Introduction

It's been quite some time since AnandTech has tackled an audio review. With Intel feeding higher bandwidth to onboard solutions and ever more data available to add-in cards through PCI Express, we could start to see some changes in the way that the industry approaches audio. We already have DVD-Audio and SACDs on current storage formats. With HD-DVD or Blu-ray coming down the pipe shortly, we'll have larger storage devices to feed the bandwidth-hungry PCs of today. That means even better quality media.

Our drive in life is to stay ahead of the curve and help as many people understand and ride the wave of upcoming technology as possible. When AnandTech got started, the AMD/Intel war was just getting going and 3D hardware was just beginning to take off. Before the advent of hardware 3D graphics acceleration, the video card was basically used as a rasterizer that drew a 2D image to the screen over an analog output. When talking about image quality, all rested on the DAC, which took the image of the screen in RAM and converted it from a digital grid of color values to an analog signal that the monitor could understand. Back in the day, Matrox started getting fancy and accelerated 2D windows function calls so that the CPU didn't have to draw everything itself. Slowly, more and more drawing was handled by the graphics card until we ended up moving complex 3D functions onto the graphics card and removing overhead from the rest of the system.

Over the years, a much slower trend has been happening on sound cards that parallels the graphics card industry. We have 3D positional audio and hardware DSP effects that manipulate audio in order to make it sound like it's contained in an altogether different environment.

Some of the key factors have kept the audio industry from advancing as fast and furiously as the graphics industry. First, our ears are easier to fool than our eyes. In general, people just don't care as much about hearing things where they are if they can see it. But there are mold breakers. Games like Doom 3, Thief 3, and The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, are aurally quite beautiful and the sound quality not only adds to the experience, but is essential to gameplay as well.

There hasn't been enough emphasis placed on more than a 2-speaker 3D positional audio yet. In our opinion, applying HRTFs (head related transform functions) to 2-speaker setups is on its way out. Solutions like Doom 3's 5.1 channel surround implementation are doable and sound more natural. As the average end user for any given game begins to have a 5.1 surround system rather than a 2 or 2.1 system, we will start to see more and more developers use better sounding techniques.

The minimum quality for PC speakers is way too low. The speaker is the weakest link in the audio chain, and there's no need to buy an expensive sound card if you're going to have a cheap set of speakers connected to it. As people start to understand audio more, they will start to embrace it. The more realistic visuals become in games, the more obvious problems with audio will become. If by no other factor, we will see audio quality improve on the PC.

Today, we are going to take a look at a cross section of the audio industry. The lineup includes two cards from Creative (the Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro and Audigy 4 Pro), the Realtek Intel HD Audio solution, and the Echo Audio Gina3G. With these cards, we are covering our bases for the consumer add-in market, professional recording, and onboard audio solutions. Over time, as we review more audio solutions, we will compare against these cards as well.

Before we get to the cards and tests, we will need to take a look at what it is exactly that we will be doing. First, we will look what goes into an audio solution, and then we'll take a look at RightMark Audio Analyzer. As most of our analysis will be based on RMAA, understanding what all its tests mean is of the utmost importance.


The Anatomy of a Sound Review (Electrical Analysis)
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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?

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