Short version of the Tragedy of the Realtek Hi-Definition Onboard Audio:
Holy crap, that sure is some high-volume static being blared out intermittently through the headphones. And where did my actual sound go?
Hmm, there’s a bunch of noise on both mic channels and both line-in channels as illustrated in the Sound control panel.
Windows Common Shell DLL not responding? That’s probably not awesome, huh?
So they did keep the BSOD for hardcore crashes in Vista. Good to know.
This all happened over the course of about 3 days…after the BSOD I did a total reformat/reinstall off of the handy recovery DVD and the exact same problem persists. Onboard sound is probably fried, huh?
My X-Fi Xtreme Gamer is actually the no. 1 reason I uninstalled Ubuntu and resigned myself to accomplishing all tasks in Windows. In the end, not paying extra money for a card that Linux likes was more important than liking my web-surfing OS.
But past that, to be fair to Adam, most onboard sound is pretty damned decent these days. There aren’t a lot of people who’ve got the speakers, movies, games, and discerning hearing necessary to make a $100 sound card purchase feasible.
This. I’m no audiophile but I have no problem at all with my onboard sound, in fact it sounds great.
Unless you are getting really good speakers I don’t think a soundcard is necessary – the speakers will probably limit the quality before the onboard sound does.
To be honest, that sort of problem seems to be far more serious than just the ‘onboard audio getting fried’. If a mobo starts misbehaving like that, chances are it’s time to let it go.
Whereas I think there is a market for 'em. . . mostly because it’s tough to find Audigy 2s. And I don’t really have an issue with a company not supporting Linux w/ drivers, seeing as how there’s not really a financial incentive to do so (Oh dear, we could expand our market to part of the remaining 1.5% of the home PC market? Joy!).
So, you know, you could try to get some love in your heart or something.
The only systems I use soundcards on are my two HTPCs and on those the only reason I use a soundcard is for the built-in digital connectors. Quality motherboards pretty much all have onboard sound that is more than acceptable for my ears, but most (though some do) don’t include a coax or toslink connector to easily get that sound into my receivers. They do usually have a SPDIF header, but don’t come with any connector to it and tracking one down is usually more of a time/money headache than buying a decent $70 audio card that has toslink and coax outputs right on it.
As I inch more and more towards HDMI for everything, this will be less of an issue for me, but I’m not really interested in replacing my receivers while they still work perfectly fine for my needs.
On topic, though, I’d agree with Tankero. If I were you I’d have lost all faith in that motherboard at this point and wouldn’t assume that the problem won’t occur if you just avoid using the onboard sound. Problems of the sort you describe are very rarely so localized.
Just one of many reasons not to put up with that BS and get an X-Fi. Sounds great. But I have a 500-watt 5.1 speaker system, and a 2.1 also hooked up, to create 7.1 sound. Heh.
Use an outboard DAC. Inside your case is a festival of electronic noise, so if you feed a digital out (use USB if you don’t have a digital audio out, and don’t mind a few percent of CPU being eaten up) into an external piece of hardware, you’ll get something much nicer than an X-Fi.
Yeah but does that actually impact the sound for those of us without audiophile level equipment and hearing?
Sounds like its more of a problem with the hardware/software than it’s being caused by electronic noise, though horrible placement on the motherboard could be an issue I guess.
You can get like a 20$ USB soundcard and plug any speakers or headset you might have into it. They work about as well as your standard integrated sound.
