.. etc...
 
I have a few suggestions.
1) Try the system without overclocking and see if it improves the noisy audio---OC will put extra stress on the components and drawn more power than things are rated for.
2) If you have a spare PSU, try it---I've had newegg ship several PSU that were sufficiently buggy that they killed a few motherboards before we figured out it was a PSU problem---if you just built this system, it's no guarantee that just because you got the same PSU as your old system it won't be a lemon.
 
Quite frankly, when it comes to onboard audio, I really think it's a crapshoot as to the quality, because Audio really is an afterthought on motherboards. It's the same reason you don't use onboard/integrated graphics for gaming---if you want performance, get a standalone device that is designed specifically for the task at hand. In this case, I think any soundcard worth its salt would have some power conditioning on board to provide a modicum of performance
 
Cheers

 
The PSU should be fine capacity-wise (and I don't see the relevance of PSU getting "stressed" during webbrowsing when it consumes probably like 30% of the PSU capacity) but I could measure it as I got a meter that measures power draw from a socket, the PSU was tested by a very experienced PSU reviewer and it turned out to even provide like up to I think it was 832W fully stressed or something like that before the built-in overload protection kicked in, so a great deal above the 750W and even. My old system was also overclocked to the max and it consumed like 50% of the PSU capacity stressed (while running 3DMark).

But I do have an old but good 520W PSU (OCZ Powerstream which were "teh ****" back in 2005) but not sure it even has the 8-pin graphics power adapters and GTX 760 requires one of those, would be interesting to just give it a try I suppose to rule out PSU. Well I do have some older graphics card to test with too I suppose. EDIT: Nevermind I just remembered Z87 even has built in graphics on the CPU and outputs at the back to connect monitor, one of the few times I have a use for onboard graphics xD
 
So at least I have something to test with. Who knows, PSU is a common problem about the noise, just seems weird that it worked "ok" with my old motherboard in that case. I do hear the _exact same_ noises now as on my old motherboard, it's just louder. With all soundcards I've tested with it's dead silent though.
 
If you check my signature below I actually have a SoundBlaster ZxR flagship Creative card for sale, let's just say I really like the soundstaging with onboard. I get bored with all these "buy a 3rd party soundcard and problem is fixed", well I've tested several 3rd party solutions and none satisfied me yet to the point I'd keep it. If I get a ALC1150 solution with acceptable EMI noise levels, I will be happy =)

 

[ab initio]

Quote:

 
The PSU should be fine capacity-wise (and I don't see the relevance of PSU getting "stressed" during webbrowsing when it consumes probably like 30% of the PSU capacity) but I could measure it as I got a meter that measures power draw from a socket, the PSU was tested by a very experienced PSU reviewer and it turned out to even provide like up to I think it was 832W fully stressed or something like that before the built-in overload protection kicked in, so a great deal above the 750W and even. My old system was also overclocked to the max and it consumed like 50% of the PSU capacity stressed (while running 3DMark).

But I do have an old but good 520W PSU (OCZ Powerstream which were "teh ****" back in 2005) but not sure it even has the 8-pin graphics power adapters and GTX 760 requires one of those, would be interesting to just give it a try I suppose to rule out PSU. Well I do have some older graphics card to test with too I suppose. EDIT: Nevermind I just remembered Z87 even has built in graphics on the CPU and outputs at the back to connect monitor, one of the few times I have a use for onboard graphics xD
 
So at least I have something to test with. Who knows, PSU is a common problem about the noise, just seems weird that it worked "ok" with my old motherboard in that case. I do hear the _exact same_ noises now as on my old motherboard, it's just louder.
 
If you check my signature below I actually have a SoundBlaster ZxR flagship Creative card for sale, let's just say I really like the soundstaging with onboard. I get bored with all these "buy a 3rd party soundcard and problem is fixed", well I've tested several 3rd party solutions and none satisfied me yet to the point I'd keep it. If I get a ALC1150 solution with acceptable EMI noise levels, I will be happy =)

 
I don't doubt that your PSU should handle your system, but my experience with power supplies (and computer parts in general) is that some work like they should, and some don't---and sometimes it's very subtle. The same goes with motherboards. That is why newegg has a return policy.
 
It's always nice to rule things out and identify the problem! When you make changes, try making one at a time to see if it fixes the problem, then it's all process of elimination.
 
Your PSU could be noisier that it's supposed to be. Try your spare PSU.
 
Try without things OC'd. If it makes a difference, that it could be that your peripherals (or even your CPU or MB chipset) are causing the noise.
 
Try with the GPU
 
The tons of fans and tons of harddisks in your computer could be causing noise. You could try disconnecting a few of the fans and see if that makes things better--- are any of the fans in close proximity to the sound chip?
 
For all of these things, it could be that the parts are injecting noise back into the power rails. They could be causing EMI. The sound chips on the motherboard are not as carefully shielded, nor are they as carefully filtered. I can sympathise that you prefer the soundstaging from the onboard (although I'm not sure I understand how the audio from the soundcard and the onboard could be that significantly different---is it hardware downmixing of 5.1 audio into stereo for headphones? You fact that you prefer the onboard audio to the high-end soundcard options makes me think that you ought to try a lower-level sound card---- perhaps the sophisticated high-accuracy sound processing is what's turning you off and a lower end card will produce a similar sound stage to the onboard solutions, but still have the superior power filtering and noise shielding since soundcard manufacturers acutally pay attention to that.
 
You may have to end up making a choice---quality audio circuitry with a sound processor you like less vs noisy low quality audio circuitry with a sound processor you like more.
 
The other thing to consider is that Asus is the parent company of Asrock, so if your asrock MB isn't getting it done, I'm not sure why you would expect a different solution from the same company to do much better. Perhaps you could try something from a different company, e.g. Gigabyte or MSI... perhaps they do a better job with the onboard audio design?
 
Cheers

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

Don't get me wrong, I very much enjoyed how the midrange sounded on ZxR card. But it just sounds so much more closed-in no matter how speaker config is set up (I've tried every possible config) in comparison to using the settings I use with Realtek onboard. 5.1 speakers, "Front and Left" and "Surround speakers" checked under the "Full range speaker options" and everything else unchecked like center, subwoofer etc in the speaker config options. I've also noticed reducing "front" volume under "Levels" tab to 97-98% brings a slight improvement with that config as it brings the center focused sounds slightly "less in your face" and leaves room for more natural soundstage processing (more depth especially). 
 
At least there's nothing wrong with my ears, more like the opposite, I'm extra picky and the kind of guy that just tries everything and therefore I usually tend to find these weird configs that actually works that no1 else would think of testing... 
 
I'm not sure whether what my thoughts would be on ASUS STX for example but I'm not quite that fond of the ASUS drivers and software and that "random loud noise" issue scares me way enough to not consider even if it doesn't happen for everyone.

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

Doesn't seem like disconnecting all HDDs except the SSD and even removing graphics card + 2 case fans do much difference and also tested with the other PSU, pretty much same noise levels so it's really the motherboard implementation or possibly quality control that is the issue in this case.
 
Motherboard replacement next for sure, just have to decide on which board to get. Techpower reviewer really liked the ASUS Maximus VI Hero's audio implementation at least and commented it sounding much better than the ASRock Extreme6 he also had tested with like 10x lower EMI noise so that would be a safe bet, it's just a shame if Gene turns out to have slightly noticeably better quality than Hero then again while having similar EMI noise levels...
 
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/MAXIMUS_VI_HERO/11.html
 
The Gene should have about 1dB better dynamic range according to us.hardware.info site: 
 
http://us.hardware.info/productinfo/benchmarks/1/motherboards?tcId=47&specId=1553&products%5B%5D=186853&products%5B%5D=187675&products%5B%5D=186949 (there is RMAA comparisons between Gene, Hero and Extreme6, still not sure though as you can't get any idea about EMI noise in these tests).
 
I think I will go for the Gene, seems like Extreme6 is quite a bit louder connected to the front panel and is a bit brighter and feels like it's handling the bass easier which is my guess the op-amp and at the backpanel it's not enabled (just based on audition, not sure but it heavily points to that). It doesn't sound bad at the backpanel either quality wise it gets just slightly too warm (slightly missing sparkle) for Q40 but I like how the mids sound like. So Hero should be pretty much the same at the backpanel if it's only ALC1150 chip at work like seems to be the case here on Extreme6 too when connected at the back panel, so might want that slightly more linear response at both frequency extremes with the op-amp on Gene.