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.