P4C800-E Deluxe onboard sound

[Oldspook]

Is there any way to improve the sound quality of the onboard sound
sub-system? Or, any suggestions for an economical sound card with good sound
quality?

I recently got a 1G MP3 Digital Audio Player. At the same time I got Shure
E3c Sound Isolating Earphones. After loading music from my computer, I was
totally amazed at the quality of the sound. I could hear every individual
note. The experience is awesome. Thinking it was the new headphones, I
plugged the headphones directly into the computer and played the same MP3
files. The sound was lousy. Everything sounded "muddy" with no definition.
The onboard sound system sucks.

Oldspook

 

[Paul]

Is there any way to improve the sound quality of the onboard sound
sub-system? Or, any suggestions for an economical sound card with good sound
quality?

I recently got a 1G MP3 Digital Audio Player. At the same time I got Shure
E3c Sound Isolating Earphones. After loading music from my computer, I was
totally amazed at the quality of the sound. I could hear every individual
note. The experience is awesome. Thinking it was the new headphones, I
plugged the headphones directly into the computer and played the same MP3
files. The sound was lousy. Everything sounded "muddy" with no definition.
The onboard sound system sucks.

Oldspook

The sound chip on your board is here:

http://www.analog.com/UploadedFiles/Data_Sheets/1198969AD1985_a.pdf

AC'97 sound chips generally have 32 ohm drive on only two outputs.
The other outputs are 600 ohms and if headphones are connected
to them, the output will be weak. Your headphones are 115 dB SPL
and that will blow your eardrums out, if you actually get a full
level signal on there.

There is an option on that AC'97 chip, to bridge stereo output to
all three output connectors. That means the three jacks would have
the same stereo content on them. Now, one of the jacks also
happens to have the HP-OUT headphone amplifier on it.

What I would try, is go to the back of the computer. Plug your
headphones into each of the three jacks, one at a time. Each time
the Audio Wizard pops up, make sure to select stereo headphones.
I would expect that setting will enable HP-OUT and give you 32 ohm
drive on one of the jacks.

You can also check the listening enviroment settings.

It is possible that a different setup of the controls will be
necessary on the AD1985, when using your stereo, versus when using
the headphones. Perhaps a little fiddling in the Audio Wizard
is all that is required.

If that is not the case, if you decide to buy a sound card,
get one with a graphic equalizer option. That will allow you
to boost certain audio bands. I haven't been able to find
a sound response curve for your headphones, and it is possible
that they will need to be equalized. Super-cheap sound cards
have no adjustment, the next level is bass/treble control,
and the best is a graphic equalizer with six or more bands.
If you actually had a response curve for the headphones, you
could even enter the exact values needed to flatten the
response curve (i.e. if sound is 3dB low at 1KHz, simply set
the graphics equalizer nearest to 1KHz to +3dB to counteract
it).

HTH,
Paul

 

[Oldspook]

Thanks for the input. I only have one sound output on the back of my
computer. I ran the Audio Sound Wizard, it was set for stereo speakers. I
set it for headphones. It sounds a little better but not near as good as the
Digital Audio Player.

The poor sound must be the onboard sound system because I am playing the
same file on the DAP and using the same headphones.

I have been considering the Turtle Beach RIVIERA for $22.99. I want high
quality music and only need 2 channels.

Oldspook

 

[Paul]

Thanks for the input. I only have one sound output on the back of my
computer. I ran the Audio Sound Wizard, it was set for stereo speakers. I
set it for headphones. It sounds a little better but not near as good as the
Digital Audio Player.

The poor sound must be the onboard sound system because I am playing the
same file on the DAP and using the same headphones.

I have been considering the Turtle Beach RIVIERA for $22.99. I want high
quality music and only need 2 channels.

Oldspook

OK. I did some testing. I have the P4C800-E, but have never used
headphones with it. I dug out my headphones, and the Audio Wizard
is smart enough to realize that the 32 ohm headphone driver is only
on the Lineout connector. So, once I plugged the headphones into
the green jack, I could do some testing.

Now, I'm no audiophile, and have a lot of trouble detecting subtle
differences in quality. No question, you're right, the sound is
muddy. I put a CD in the computer, set up the CD drive for
DAE (digital audio extraction, so no CD audio cable needed), and
listened to a CD I had handy. The results wasn't quite what I
was expecting.

I visited Abxzone.com, and there were a couple of suggestions.
The first suggestion is, the P5P800 has exactly the same audio
subsystem as the P4C800-e. And, being a newer board, Asus has
newer versions of drivers on the download page for the P5P800.
The "5150" driver is the recommended version. I downloaded
that and tested it, and the output isn't quite as muddy.

Another suggestion is to use a Realtek ALC650 audio driver.
The ICH5 got support in driver 3.41, and versions later than
that might work. I tried downloading and installing 3.43 and
it was a flop. Perhaps there is a trick to installing those
drivers (editting the .ini for example). In any case, I went back
to the 5150 driver above.

The 5150 driver doesn't have a button in the interface any more
for the Audio Wizard. The 36xx driver had that button, but 5150
does not.

There was always a "bass boost" slider in the control panel.
You just have to go into the preferences and enable it. There
is no graphic equalizer, but I got to play with the one in
Winamp instead, for some of my experiments.

I don't know if you have noticed the problem with your
motherboard or not, but I was getting infrequent pops and
clicks coming from the AD1985. I could not figure out what
the source of those pops and clicks might be. The Abxzone
thread had various suggestions, such as disabling the
Bass Boost feature. At least while I was testing the 5150 driver,
I didn't hear any of the usual pops and clicks, but other people
testing 5150 on Abxzone were still getting the clicks.

A possible reason for the muddy audio, is I believe even when the
special effects are set to "none" in 36xx driver, the driver was
still doing some DSP on the audio signal. The audio is still not
as clean as I would like it, but I need some higher quality audio
to do more testing with. The CD I was listening to, was likely
originally recorded on a two or four track recorder, so is hardly
idea for detecting "mud".

As for you choice of the Turtle Beach RIVIERA, be aware that the
card looks visually identical to many CMI8738 based cards
(cmedia.com.tw). The chip only offers a 24 bit path via SPDIF,
and the DACs on the chip are only 16 bit. Many companies make
CMI8738 based cards, ranging in price from $7 to $70. The only
significant difference between the cards, might be the bundled
software.

AFAIK, the CMI8738 does not have a base/treble set of controls.
So, you won't be able to shape the sound, if your listening
environment needs help.

This card is only $25 and seems to have better numeric specs.
It would be nice to find a picture of the mixer/control panel
before buying it. It is based on the Via Envy24:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829120103
http://www.chaintechusa.com/tw/eng/product_spec.asp?MPSNo=16&PISNo=199

There is a review here. Note that the jumper mod they are talking
about, may connect the DAC directly to the output, and the DAC
cannot drive headphones. You may want to leave the jumper as is.
I read something/somewhere about the DAC being gutless, because,
well, you don't drive stuff with a DAC, you use an amp after the
DAC for that. You can do their jumper mod if connecting the
card to your stereo, or to a separate high quality headphone amp.
If your stereo doesn't have a very high impedance input on it,
you may find that connecting the DAC without the amp in the
path, still isn't possible without causing some audio coloration.
In any case, for $25, I think this will be a worthwhile gamble.

http://www6.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?p=848255

HTH,
Paul

 

[DaveW]

Onboard sound chips on the motherboard cost the manufacturer around $5.00
US. You get what you pay for. Install a decent sound card.

 

[Oldspook]

I'm no audiophile either but the difference between the onboard sound and
the DAP was very obvious.

Thanks for the link to Head-Fi forums. I joined and have been reading the
posts about sound cards. Most of the posters don't consider the cards
designed for gaming to be real hi-fi cards. Since my new interest in high
quality music, I have just about decided to get an E-Mu 0404 sound card.

Oldspook

 

[Paul]

I'm no audiophile either but the difference between the onboard sound and
the DAP was very obvious.

Thanks for the link to Head-Fi forums. I joined and have been reading the
posts about sound cards. Most of the posters don't consider the cards
designed for gaming to be real hi-fi cards. Since my new interest in high
quality music, I have just about decided to get an E-Mu 0404 sound card.

Oldspook

I just finished doing a few experiments with different driver
versions for the AD1985.

What I used for tools, is I got a copy of "Audacity" from
sourceforge.net. That is a waveform recorder/editor, available
for multiple platforms. I ended up doing my waveform recordings
with the Microsoft "sound recorder" that comes with the OS
(because Audacity would not record and play at the same time).

I used a 1/8" plug jumper cable, to connect line_out to line_in.
In Audacity, I "drew" a waveform consisting of a pulse. I made
the pulse 10 samples wide at 44.1KHz. That was necessary so any
output would make it through the audio path.

With the AD1985 driver version 3630, if the audio environment
was set to "none", there was still an echo/resonance with a
time constant of 10 milliseconds. If you use the "hanger" setting,
the time constant is 30 milliseconds (corresponding to a larger
room). When set to "none", there should not have been any effect.

When I used the 5150 driver, a setting of "none" produced a signal
devoid of room echo effects. But, I did notice another effect. A
bit of ringing on the waveform, with a characteristic frequency of
somewhere between 5 and 10KHz. As I've never really done any DSP
work to speak of, I don't know what this would sound like, if it
happened to music. Maybe the music would sound like it had harsh
treble or something.

I also managed to get the Realtek ALC650 driver to install, for
the purposes of testing. I wanted to see if the (less sophisticated)
driver of the ALC650 would produce cleaner sound. Nope. In fact,
there was more garbage on the signal when using the ALC650 driver,
than when using the Soundmax driver.

Conclusion of the experiment, is Soundmax 5150 is the best driver
so far, with the caveat of the ringing seen in the example below.

1.0V --------- /\ - __
| | ===> | \/ \/ |
| | | |
------- ------- ------ | -- etc.
Waveform played in \/
Audacity audio tool Recorded on line_in with
the Microsoft sound recorder.

Perhaps when you get your EMU 0404, you can try something like
that. Connect line_out to line_in, and experiment with pushing
signals through from output to input. A more standard test would
be to run 1 tone or 2 tone tests through the audio path, but I
figured those wouldn't show too much in the way of artifacts.

Paul