I find it really interesting that modern 3D pipelines are so efficient that drawing 2D using 3D part of GPU is faster and better than using 2D part of GPU still present in modern GPUs for backwards compatibility. Maybe 2D is now done in software in drivers though, I'm not sure, haven't checked.
At least it was a real name. Nowadays it seems like every new company's name is just a random jumble of letters solely because that .com was available.
The motherboard had nothing but the case usually had a speaker just to make a "beep" sound. I had to play Wolfenstein with that shit because my dad didn't have a sound blaster until he also got a CD-ROM drive to play Doom since he could only find a copy on CD and not floppy disk.
And even now, a SoundBlaster32 is better than the in-built audio stuff motherboards do have. Though it's not worth getting one just for games.
If you want good sound, buy an external usb DAC. It will be away from all electro magnetic interference and will be way better than any consumer stuff.
Lol how do you think they get to that front panel?
I mean sure go ahead and shield this and that (and still get em interference in the DAC card because it's hooked up to the friggin PCI express bus on the motherboard) instead of using a simple USB cable.
15 pin d-sub that could support TWO joysticks if you had the splitter cable.
Micro machines 2 : 4 player, with 2 gamepads into the soundcard, and one player using each side of the keyboard.
To this day I use a Creative Labs emu 0404 sound card weekly and just purchased a replacement when the present one started having issues every now and then. One of the great underrated pieces of hardware IMO.
Hi/Lo Z in, digital IO, optical IO, analog IO, USB, 24/192, preamps and one hell of a solid clock and it can be used as a stand alone mixer without a PC.
I miss my SoundBlaster Live! card. Excellent sound quality. Last used with the last computer I built, in the late-mid-2000s. That was the second computer I had that had on-board audio, and I just didn't bother with on-board audio because I just straight up assumed it was going to be shit. Unfortunately it stopped working at some point, along with the GPU (I suspect a static electricity fuck-up on my part, or something) which didn't matter all that much because I was mostly using the system as a server at that point.
(I'm going to build a new NAS server from ground up later this year, and I'm contemplating getting an external DAC for it for use with musicpd. Wonder if there's still SoundBlaster branded DACs, or are they gone? ...Oh they're still around!? Good.)
what was really cool were the few games that would give realistic* music and speech from the internal motherboard speaker. No daughterboards or external speakers required. This was 386 era, I think.
* realistic as much as could be from that tiny internal speaker and 8 bits of data.
Yes, I remember these! Countdown And Tex Murphy: The Martian Memorandum come to mind. I remember being amazed at the sounds suddenly coming out of our internal computer speaker. It even had something close to speech!
The manual also came with some info on making the sound even better using some alligator clips, but that went waaaay over my little head at the time :)
Most BIOSes can show them on screen and most motherboards have LEDs to indicate WTF is going on before the screen becomes active. Also, boot up failures are extremely rare compared to 1990-s.
Many mainboards have moved to a small piezoelectric speaker, not dissimilar to the buzzer on an old style of digital watch (think Timex), rather than a speaker pinout for the system.
It's soldered right to the mainboard. It's different than the crap cone style system speaker.
The cone style usually was bundled with the case and was usually mismatched lowest bidder garbage.
I'm pretty sure that even very modern mainboards have a piezo style "speaker" on them, though many might forego this in favor of lights or something.
G5 is a USB card. And I'd argue that's the best approach, as sound signal being analog is highly susceptible to interference, and insides of a computer have a lot of that.
On board is easier and for any audio enthusiast, sounds like trash by comparison.
I have yet to meet an onboard audio solution that didn't give you garbage in the output. Whether it's coil whine, a low hiss or a 60hz him, there's always something.
Onboard, in my experience also distorts way earlier into the volume slider by comparison.
I always hear interference, especially from a mouse, in onboard audio.
I'm happy you haven't had this problem, but I consider that to be an outlier in the grand scheme of things.
I'd also be willing to bet you have the problem but just haven't noticed it. Which is fine. If the issue isn't one you have noticed, and you're fine with onboard, go ham. Have fun. That's not me though.
Take a look at your board. How many sources of interference do you see? Historically a lot of the board was analog. Now they are digital. Unless your board is a fire hazard that shouldn't happen. It just isn't how it works. If USB affects audio you machine is probably toast and fuses should of blown.
Considering how many systems I've heard this on, not just my own, and how long I've been able to hear it, no. Definitely not.
Some newer boards have gotten wise to the issue and generally shield or provide an exclusion area around audio carrying circuits. Not all of them do it.
Above and beyond that, the amps used are generally crap and distort at high volume levels, so no matter how good your headphones are, the audio always sounds like hot trash at high volume levels regardless of pretty much everything else.
My AG06 costs as much as a cheap motherboard. There's no doubt that the audio hardware, designed and produced by Yamaha, a well known name in audio equipment, had been built with better components than you'll find in your average onboard audio solution, and with more attention to detail about interference sources.
Considering the AG06 is on their low end of equipment, compared to some stuff out there, it's complete trash. There are audio interfaces and headphone amps that cost 5-10x what I paid for the AG06, and some that cost more. I promise you they sound better than my dinky little audio interface/mixer.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, if you're happy with your audio solution, cool. Use it. I'm not here to judge you for what you like. For those who hear the distortion and interference from onboard audio, they already know what I'm talking about and likely have their own audio setup which eliminates any trouble they might have with their onboard audio. As long as they're happy with theirs, cool, they should use it.
I'm happy with mine.
Please don't argue that the problem doesn't exist because your limited experience hasn't noticed it. That kind of subjective anecdotal evidence proves nothing beyond the fact that you don't have a problem with your setup.
That's cool. But don't tell me that it's not a problem just because you don't have that problem.
