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By Chris Angelini |
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When I started brainstorming about this story, I wanted it to be a guide that would help resellers choose the right audio solution for their customers. Not everyone needs a discrete add-in sound card, and there are plenty of enthusiasts who shun the integrated stuff as if it served no other purpose than to slow their systems down. Learn about the latest audio technologies, identify a handful of key products designed to bolster your bottom line, and explore whatever partner programs that might be available to resellers. That was the plan. |
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Interestingly enough, generating vendor enthusiasm proved nearly impossible. Even the companies vested primarily in audio dragged their feet answering questions. Ultimately, we were all left wondering: is there any life left in the sound card market? Can a reseller really throw in a $99 controller and expect it to make a difference? Of course, the real answer is that it depends on your customer. If you make a living custom-building home studio systems, then sure. Anything less than a 24-bit add-in card with loads of inputs and outputs just won't work. Go after the graphics or small business workstation folks, though, and the integrated codecs featured on almost every motherboard today will suffice. Breaking It All Down You can distill the PC audio industry down into a couple of predominant categories. The first consists of integrated solutions ranging from basic AC'97 codecs to simple 5.1-channel controllers. For the most part, they're transparent in the price of a motherboard and relatively scant in the feature department. But integrated audio does the job, and for a business customer subject to the occasional cash register "cha-ching" in QuickBooks, audio means nothing more than the little green jack to plug in speakers. Sometimes you'll find integrated solutions with digital output, either through a coaxial connector or optical jack. That's even better, because home theater buffs can run a signal straight from their DVD drive to a stereo receiver without introducing any electrical interference at all and play a Dolby Digital stream back on their surround speakers. Take a step up and you'll find the discrete sound cards—plug-in PCI types with a controller and much more connectivity. Baseline models from such companies as Turtle Beach, M-Audio, and Mad Dog can be had for as little as $30. Most center on older PCI controllers that rely on host processor power for delivering DirectSound 3D effects and consequently detract from the overall multimedia experience you'd want from a high-end machine. As you ascend the hierarchy, however, beefier cards start to incorporate more advanced processing and value-added features. Digital inputs, unique 3D sound algorithms, and built-in decoding for Dolby Digital and DTS are but a few of the most notable. Creative Labs is king of the hill in that domain with a long-standing reputation for keeping one step ahead of the competition.
Finally, you have your pricey studio equipment. Starting at several hundred dollars and ranging upwards, typical high-end cards are designed to preserve audio quality and provide the interfaces you'd need to connect MIDI hardware, mixers, tape machines, and synthesizers. There will always be demand for such specialty equipment because it serves an incredibly small niche of audio professionals. Unless you spend time building professional studio equipment, there's a good chance you'll never have to deal with BNC connectors, ASIO 2.0, driver latencies, or ADAT protocols, though. The Basics: Motherboard-Down Audio Your cheapest option is always going to be the free stuff thrown in on most motherboards. And although enthusiasts give integrated solutions a bad rap, much of it is actually quite acceptable, especially since Intel introduced its HD Audio specification with the 925X chipset last year. Those products that don't feature HD Audio—Athlon boards and lower-end Intel-based platforms—generally employ lesser-quality codecs that juggle audio performance versus cost. But lesser is of course a relative term, and it should be noted that today's mainstream codecs are in fact better than many older discrete add-in boards. Take Realtek's ALC650, one of the most popular choices for budget motherboards. It sports a signal-to-noise ratio above 90dB, indicating fairly clean sound. You get a host of analog inputs and outputs, which are often exploited by motherboard manufacturers in different ways. Many models even include digital S/PDIF output for audio pass-through of content to a decoder box or stereo receiver.
Chipset vendor VIA has its own slew of audio solutions that raise the benchmark for quality and functionality. The company's most advanced codec, VT1617A, sports 20-bit resolution and 96kHz sampling. It also facilitates eight-channel output, enabling you as a reseller to offer up to 7.1-channel sound systems without having to incorporate an expensive discrete controller. Is there value in such a configuration? Most businesses aren't going to want intricate speaker setups, but for the college student on a budget, inexpensive multi-channel sound is sexy. Other exciting features include 96kHz S/PDIF output, jack-sensing for automatic detection of speakers, headphones or microphones, and entry-level 3D audio algorithms.
In a vast majority of cases, the combination of analog and digital connections offered through integrated codecs is more than enough to satiate your customers. Why doesn't everyone use them? To begin, the controllers included with many modern chipsets lack I/O. There are only so many ports that will fit on the back of a motherboard. Customers looking to go beyond the standard 1/8" analog jacks and occasional optical output need an add-in card. Then you have performance. For all of the audio solutions currently available, only Creative Labs uses hardware to accelerate DSP effects. Consequentially, any intensive audio processing on other solutions is offloaded to the CPU, negatively impacting general performance. Enthusiasts naturally shy away from integrated sound because it does detract from gaming. Intel Goes HD A little more than a year ago, Intel fired a volley over the bow of add-in sound card manufacturers with a high-definition audio specification that rivaled the best discrete products. It's capable of two-channel 24-bit/192kHz playback and 24-bit/96kHz multi-channel output. The controller features DSP effects and Creative's EAX2 gaming technology, as well. On paper, HD Audio is a solid implementation with enough features to put the sound card folks out of business. Unfortunately for Intel, the real story is a little less flattering. HD Audio is not a hardware-based solution, so all of the advanced effects you get are processed in software. With host processors getting continuously faster, Intel is anticipating the demands of audio will decrease. Right now, though, positional 3D audio makes an ugly dent in gaming performance. The sound quality levels capable of accommodating DVD-Audio are only now being utilized through applications such as InterVideo's WinDVD 7. And although HD Audio purports to deliver a more stable reference frequency, both of the motherboards I tested suffered pops and crackles using optical and analog outputs. Perhaps future driver revisions and newer codecs will improve HD Audio's standing. For now, keep discrete solutions in mind when it comes to delivering enhanced quality. Add-In Options The easiest way to work around lackluster onboard sound is disabling it completely in favor of a discrete card. There are a few big names manufacturing the controllers themselves and, in turn, selling to board vendors such as M-Audio, Terractec, Turtle Beach, and AOpen. Creative Labs persists as the only company offering cards based on its own DSP designs.
For the most part, nearly all of Creative's competitors have adopted VIA Envy 24-based controllers, leaving such names as C-Media and Crystal Semiconductor by the wayside. Fortunately, the Envy 24 lineup is solid. Eight-channel audio, 24-bit resolution, and a 20-channel mixer all come standard. The only caveat is that the VIA doesn't have a DSP core, so all effects processing takes place on the host CPU, similar to integrated implementations. Games are resultantly going to suffer a bit due to the inability to handle EAX environments.
Of course, the most popular name in the game is Creative Labs. The company's notoriety will cost you a premium, but when it comes to offering hardware acceleration, DVD-Audio playback, and Dolby Digital decoding, its Audigy series is your only choice. The thing is, most of Creative's cards cost more than $100 with many tipping the scales at $250 or $300. If your customer doesn't need all of the fancy connectors and still wants a hardware DSP, the Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit costs a reasonable $30 and even comes integrated on some of the newer motherboards from MSI. In Retrospect
Selling sound is admittedly difficult. Many quality specifications are largely subjective and customers may never be able to hear the supposed benefits touted by higher-end products. And because motherboard manufacturers focus so intently on keeping costs down, "good enough" codecs populate a majority of what's sold. Most of your customers will never know the difference. Without great speakers or some quality headphones, the subtle nuances separating discrete from integrated are often lost. In other words, if you're selling monitors with built-in speakers, don't bother with a full service sound card. It's not that the audio market is lacking in options. There are plenty of choices between the integrated and discrete solutions available, along with great output devices. We're increasingly seeing features once exclusive to high-end cards make their way into onboard controllers, though. The opportunity for a reseller to make sound a profitable bid seems to be diminishing. Eight-channel audio is already available through VIA's Envy controller and Creative's cards. But who really wants eight 2.5" speakers surrounding their office chair, anyway? Next month we're going to spend some time looking at the PC in a media center environment, where many integrated audio solutions are just as likely to output an optical signal as connect to multi-channel speakers. Maybe then we'll see if there's value in a premium sound card nowadays. |
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Copyright © 2007 RAM Magazine. All rights reserved.
Do not duplicate or redistribute in any form. |
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