Originally posted by: agent2099
90% of people hthat have Soundstorm capable MBs are using the analoge outs, which are indeed NOT soundstorm at all!, but as you said a crappy Realtek codec. You are only using soundstorm if you are using the optical out.
To quote a short-lived sports-talk TV show, "But I, Max, say, 'Wrong, wrong, wrong!'"
Soundstorm is an APU - Audio Processing Unit.
Soundstorm, like a decent hardware sound card, accelerates mixing of multiple "regular" stereo sound streams (i.e. the Windows "Ding" and playing an MP3 simultaneously) without having the CPU mix the sounds together itself.
Soundstorm, like a decent hardware sound card, accelerates rendering of 3D sound streams (i.e. "There's a gunshot that's coming from 30 feet behind me and to the right, out of a garbage container with the following properties...") This provides a major performance boost for gaming, even with modern CPU's.
Soundstorm, unlike MOST other sound cards (the latest from C-Media being one of the exceptions) can then take the 4-channel or 5.1-channel rendered 3d audio, and encode it into a Dolby Digital stream, so it can be passed on to a digital receiver.
So, using analog speakers with an MCP-T southbridge-equipped motherboard, you STILL get the benefit of SoundStorm, as your audio mixing and rendering IS hardware-accelerated. However, coming through the DAC portion of the ALC650, it sounds like crap.
If you listen to music, or pre-processed multichannel audio (I.E. DVD's), the Via Envy card will sound better.
if you play games more than you listen to music, you'll have better quality audio rendering, and far less performance loss from using sound if you stick with the SoundStorm. The Via card can do hardware 2D mixing, but it can't accelerate 3D audio.
