# How can I compare Audio in motherboard?



## khjhpopasa (Dec 5, 2020)

How can I compare Audio in motherboard?
Realtek ALC887/897 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC *2  it mean something?


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## TheLostSwede (Dec 5, 2020)

Yes, that is's quite old and quite poor.
ALC1200 and variants of it, is the most recent solution from Realtek.
The rest depends a lot on what other bits are added the mix.
Some technical details on the ACL1200 parts.








						Realtek ALC1200 demystified - what really distinguishes the entry-level sound chip from the larger ALC1220 | igor'sLAB
					

One finds the Realtek ALC1200 very often on beginner and mid-range motherboards, and if you google once or interpret the swarm intelligence of the relevant forums, there is also a frightening amount…




					www.igorslab.de


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## Tatty_One (Dec 5, 2020)

With Realtek, in most cases the higher the number the better the spec, 887 and 897 are quite old now but still found in many budget motherboards, I have the ALC1200 in my mid ranged z490 motherboard and I think ALC1220 is currently the highest spec which often translates into audio quality but there are also as TheLostSwede says, some variants.

Edit:  The 887 for example has 4 stereo Dacs with 97dB Signal-to-Noise Ratio, my 1200 has 10 with 110db SNR.


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## TheLostSwede (Dec 5, 2020)

Tatty_One said:


> With Realtek, in most cases the higher the number the better the spec, 887 and 897 are quite old now but still found in many budget motherboards, I have the ALC1200 in my mid ranged z490 motherboard and I think ALC1220 is currently the highest spec which often translates into audio quality but there are also as TheLostSwede says, some variants.


Yeah, I have an ALC1220-VB, which apparently means it can do "Direct-Stream Digital" and a headphone amplifier.
The latter is not used though, since my board has an ESS Sabre 9118 DAC as well.
The 887 if memory serves is a turd, whereas the 897 is kind of acceptable.
The more common one is the ACL892, but it too is quite old now.


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## khjhpopasa (Dec 7, 2020)

TheLostSwede said:


> Yes, that is's quite old and quite poor.
> ALC1200 and variants of it, is the most recent solution from Realtek.
> The rest depends a lot on what other bits are added the mix.
> Some technical details on the ACL1200 parts.
> ...


and the voice really change ? 
if i use my iPhone to play music it sound better or lower then mainboard i got? and how can i compare it ?



TheLostSwede said:


> Yeah, I have an ALC1220-VB, which apparently means it can do "Direct-Stream Digital" and a headphone amplifier.
> The latter is not used though, since my board has an ESS Sabre 9118 DAC as well.
> The 887 if memory serves is a turd, whereas the 897 is kind of acceptable.
> The more common one is the ACL892, but it too is quite old now.


up


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## TheLostSwede (Dec 7, 2020)

The main thing here is that some older onboard audio can sound hissy or bad in some ways, whereas more modern implementations have better isolation from the main PCB and better overall audio quality. I guess if you can hear it or not also depends on the device you use for listening to the audio through. A pair of $10 headphones isn't going to sound good regardless of what you use them with.


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## nguyen (Dec 7, 2020)

TheLostSwede said:


> The main thing here is that some older onboard audio can sound hissy or bad in some ways, whereas more modern implementations have better isolation from the main PCB and better overall audio quality. I guess if you can hear it or not also depends on the device you use for listening to the audio through. A pair of $10 headphones isn't going to sound good regardless of what you use them with.



Do you have a soundcard like Creative AE-5 or external DAC to compare to your onboard Aorus Master ?
I would like to know whether I should bring my Creative AE-5 to my next build with X570 Aorus Master , my current Gigabyte Z370 Gaming 5's onboard audio is day and night inferior to Creative AE-5.


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## TheLostSwede (Dec 7, 2020)

nguyen said:


> Do you have a soundcard like Creative AE-5 or external DAC to compare to your onboard Aorus Master ?
> I would like to know whether I should bring my Creative AE-5 to my next build with X570 Aorus Master , my current Gigabyte Z370 Gaming 5's onboard audio is day and night inferior to Creative AE-5.


Nope, I don't have any other audio device. My speakers are USB and in all fairness, I'm not really using the onboard audio, as my headset is wireless...
However, initially the wireless audio on the headset was terrible and I would say the onboard audio sounds slightly better than the build in DAC in the headset, but not enough that it matters when playing games.
Haven't used anything Creative in years and even then they used to have so many driver issues it wasn't even funny.


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## Tatty_One (Dec 7, 2020)

I went from a Xifi Elite Pro to onboard ALC1200 this summer, whilst the Elite Pro is old by todays standards it was top dollar back in the day and high spec, I am still playing a couple of games today that I was playing in the summer with the Elite Pro which was a PCI card hence why I couldn't use it on Z490, the Elite pro was better sound quality, deeper richer sounds and whilst I am on analogue I do have a reasonable 5.1 system with 100W of sub, but here is the thing, after a week there was no difference because the comparison dies and there was not significant enough difference to now make me think what I have is poor or weak, it's not, it is good but not great, what would be interesting is to compare the 1200 plugged in to my AV Surround amp and a good set of speakers (KEF).

Often with some sound cards it's the suite of sound effects as well as a higher spec that help with games, obviously it does not matter how good the device is if you don't have reasonable speakers plugged in to it, I suppose if I thought the difference was significant enough I would spend £100 - £150 on a decent sound card, I just don't think it is.

What I will say though is that ALC1200 is night and day ahead of ALC887.


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## khjhpopasa (Dec 7, 2020)

Tatty_One said:


> I went from a Xifi Elite Pro to onboard ALC1200 this summer, whilst the Elite Pro is old by todays standards it was top dollar back in the day and high spec, I am still playing a couple of games today that I was playing in the summer with the Elite Pro which was a PCI card hence why I couldn't use it on Z490, the Elite pro was better sound quality, deeper richer sounds and whilst I am on analogue I do have a reasonable 5.1 system with 100W of sub, but here is the thing, after a week there was no difference because the comparison dies and there was not significant enough difference to now make me think what I have is poor or weak, it's not, it is good but not great, what would be interesting is to compare the 1200 plugged in to my AV Surround amp and a good set of speakers (KEF).
> 
> Often with some sound cards it's the suite of sound effects as well as a higher spec that help with games, obviously it does not matter how good the device is if you don't have reasonable speakers plugged in to it, I suppose if I thought the difference was significant enough I would spend £100 - £150 on a decent sound card, I just don't think it is.
> 
> What I will say though is that ALC1200 is night and day ahead of ALC887.


and it worth extra money for it ?50$ or more


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## Tatty_One (Dec 7, 2020)

khjhpopasa said:


> and it worth extra money for it ?50$ or more


Between 887 and 897?  Which motherboards are you considering?

Edit:  If you have cheap $10 stereo speakers then go for the cheapest, as I said before, what you hear comes from the speakers, if you have decent speakers you are more likely to notice the difference.


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## robot zombie (Dec 7, 2020)

Tatty_One said:


> With Realtek, in most cases the higher the number the better the spec, 887 and 897 are quite old now but still found in many budget motherboards, I have the ALC1200 in my mid ranged z490 motherboard and I think ALC1220 is currently the highest spec which often translates into audio quality but there are also as TheLostSwede says, some variants.
> 
> Edit:  The 887 for example has 4 stereo Dacs with 97dB Signal-to-Noise Ratio, my 1200 has 10 with 110db SNR.


TBF even -97db is like... mosquito farts, or the sound of electrons colliding. Any ordinary room has a way higher floor than that. Theres no way anybody is hearing that in a blind comparison.

I mean, even getting into speakers... anything with an integrated amp usually has dogshit sinad. Jbl LSR305s are venerated for clarity and detail but the plate amps theyre packing inside have massive amounts of THD... -50db ish sinad. Which sounds pearl clutching but again, nobody would say the sound bad.


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## Hattu (Dec 7, 2020)

Is there any or what kind of difference expected between different MB codecs, when using optical output and external amplifier? Just curious...


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## Tatty_One (Dec 7, 2020)

Hattu said:


> Is there any or what kind of difference expected between different MB codecs, when using optical output and external amplifier? Just curious...


Well your amplifier can only process what it gets from the audio codec in terms of quality and features (functionality) if you take ALC887 for example, this is the spec you get, with this Codec you get 4 stereo DACS and 2 stereo ADC's, you can see the bitrate quality etc in the datasheet here ...……………….









						ALC887 Datasheet - 7.1 Channel Audio Codec - Realtek
					

ALC887 Datasheet - 7.1 Channel Audio Codec - Realtek, ALC887 driver, ALC887 pdf, ALC887 pinout, ALC887 manual, ALC887 schematic, ALC887 spec.



					www.datasheetcafe.com
				




When you get into 1220 territory you are talking more DACS and more ADC's with better sample rates as well as a built in Amp, encoder and decoder, obviously if you were connecting to your own amp you would not need some of that, this is a specs comparison and closer look between the ALC1200 and ALC1220, however SPDIF bitrate quality may be more limited on the lower end codecs which might well limit an external amp.









						Realtek ALC1200 demystified - what really distinguishes the entry-level sound chip from the larger ALC1220 | igor'sLAB
					

One finds the Realtek ALC1200 very often on beginner and mid-range motherboards, and if you google once or interpret the swarm intelligence of the relevant forums, there is also a frightening amount…




					www.igorslab.de
				




I am no expert by any means but I would guess that any Codec without any or decent amplification is going to benefit in terms of an external amp providing it offers a reasonable bitrate.


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## khjhpopasa (Dec 9, 2020)

Tatty_One said:


> Between 887 and 897?  Which motherboards are you considering?
> 
> Edit:  If you have cheap $10 stereo speakers then go for the cheapest, as I said before, what you hear comes from the speakers, if you have decent speakers you are more likely to notice the difference.


from every one Between 887 and 897  and even to 1200 or 1220 have really change that worth any money?


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## TheLostSwede (Dec 9, 2020)

As explained, the 887 is quite a poor audio codec, anything more recent would sound a lot better.
However, if you're set on a specific motherboard, you can always get something like a USB DAC if you want better audio, or of course, a sound card, but that's likely to cost a lot more.
You still haven't really explained what you will connect to the onboard audio for that matter.
I can tell a huge difference between my current and my old motherboard, but I believe a lot of that has to do with the onboard ESS DAC that's used for the front headphone jack.


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## Tatty_One (Dec 9, 2020)

khjhpopasa said:


> from every one Between 887 and 897  and even to 1200 or 1220 have really change that worth any money?


I was always told that you should never buy a motherboard based on what audio it offered, if you need really good audio you should probably go for a decent quality add on sound card, buy the motherboard that gives you the connectivity and features you need, if you then find that you cannot bear the sound, you can easily get a cheap soundcard for a few $$$.


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## khjhpopasa (Dec 9, 2020)

Tatty_One said:


> I was always told that you should never buy a motherboard based on what audio it offered, if you need really good audio you should probably go for a decent quality add on sound card, buy the motherboard that gives you the connectivity and features you need, if you then find that you cannot bare the sound, you can easily get a cheap soundcard for a few $$$.


and sound cards better ? how can I compare them to motherboard sound?


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## TheLostSwede (Dec 9, 2020)

Can you pleas stop trolling at this point, it's getting tiring.


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## TheLostSwede (Dec 9, 2020)

You keep asking the same question in different ways and apparently expect different outcomes. 
Go read some reviews like everyone else does.


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## Tatty_One (Dec 9, 2020)

khjhpopasa said:


> and sound cards better ? how can I compare them to motherboard sound?


Maybe take some time to read a few reviews?  Soundcard and even some motherboard reviews give some quite detailed information on sound quality.  Most soundcards from the main players like Creative, Asus etc will give you better quality than ALC887/889/897.

These circles we are going around in are making me dizzy now so this thread is closed.


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