How to Choose High End Audio Device for the PC? How to Select Audio Products for the Computer-Best Computer Online Store Houston Buy Discount Prices Texas-Directron.com

A guide to High End Audio for the PC

by Walt Huber

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Introduction

Computer audio has often the poor sister to system components such as graphics cards and CPUs. Big powerful systems are often brought home with a pair of $10 speakers. Relatively recent options in computer audio make it possible to have truly awesome audio, with signal quality good enough for Home Theater.
Better than Nothing
Fair to Good
Excellent
Sound Files
CD Audio
DVD Video and Audio
Conclusion

Better than Nothing

In the beginning, PC sound came out of a 35 cent speaker, and to this day most systems will emit startup beeps and boops from the dinky little speaker. Competition in the mid '80s with other computer systems resulted in the Ad Lib and Soundblaster 'game cards' PC audio, which upgraded sound to one analog output on a sound card. From this you could attach a pair of computer speakers, which came with their own amplifiers. This was not hi-fi, but 8bit sound, mostly used for game sound effects. Later soundcards output 16 bit stereo audio, which is still a standard for many users. A Y adapter can be used to attach a separate subwoofer. If you can be satisfied with stereo sound, with or without a subwoofer, very acceptable sound for casual listening can be had this way. With proper cabling you can send the signal to an audio receiver or amplifier and use any of the myriad speakers available for stereo sound.

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Fair to Good

Up until recently, built-in motherboard audio was second rate; a cheap way to get the cheap $10 speakers to make noise. While it is probably still possible to buy motherboards with low quality built-in sound, this situation was improved with the implementation of the AC '97 standard. With subsequent updates it has brought to the masses 2 or 3 line analog outputs from soundcards and motherboards. Analog outputs send separate signals to the front, rear, and sometimes center/subwoofer. These remain the most common means of connecting speakers to a PC, and many excellent PC speaker systems are connected in this way. Dedicated PC speaker systems are the best way to exploit this multiple analog connection option. They will come with all the wiring and cabling necessary to run from the analog outputs. Analog sound is processed almost entirely on the PC, so if you intend to use analog outputs you will want good PC audio hardware, with low CPU usage especially important for gamers.

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Excellent

Hardware options have emerged for motherboard sound processing that rivals the best sound cards. Motherboards with Nvidia's NForce2 chipsets or onboard SoundMax Audio have received high marks for their sound quality, and these can also output digital sound, as can motherboards with full AC '97 implementation. The SPDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface) connection opens up the digital audio world to computer users. The digital output is a significant connection to Home Theater, and a computer can now be the source of its high quality audio and video.

SPDIF output to an Audio/Video (AV) receiver or speaker set is the ultimate audio option for a computer. Any competent modern receiver will have both optical and coaxial digital inputs (usually several), and it is just a matter of using the correct cable. The typical modern computer with digital output (motherboard digital, Creative & Philips etc..) will typically require a cable with a 1/8" (3.5mm) mini mono jack at one end and a standard RCA jack at the other to plug into the receiver. These are available at your local Radio Shack. They are not the preferred coaxial cable type but a simple two-conductor cable. For short runs of 6 feet or less this is probably not critical, and just follows the standard rules of separating audio/video cabling from power cabling. A better solution is to use an

1/8" Mini mono-to-RCA adapter and 75 ohm coaxial cable with RCA connectors, and be in step with the specs.

Some computer digital outputs will be optical (Hercules products, e.g.), and they will require an optical cable. With this single wire connection whether coaxial or optical, the whole world of home theater systems is opens up. You are no longer limited to hardware built to be used with computers; the computer can hook up with the best audio equipment that money can buy. With this and an upscale video output, your computer can function as the home theater DVD player, internet browsing, etc., but that's another article.

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While audio can be an integral part of a program, such as a game program or its binary files, the sort of audio most computer users become familiar with is either in a file format, such as a WAV or an MP3, or an audio CD.

Sound Files

The CPU plays a small role in sound processing; most of it is done in the PC's audio circuitry. These signals will undergo less processing in the sound card when they are output as digital signals, instead relying on the receiver decoder.

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Audio CDs

Audio CD takes a slightly different path. It can be input as analog via the 4 pin connector or digital via internal 2 pin SPDIF. Analog cabling is still much more common, and if cabling is shipped with a CD or DVD Drive, it is almost certainly analog. For stereo Audio CDs, there is no difference. Win 98, including Win 98 SE and anything in MS-DOS mode may not play nice with the internal SPDIF connection to the CD/DVD drive. Nothing more than a single analog stereo output is required for CD audio playback on a computer. DVD Drives are on the verge of completely supplanting the venerable CD Drive and new models are completely compatible with the CD audio standard, connectors and cables included.

Audio CD (or CDA) is equivalent to WAV file in 16 bit stereo with 44 khz sampling in PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) format. This is the most accurate file conversion of a CD Audio track, and also results in the biggest files. 700MB of such WAV files would almost exactly match the contents of a full CD, so you can perceive the one-to-one equivalent file size. MP3 is the enormously popular audio format, and is the format usually chosen to rip an Audio CD to. It is a compressed format. 128kbps sampling is considered the minimum for decent audio quality, while many prefer 160kbps or higher. WMA (Windows Media Audio) format is now popular if only because it is the default audio format for Windows Media Player. The version of Windows Media Player bundled with Windows will play an MP3 file but it will not create one. It is claimed to be more efficient than MP3 and so can compress audio files to even smaller size with resulting equivalent quality. These formats are popular because a MP3 or WMA compressed audio file will be about 10-30% of the size of a WAV file of the same song. If you plan to rip Audio CDs regularly, the DAE (Digital Audio Extraction) rate is important. Just like a ?0x?read rating for a CD ROM drive, the numeric DAE rating is a multiple of the 1x speed used for CD playback. A device with a high DAE rate will extract the music tracks more quickly. The DAE is not always listed in a device's specifications and you may have to browse hardware reviews to find the DAE rate.

Creating Audio CDs from high sample rate MP3 or WMA files can result in good audio quality, but it will not be as good as a copy from a CD image file, a one-to-one burn on the fly or a CD created from the WAV file of the stated specs. Whether or not you will hear the difference depends on equipment and circumstance. A pop song coming from a portable player on the beach will sound pretty much the same from any source, while audiophile grade equipment in an acoustically balanced room will detect every little defect or missing attribute.

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DVD Video and DVD Audio

If you want to explore DVD video (and now DVD audio via the Audigy 2) in glorious 5.1 or 6.1 audio format, you will either need to send the sound via the digital output to an AV receiver or digital speaker system, or your system sound must be capable of decoding Dolby Digital, with the output then going to the analog outlets. Most motherboard sound systems do not have decoding capability, and it is an upscale feature on soundcards. If you simply connect speakers to the analog outlets without decoding and watch a DVD, the speakers will get the stereo PCM signal only.

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Conclusion

Does it make a difference if the digital signal comes from built-in motherboard circuitry, a mid-range or high-end sound card? In a 21st century system normal uses such as music and sound playback there's not much difference. Once attenuation and mixing is done, most of the sound processing is done outside the system when using digital output. Sound circuitry lacking hardware sound buffers and accelerator circuits will not perform as well. AC ?7 specs are a bit less than the best sound cards in areas such as Signal to Noise ratio, Dynamic range, and upper frequency response. With good speakers and amplification, most people won't notice the difference. The best onboard audio, such as nForce Soundstorm and SoundMax, have specs that are competitive with the best consumer sound cards. Their CPU usage is similarly low, and the output has a low Signal-to-Noise ratio. Sound cards can add effects and may have other features that may be attractive to some users.

The quality of computer audio has increased dramatically in the last few years, and the ease of connection to home theater hardware makes it a very exciting area. I hope this small lesson has pricked your ears to the possibilities.

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Tips

1) In a computer, AC?7 defines several specifications related to PC Audio. One of the main ones is the color coding of the actual audio connectors on the back of the PC. One common point of confusion relates to AC?7 in relation to the actual audio in the chipset. It is possible for the motherboard to have both AC?7 and a standard audio chipset component such as the integrated audio in an nForce motherboard or a creative chipset. In that situation AC?7 refers mainly to specifications like coloring. If you don't have an audio chipset on the board and just see "AC?7" then you can assume that the board has a very basic audio codec and is offloading audio processing to the CPU.

2) One benchmark used for testing onboard audio quality is the amount of CPU demand required to use audio functions. Many onboard solutions offload virtually all calculations required for audio processing to the host CPU.

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Directron.com is not responsible for any damage or problem as a result of following the instructions outlined in this manual. Do it at your own risk.

Last Updated: May 26th, 2003

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