Analog Speakers on a Soundstorm

elbaz

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Oct 5, 2004
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Hello all. I have just purchased a NF7-2 motherboard with Soundstorm audio. However, I think my speakers (AVS500 Altec Lansings) are analog only? Is this actually the case and, if so, is there something I can do to take advantage of the Soundstorm audio rather than the AC97 sound? What would the advantages be of the Soundstorm over the AC97? Thanks for helping an audio neophyte,

El Baz
 

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
Soundstorm uses nForce APU. If your board has the nForce APU, it's output goes to TWO places, the digital output AND the AC97 codec. So everything going into the AC97 should be pre-processed, you're getting the same output except that it's been split into channels by the codec.

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Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
BTW, the NF7-2 has the MCP-T southbridge (for Soundstorm)?

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elbaz

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Yes that's correct, it has MCP-T. Please excuse my ignorance, but what is the significance of that in terms of performance? Also, do you think I'll loose quality by not using the digital output? Thanks for your help!
 

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
MCP-T has an DSP (Digital Signal Processor) called the nForce APU (Audio Processing Unit). Normally, sound codecs rely on the CPU to process sounds, but high end sound cards contain DSP's just like the nForce APU. These increase system performance by reducing CPU overhead, while adding features.

So in this case using the AC97 codec shouldn't hurt system performance because the nForce APU is doing the same amount of processing either way, with the same smaller load on the CPU.

As for sound quality, in this case the Codec is simply a device to split the combined digital channels into seperate analog channels. Such a device also exist inside "digital speakers". So both the board and digital speakers convert sound to analog using similar devices. Therefore, cheap digital speakers with cheap electronics would do a worse job than your onboard codec, while high end digital speakers may do a better job using a higher quality converter.

So you don't really loose quality using the analog output, as compared to typical (read inexpensive) digital speakers, assuming the drivers themselve are the same quality.

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elbaz

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Oct 5, 2004
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Thanks so much for your help! Reading various message boards left me a little unclear if I used analog speakers I would really just be using the AC97 codec with none of the benefits of the soundstorm. Thanks again!
 

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
No problem. Basically the AC97 codec converts digital to analog audio. Most boards supply digital audio from the CPU, but yours supplies it from the nForce APU (assuming you have all the drivers loaded).

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