The best on board sound solution now is nForce APU SoundStorm on nForce2 (MCP-T) chipset. It offers 5.1 Dolby Digital encoding, DTS, 5.1 Dolby Surround, etc. nForce APU will be hell a lot better than most cheap soundcard in the market.
CODEC - COder and DECoder, in simple term is the controller for audio I/O. Although most nForce2 mobo use the cheap Realtek ALC650 codec for their nFoce APU, it doesn't mean that nForce APU will sound like Realtek ALC650. Realtek chip only acts as an DAC (Digital to Analog Convertor). If you use digital connection for your speaker, you won't be using the Realtek DAC, and this is highly recommended for nForce APU users because the digital audio quality of nForce APU is extremely good.
S/PDIF - a digital audio interface standard developed by Sony and Phllips. It has two types of connection, optical and coaxial. Optical is on top of coaxial.
6.1 Channel - means that the audio will be positioned in 7 discrete channels: Front Left, Front Right, Rear Left, Rear Right, Front Center, Rear Center, and LFE (Sub-woofer)
Currently only VIA offers on board 24bit audio, I personally never experience it's sound quality yet, but VIA seems to be using high quality DAC instead of Realtek.
Hope these helps.
If I agree with you... will you shut up?
<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=22996" target="_new">My System Rig</A>
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram