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hahaha what the HELL.....tube preamp on a motherboard!?

WTH!! is right,as if we needed more heat being generated inside the case.
rolleye.gif
 
WTF? That's awesome. What is the purpose of a tube on a motherboard? I guess it could be cool for a nice set of headphones.
 
thats interesting, tho a bit out of place on a PC motherboard
all top end hi-fi is tube (very expensive tube) - no transistor harshness
prob 6922 tube

I guess they are looking for a sweet sound output.

But I dont think PC guys are looking for that in a PC.

Edit: But maybe with VIA's new pro level sound chip 24bit 96K, it maybe necessary.
 
Single ended triode amps can cost upwards of $20,000, I'm guessing AOpen just stuck a tube in the output path. As I said in the other thread:

Odd. Anyone who like tubes already has an audio system costing many thousands of dollars. Nobody serious about sound quality listens to music on a computer, and the tube sound isn't going to appeal to people accustomed to the harsh and bright sound of mass-market electronics.
 
Originally posted by: jaeger66
Single ended triode amps can cost upwards of $20,000, I'm guessing AOpen just stuck a tube in the output path. As I said in the other thread:

Odd. Anyone who like tubes already has an audio system costing many thousands of dollars. Nobody serious about sound quality listens to music on a computer, and the tube sound isn't going to appeal to people accustomed to the harsh and bright sound of mass-market electronics.
Click to expand...

yeah, thats pretty much what i made of it. the lone act of putting a tube in there isn't going to all of a sudden make it high quality anyways.
 
that is just silly .. that screams "hey unsuspecting computer part buyer guy, this has something new and cool let me rip you off" .. heh
-neural
 
Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
But...your MP3's will have VERY clear sounding artifacts!
Click to expand...

bwahahahahahhahaha.....now those cymbals won't only be wishy-washy-swirly sounding, but they'll be wishy-washy-swirly sounding and WARM sounding!!! 😀😀😀😀
 

from Hardocp:

Today AOpen shows us something that, while it could be considered revolutionary, may also be very "old school" to many of our readers out there. AOpen is putting vacuum tubes back onto the desktop platform.

The pictures above are of the AOpen AX4B-533Tube. It's an i845E based board that supports both 400MHz and 533MHz bus Pentium 4 CPUs with DDR RAM up to PC2100 spec. The ICH4 hub is used with the i45E at this time which brings native USB 2.0 support to the board. While this board hosts a myriad of overclocker features, what's really the attention getter is the audio system on-board.

One of the greatest gripes about onboard sound today in the mainboard market is the quality of the sound. While there have been solid advancements and onboard sound has certainly grown leaps and bounds in the last year, AOpen wanted to come in and do it like no other company has.

While no full specs were yet available to us, AOpen has taken a lead from the high-end audio component producers and used a vacuum tube system on their mainboard which they say produces overall sound quality that cannot be duplicated on silicon.

The first picture shows the overall board layout. The sound components are clearly visible at the lower edge of the board. You might also notice only three PCI slots. AOpen has also included an onboard NIC on this board. Considering that, and the fact that anyone purchasing this board is very likely to use the onboard sound, AOpen sees three PCI slots as being plenty.

Close ups of the tube and other components show off that this isn't just for decoration. The header that you see in the second picture above is not a power header, but rather the plug that handles the audio out jacks.

You old guys will remember that vacuum tubes need some high-end power as well. AOpen has fitted the board with components spec'ed at twice the 200 volt power requirement by the tube system in order to produce a solid and stable platform. Seems to be no skimping here.


This last picture shows the AX4B-533Tube running an audio system in the AOpen booth, and from what we heard, their tube board seems to be just what the audiophile may be looking for. Another interesting software feature that will be shipped with the board is CD Player software. While this does not seem to be anything new, AOpen's solution can run the CD player without booting into a Windows OS. The CD Player loads immediately after the BIOS.

pic
 
It could possibly improve sound quality (in a warm sort of way), however what is the built-in sound chipset?

Another use is if you have a case mod with a window you can have 'glow in the dark' without using LEDS😀.
 
Tube output with a measly 16/44.1 output? That has to be the dumbest thing I've seen!

If they're going to have decent onboard audio they need real 24 bit AES outputs and 5 MHz sample rate. Forget about onboard DAC, Mr. Krell and Mr. Wadia do just fine, thank you! 🙂

Cheers!
 
This deserves the WTF and DOH awards for sure...tubes have no place in the PC world IMO. The next thing you know they'll abolish DVD-ROM/CD-ROM drives and start putting LP and 8-track readers into the system and sell it off as "audiophile".
 
There is not enough slots on the board, no place to put the M-Audio in there. What a joke. I think the marketing folks over at Aopen need to get a clue.

Rain
 
Originally posted by: jcmkk
WTF? That's awesome. What is the purpose of a tube on a motherboard? I guess it could be cool for a nice set of headphones.
Click to expand...


Not at all, it'll raise your ambient temps like mad, as well as giving you insanely higher THD levels.
Tubes only have on real appeal, you can raise the gain very high without clipping. That's not to say they don't distort VERY easily.

Some claim they give "warmth," which is just some retrospective b.s.
 
What a pointless exercise.

Valves (sorry, tubes) have some uses, but I find it hard to believe they will offer much for this board.

Valves are bulky, heavy, fragile, expensive, require a high voltage power supply (400 V), have a very limited life span (1000-2000 hours), produce considerable heat, add considerable distortion (some people regard this as a good thing, because it sounds 'warm'), act as microphones (ping a valve, or expose it to vibration, and the vibrations will be reproduced in the sound) and require bulky and expensive ancillary components (capacitors and transformers).
 
Laughter turned into serious raves a few months later when we did our first lab demo of our unique hybrid creation. The sound that was reproduced was absolutely amazing. It left everyone stunned.
Click to expand...

I'd like to hear what it sounds.
 
Why tube amping "sounds" better to some people is explained here:
here

"so when they (tubes) distort, even-order harmonics are produced (2nd, 4th, 6th, etc...) while transistor amps are current driven and produce odd-order harmonics (3rd, 5th, 7th, etc....) When you look at them both on an oscilloscope, the transistor amp flattens out the waveform, while the tube amp sort of makes a triangle wave. If we look at the inherent resonances of acoustic instruments we find that things like violins make lots of even order harmonics, while things like clarinets make lots of odd order harmonics."


"That's because the human brain likes and will tolerate much more even-order distortion than it will odd-order."

So we see that our brains tend to like the even order harmonics better than odd order harmonics. Of course.
 
I'm a tube freak.. but i dont see the point of this.

so you have digital source ---> analog preamp (the 6922 sovtek) ---> digital power amp (well most likely digital.. not many guys have tube amps nowadays)

WTF is the point of DIGITAL --> ANALOG --> DIGITAL ?

ah well, its different for a change 🙂

the 6922 is a dual triode, like a 12AX7, which are common in the preamp stages of many tube amps.


i checked the datasheets, and this tube has 0.5w amplification @ 7% distortion in class 'A'.

this is a minature tube.. its not going to throw in that much extra heat. I cant seem to find how much heat it throws, but it shouldnt be too much.
 
I'm no expert on sound electronics but aren't most speakers analog? That would mean digital source -> analog preamp -> analog speakers. I would think that the tubes would have a difference in the quality of the sound.
 
Originally posted by: BlvdKing
I'm no expert on sound electronics but aren't most speakers analog? That would mean digital source -> analog preamp -> analog speakers. I would think that the tubes would have a difference in the quality of the sound.
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yeah, speakers are analog, but 99% of the time the amp is Solid state (FET's, etc.) instead of tube. i guess i said it wrong.

it would be going:

SS (sound chip onboard) --> analog (tube preamp) --> SS (power amplifier) --> speakers

 
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