ASRock Also Boasts High-End Onboard Audio
It appears that ASRock is also working on motherboards with better onboard audio.
Earlier, Gigabyte was teasing us that it would carry much better onboard audio thanks to Creative's Sound Core 3D chip, but it appears that Gigabyte is not the only manufacturer that wants to improve onboard audio to differentiate its products from the rest of the market. ASRock is introducing its A-Style Purity sound.
The A-Style Purity sound would be built using a Realtek ALC1150 codec in conjunction with two TI NE5532 amplifiers. One of the two would work as a differential amplifier, while the other is a headphone amplifier that can support headphones that have an impedance of up to 600 Ohms. The Realtek ALC1150 codec is covered by an EMI shield, and the part of the PCB where the audio hardware is located is isolated to prevent interference.
A-Style Purity sound will feature signal-to-noise ratio of 115 dB, 7.1 channel HD audio, DTS connect and more.
Stay tuned, for all we know there will be even more manufacturers releasing motherboards with higher-end onboard audio.
Though you're right that aftermarket codecs offer far more and better quality sound, it all comes at a price. fact of the matter is, onboard audio have become (like PCs made in the last 3-4 years) good enough for most people to have no-incentive to spend big bucks to upgrade.
Still this is good news, about time on board audio got some attention.
1) This really isn't that much of an upgrade from normal onboard sound.
2) It's not going to find it's way onto mATX and mini-ITX boards where it would actually be a selling point.
1) This really isn't that much of an upgrade from normal onboard sound.
2) It's not going to find it's way onto mATX and mini-ITX boards where it would actually be a selling point.
AsRock Is known for being low cost. I totally agree with every thing you have said but I just want to say that AsRock's major selling point is price. If they make it too good and add super high quality audio then they lose what edge they have which is cost for us budget challenged builders.
You're certainly correct that one of their selling points is cost, but having good audio on their high end boards and their specialty boards could be a very good thing.
And if GT3e delivers, it may be the beginning of the end for low/low-midrange GPUs, which is just about everyone who does not have esoteric display or somewhat serious gaming requirements.
The thing that bugs me about on-board audio is that unless your mixed-signal engineers or CODEC suck, there is no reason for on-board audio to actually suck at least THD+N wise... all it takes is a little bit more effort on PCB layout and maybe $2 in extra/better parts. The most important things you need are a good CODEC, a section of properly isolated ground+power planes for the analog side with proper decoupling and filtering.
This is a lot like the difference between a 'good' and a 'bad' PSU: minor detail tweaks in the overall design, $2 on better components and you get a PSU that lasts 7-10 years instead of 1-4. All this corner-cutting is pretty bad for the environment and for people's wallets.
Even the best sound IC in the world cannot be any better than the digital/analog isolation around it on the PCB.
Many low-end boards simply dump the sound chip wherever there is leftover space with minimal design consideration.
personally, i like asrock. but i dont like 3d recon, no thanks creative.. your drivers were a head ache
Now.. it they can somehow squeeze everything a dedicated card offers onto the mobo with no loss in quality then im all for it.
serious question, my build is will have an asrock board for sure.
Not all boards are created equal and not everyone has the same requirements either.
Personally, I have been more than happy enough with on-board sound on my Asus P5Q and current P8H77 - no point in getting a sound system that vastly outperforms ambient noise under normal listening conditions even with headphones on.