Epox 8KHA+ has poor onboard sound? (versus ECS K7S5A)

[LS20]

I just switched from the ECS with C-Media onboard sound to the Epox... i noticed that the AC97 on the EPOX has alot more distortion and scratches... it really shows off poorly encoded media... this is with winamp w/o any DSP Processing... windows media player playing music vids... etc...


the same media that i played with on the cmedia ... the epox seems to have more hiss


is it true of all ac97 sound or do i need to tweak it? 3d depth is off, all other volumes turned up in sound panel, driver is current one from epox's website

 

[Peter]

AC97 is just the name of the digital sound data _bus_. Saying you have AC97 sound is just as pointless as saying you have an AGP graphics card.

K7S5A uses the SiS 735's sound engine (an SiS 7012 unit) and interconnects that to a codec - either a basic stereo Realtek ALC100 or a more advanced 4-channel C-Media 9738 - through an AC97 bus.

The Epox board uses the same basic setup, but obviously uses the VIA chipset's sound engine, and also some sort of codec.

That should be enough proof for you that "AC97" means nothing. Even SoundBlaster Audigy uses that bus standard to interconnect engine and codec(s).

The analog audio quality is in how much design care has been put into the analog stuff _behind_ the codec, toward the analog connectors. Owning a K7S5A connected to a decent HiFi amp, I must say its line out signal actually is very good.

Digital noise, like scratching and popping, is a sign of PCI bus overload. Apply VIA's PCI performance patch before you ditch it. Even if you choose to use a PCI sound card as a replacement, you need to get that sorted first, else you'd get the same problems there.

regards, Peter