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AOpen - tube sound?

P

Particle Man

Member

I found motherboards that are using "tube sound" for the sound card (built on the motherboard). AOpen is going to sell the AX4B-533 tube (P4 mobo, Intel 845E chipset) and the AK79G tube (AMD mobo, Nforce2 (Crush 18G) chipset). Both motherboards have everything onboard other than the modem.

First, I am wondering if anyone here has any feeling towards Aopen motherboards, good or bad. Second, it has something rather new (or retro) to the sound card world: tube sound. I haven't heard a tube amp for quite a while, but I was fairly impressed with the sound. I am more of a LP guy than a CD guy, and I would love to hear my LP records by a tube amp. I am curious if it is a gimmick or not. New sound cards with this capability have been rather mute. (no pun intended)

If it is the real thing, I could see a lot of older guys getting into this.

-PM
 
Tube gear done right can sound excellent, but we're talking about gear that costs many thousands of dollars. I don't know that sticking a tube in the output stage of a $5 codec will do much. One thing it certainly will do is soften the glare of the typical cheap digital sound.
 
Yeah, your probably right.

I guess that I am looking for a pipe dream with tube sound (nostalgia for the older guys). It does only have one tube to soften the digital glare. I just ran across this when looking for new motherboards, and thought that it could be interesting.

-PM
 
Can't speak from experience on tube sound on a motherboard, but the "king" tone many purists look for comes from tubes. With just one tube I wouldn't expect much but I would really like to hear it and find out. This may sound overly simplistic, but tubes add warmth and fidelity to the music which is why musicians go for tube amps. My home stereo is all solid state but I have two guitar amps- one is solid state and the other is a vintage Fender with tubes, and man what a difference!

As far as Aopen boards, I've used a couple with Intel chipsets and they were both excellent. I didn't OC them, but as far as reliability and good trouble-free performance they were superb.

 
Aopen is a decent brand. However, I have a feeling these tube mobos are more of a gimmick than anything else. If they were the tube quality we expect from high quality guitar amps and the like, people wouldn't be as inclined to buy third party sound cards all the time like they still do. I bet it's neat and it sounds cool for onboard sound, and it'll probably raise some eyebrows if you have a window on your case, but otherwise, my guess is you'll be better off w/ a mobo w/ more PCI and a Audigy 2 or Santa Cruz or something.
 
If you're not an overclocker it's probably a nice set-up, but tubes give out a lot of heat and it will no doubt heat up a computer case faster than an overclocked/overvolted T-bird.
 
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