Audigy 1 or nVidia SoundStorm?

[Gurm]

So my SiS-748 board has shit the bed (long story, it was doing all KINDS of weird crap), and I have replaced it (in theory, it hasn't actually gone IN yet) with an nForce2-400-Ultra board. Very spiffy board.

One of the spiffy things on this board is an onboard SoundStorm with optical in/out and also a firewire chipset/port.

So that pretty much kills all the reasons I was keeping my Audigy eX. I can probably recoup the entire price of the mobo, and/or buy myself some RAM, if I sell the Audigy.

How are the SoundStorm drivers? How is its sound?

- Gurm

[GNEP]

Just replaced my Audigy with the on-board soundstorm audio on the new Asus A7n8x-dlx when I put the board in.

Audio quality is similar - although I haven't pushed it that hard. Possibly some "intereference" type sounds (sounds a bit scratchy?) at high volume on quiet sounds which I never noticed with the audigy. But this is marginal. Using my analogue creative 5.1 speakers btw which aren't the best anyway. I'm no audio freak.

I am glad to be rid of creative drivers from my system to be quite honest. Nvidia drivers actually seem pretty good, and quite easy to install and set options etc, although I haven't dug that much into "best" versions - just using the 3.13's as far as I know.

Which nForce board did you go for then? And what were the issues with the FIC board? Hope you got your money back.

[Tjalfe]

I am using the soundstorm on my A7N8X-DLX. No problems, except for the now very rare hickup. I have it connected to my old DDT2500 speakers from creative.

[Fat Tone]

I haven't let a creative or VIA driver near ANY of the 2-dozen+ PCs I've built in the last year or so, and I actually removed the LIVE from a via-based PC I had to upgrade. Support issues: None.

So far. Fingers crossed.

The only issue I've had with the audio on my EPOX 8RDA+ was that I couldn't configure the number of speakers correctly without using the wizard, but I haven't had to do for a while now.

Edit: btw - the sound quality has always been excellent for my needs - but I only have the Creative 4400 5.1's.

[K6-III]

Analog output is paltry at best, due to motherboard manufacturers skimping on components and using the Realtek ALC650 Codec/DAC. Digital output would be just as good as the Audigy, with the added benefit of realtime AC3 encoding.

[TransformX]

DolbyDigital encoding does sound compelling.
Not to mention the great motherboards being made using the Nforce2 Ultra 400 nowdays.

[Gurm]

Yeah, this ABIT board claims to have used EXCELLENT components in conjunction with an ALC658 (not 650 or 655) codec.

I intend to go all digital anyway, once I'm certain that the motherboard meets my needs.

What went wrong with the other one? I'm still not sure. What happened was that right away when I first installed it, I noticed a little bit of graphical glitching. Not the kind that corrupts the screen, just the kind where a little piece of the screen "twitches" for a second and then it goes away.

As time went on, I also noticed some crackling from the Audigy that hadn't been there before - pops at weird times, or when transitioning between sounds. The drivers were the same, so I started to suspect the new component. I played with a lot of settings, but the problems just kept getting worse!

At one point, the entire display became corrupted... well, just the text. Not anything DRAWN in, so Yahoo messenger for example looked fine (because they DRAW into their windows instead of using text boxes).

Nothing I did helped. At one point I just sat there and watched as dozens of these squiggly things appeared and disappeared onscreen.

Needless to say, I haven't positively ID'd a single one yet with this new board. I have seen some stuff from the corner of my eye, but nothing I couldn't blame on the shitty MS built-in drivers for the 8500. I'll keep my fingers crossed, 'cuz I got a KILLER deal on this new board ($80), and I'd hate to have to bring it back and get a new video card... not to mention that this board was a replacement for one that I can get $$ back on, but the video card I'd have to eat the entire cost.

- Gurm

[cjolley]

Are you sure that wan't an Apple motherboard?

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=4234042

chuck

[Gurm]

Pretty sure, thanks.

Anyway, I'm not super-thrilled with the nForce2-400 chipset. Their drivers need some work, and are apparently in the same place VIA's were some years ago - gotta mix 'n' match to get the same reliability you get out-of-box with SiS. Grr...

- Gurm

[Marshmallowman]

The drivers are good, one thing which may be worth doing is settinging the digital input to aux, it stops some low level crakling on the analogue out(barely audably but still)

The digital out is VERY good, playing games in 5.1 *IS* nice.

[a_h]

If you all egt issues with the creative drivers, why don't you try the kxproject (http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/index.php?skip=1), for ac3-passthrough or musician needs, it seems to be perfect. The main dev adds at the moment even the first EAX support for the gamers...

Personally I think that the audigy is clearly superior than any integrated solution, better signal to noise ratio, lower cpu load (hey Gurm aren't you actually a fan of low cpu load?), but maybe I'm wrong ;-).

With kind regards, Hannes

[Gurm]

Actually I think the Audigy has HIGHER CPU load. Well, using the Audigy2 hacked drivers makes that better, but still...

At any rate, the issue I'm having now with the nForce is that it just feels... weird. I'm very used to SiS's very predictable performance. And this feels like VIA all over again.

1. The latest "official" nVidia drivers didn't automatically install the SoundStorm portion of the drivers. I had to manually update the devices. This would be fine, except then their cool control panel didn't work.

2. I downloaded the "unofficial" version 4.09 from somebody's fansite. They work great. Ok, THAT problem solved! (Except for the slightly anemic output of the SoundStorm as compared to the Audigy, I'll have to get used to turning the speakers up a little I guess, no big deal.)

3. nForce IDE drivers suck. I have found a site that mixes and matches their drivers to get the best mix of IDE, GART, memory driver, etc. I'll try some of those, but may just stick with the MS builtins. When I say that the nForce IDE drivers suck (3.13), what I mean is that while doing a big file copy from one drive to another, you may as well not even try to use the machine for anything else! Which... reminds... me... of... VIA! ARGH!

Anyway, the board has a lot of great features. And once I'm actually DOING anything with it, it's damn fast. I guess I got spoiled forever by SMP, and I'm subconsciously judging everything else's performance against it... and the SiS 745 was the closest I've ever gotten.

I'm still tempted to return all of this and order the ASROCK 748... maybe work off the laptop for a couple days until it shows up.

- Gurm

[a_h]

I think the cpu-load isn't worth mentioning anymore...besides the creative drivers are generally (e.g. at the kxproject) considered as extremely optimized for gamers - that's the cause that this project exists at all!

AFAIK it's not necessary anymore to use the hacked A2 drivers, since it's the same development tree and both drivers have the same release date. Just my 2$.

However smp is great!

Cheers, Hannes

PS: are you sure, you aren't leaning a bit out of the window with so many hacked/mixed/garbled drivers on your machine?

[Gurm]

Yeah I know. So you say you don't need the hacked drivers any more? What if you want to use Media Source? (Since, IMHO, Playcenter is a BOD - Bowl Of Dick).

- Gurm

[rugger]

Hmmm, I agree to a certain extent about nvidia drivers... they still need more work. But the nvidia hardware is a LOT better then the VIA hardware, in terms of general performance and buggyness. Not as simple plug and play as the SIS boards though.

Hmmm, the output on the Realtek 650 codec isn't too bad on my Asus A7N8X-X. This is from:

1) Listening to it on a 6 speaker Logitech Z-640 speaker set.
2) Listening to it on reasonable headphones connected connected via a reasonable external amplifier (the onboard headphone amplifier seems to colour the sound somewhat)

What I have noticed:
1) It sounds rather good, not as good as an sblive or an audilgy, but still far better then any motherboard onboard audio should sound.
2) It does pick a bit of noise from the ethernet transceiver sometimes while it is not playing any sounds. This can be eliminiated by playing something, disabling the ethernet, or simply disconnecting it.

However, with the above said, I am not entirely happy because the a7n8x-x because doesn't have soundstorm, its only a software driven sound card. I intend to aquire and use an audigy card as soon as I can afford it. The CPU usage of the this sound soultion is too high for my liking.

The drivers I am using on this beast:

1) 3.13 nforce drivers as the base drivers. I am using the default IDE drivers, not the ITB ones, which had problems with my liteon cd burner.
2) The realtek 650 codec drivers for my sound, since the nvidia drivers do not properly support multiple speaker configurations, and refuse to upmix 2/4 channel sound into 6 channels for my speakers.
3) The ethernet driver from an older nforce driver pack, with it set to Throughput mode. This mode puts less strain on the CPU for what I use most of the time. This is because in CPU mode, the ethernet hardware generates a constant stream of interrupts. This is good under heavy ethernet load, but under low loads, I find it just wastes CPU cycles.