Soundmax vs Realtec

[DanStp]

I am familiar with the Cmedia onboard audio. It seems to perform pretty well. What I would like to know is what others think of the Soundmax audio vs the Realtec audio chip. I am looking at PE chipset boards, and ASUS uses the Soundmax, and all the others seem to use the Realtec.

Thanks

 

[DanStp]

Bump in case someone cares about this?

 

[Kingofcomputer]

Beware, soundmax makes both pure codec chip and complete audio processor chip.

In end-user motherboards, they use pure codec chip to partner with chipset's built-in sound engine. Mostly Soundmax (Analog Device) AD1981 or Realtek ALC650.

In IBM, Compaq PC, the oem motherboards use Soundmax Cadenza chip, which is like CMI 8738, a complete audio processor ship, which has 4M GM MIDI or 1.2M Yamaha XGLite software MIDI synthesiser with DLS support.

If the motherboard is with AD1981 or ALC650, you need to use Windows' built-in MS software MIDI synthesiser.

 

[pukemon]

I've used the ADI Soundmax, the ALC650, and the CMI8738-series. They are all Host Signal Processing sound chips. Of the three, the CMI8738 series seem to sound the best, mainly because (at least the ones i used - built in on Iwill boards) had decent DAC and ADCs chips.

What Kingofcomputer said is true if you actually care about the MIDI capabilities of the board. Not too many people listen to MIDI files, the ones that compose in MIDI won't be using these anyway, on the very least they'd use the Sound Blaster Live/Audigy series because of the EMU10000 chip which offers a hardware wavetable and soundfont capability et al.

Any of the newer (from VIA 8233 and on) AC97 based software sound solutions will work fine for desktop beeps, MP3 playback and basic gaming. The best cheap sound cards imho are based on the C-Media 8738. can't go wrong with those $10 cards.

 

[Kingofcomputer]

update: the spec of ASUS's new PE and GE motherboards' optional soundmax audio seems to be Soundmax Cadenza.

 

[TenEgg]

So the ones that use processor chips use less CPU power than the ones that use codec chips?

 

[Kingofcomputer]

You can treat it as software modem vs controller-less modem vs fully hardware modem.

software = Intel ICH chip or VIA/SIS/ALI southbridge chip + Codec chip
controller-less = CMI8738, Soundmax Cadenza, ESS Solo, Ensoniq AudioPCI
fully hardware = Emu2K (in SB Live), CS4624/CS4630 (in TBSC, Hercules GTXP, Fortissimo, etc)

 

[Vette73]

Thing is computers have so much power there is little difference now. BUT back int eh days a 800mhz cpu was king of teh hill and PC133 was just kicking it, the Dif. could be kinda big. I am using the AC97 built into my AMD 760MPX board and its sound fine. I liked the C-Media a little more, But after some adjustments to my settingsa the AMD AC97 is not bad at all.