The website for the Aorus Xtreme does mention the reason behind using USB DAC instead of the standard front panel jack. Those cables in the pc cases that connect to the front panel audio are too inconsistent, either poor grounding or poor shielding, or even a combination of both. I've had my fair share of poor front panel audio from the cases I've owned so far, and for those who say they don't experience such things, well lucky you. For the rest, this is a viable out of the box solution for those people who do not know much about picking out USB DACs from the multitude of choices available nowadays and just wanna use the defaults that come in the box.
Only the Xtreme comes with the DAC though. What's everyone else going to do?
definetly not a hardware limitation, pretty sure u can just do pin config override in the OS and have them work as independent sinks
Gigabyte states quite clearly you can't use them together.
Oh wow, I hadn't even considered people using unamplified line in/line out. For motherboard audio isn't that just asking for EMI noises in the background? I know isolated traces and higher-end capacitors can help but IME they're still in the same metal box as all the other stuff generating EMI interference that manifests as squeals, whines, and other irritations that even a very cheap USB DAC (built into a cheap headset, or mic) can reduce or eliminate entirely.
Not everyone has as high requirements. I bet a lot of people just use what their PC has in terms of connectivity. There have been other discussions about what ports people use and the conclusion was pretty much that most people use what they're given.
This is stupid to butcher AC97
AC'97 died a very long time ago. All modern boards use the Intel HD audio standard.
I'm OK with that if they keep the digital out, but removing it... that is a bad move.
Onboard sound should be good for people who don't need high-end sound, but I think it's time to stop trying putting "high-end" audio in motherboards as people who really want it will use external DAC/AMP combo.
More USB ports can be more useful to more people.
I tried to use the S/PDIF out on my board with Netflix on my PC, guess what, it doesn't work. Netflix works fine using analogue out, bit refuses to our output audio digitally to my speakers...
It's clearly not an issue of space on most of the boards.
Weird move by gigabyte, but they have been weirdly ran company for the last year or so... they moved some production to taiwan recently from mainland china, maybe they have supply issues? Does not make sense but once again, nothing about gigabyte decisions lately makes sense...
They have a very nice and quite modern factory not too far from the main international airport in Taiwan, so why not use it? They've always made some boards there, plus Japan prefers made in Taiwan and so does the US note. Plus there should be lower duties on made in Taiwan products, so nothing really weird.
so, if some user have speaker 5.1 or 7.1, how they will connect that speaker setup into this new motherboards alder lake from gigabyte ??
You can't without a sound card if the speakers only have analogue input.
I did ping someone at Gigabyte about this, but was told to contact TPU's main point of contact there for an official answer. So let's wait and see what that will be.
