Via M Series Onboard Sound vs. Audigy 2 USB

**00CericaRuss** · 01-29-2004, 04:18 PM

i had crappier SQ

divx play fine, haven't checked the cpu stats when running em, but dvd's are now a little choppy.... I haven't had time to go through and work on it lately, but i haven't had the need to play a dvd in my car, so it kinda works out

**atombomb** · 02-02-2004, 11:52 PM

I have had 5 M10000 and 1 MII 10000 and only 1 has ever had normal 5.1 output levels on all the lines.
I have even sent a unit back to the VIA engineering team and they verified the problem and recommended trying new VT1616 drivers which never fixed the issue.
After the brand new MII 10000 failed too out of the box I have now given up on the VIA built in sound card.

**Choser** · 02-03-2004, 12:49 AM

If you use the optical or coax spdif output - then there should be no difference between any option, am I correct?

**swellfellaT** · 02-03-2004, 01:31 AM

I recently upgraded from the built in 5.1 on my MSI board to the
Audigy NX (just like the last extigy), and it has made all the difference in the world for me. I use the line-in on my kenwood deck, and i get much much stronger output from the Audigy, not to mention the lack of the ever-present and annoying ground loop noise that was there. The sound quality is amazing.... plus I don't have to have a 20' + RCA cable from the back of my SUV. Give it a shot....

**leenas** · 02-03-2004, 10:58 AM

swellfellaT: What kinda cpu are you running? My main concern now is the CPU usage of it. I would like to do full screen divx but if this sound card is using 25% of my CPU im not sure if the playback will be smooth with the m10k.

**unsavory** · 02-03-2004, 02:39 PM

I have the same concerns with the Extigy. I'm thinking of getting an Extigy since it is 12V, but I'm a little concerned about the USB interface sucking my CPU bandwidth. Anyone here running an EPIA-M10000 and an external USB sound card?

**Alric** · 02-03-2004, 02:48 PM

I should get my Sonica Theater today...

**leenas** · 02-05-2004, 04:57 PM

Alric: What are the results of your Sonica cause that is my other alternative.

**leenas** · 02-14-2004, 01:28 PM

Just as an update to those that were interested:

I finally got an Audigy 2 NX USB Sound Card. In my setup i have an M10000 w/ 256 ddr ram and a 30 gig hard drive running win98.

I didnt really install any of the mixing software for the card because i was just going to use the stereo output of the card (not 4.1, 5.1 or 7.1 etc). The installation went flawlessly.

The card didnt slow down the bootup time from what i could tell (havent timed it). The real slowdown occured when you initially played music. I use Myhtpc using the Windows media player dll (as opposed to winamp 2's dll). When i play the first song it's "connecting" to the song for about 5-10 seconds and then starts playing and after that there was a 1-2 second gap between each song once you have queued it up. If you hit stop and play again then youre gonna wait another 5-10 seconds. Also during the initial 5-10 it almost completely uses up all resources. Videos are even a little slower. I played 700 meg (1 and a half hour) divx file and it wasnt really choppy that i noticed. I did experience some slow down when playing dvd's thru windvd.

Another thing to mention was that the sound card actually brought in noise. It requires an external 5v supply which i got from my Opus. I didnt really play around with it too much to get rid of the noise. It wasnt "engine whine" and it was only really audible at about 70% volume but music was playing you wouldnt hear it all.

All in all i think the sound quality was better than the onboard sound but the slow downs are just too much. Circuit City has a deal running right to get it for 60 after rebate, but im going to be returning mine. I might try to get a M Audio Sonica (not the theater) and use that once i find out about its cpu usage.

**swellfellaT** · 03-10-2004, 03:53 AM

Originally Posted by leenas

swellfellaT: What kinda cpu are you running? My main concern now is the CPU usage of it. I would like to do full screen divx but if this sound card is using 25% of my CPU im not sure if the playback will be smooth with the m10k.

Sorry to take forever to post again, but I recently upgraded from my PIII 733 to an AMD Athlon 2000+. Not exactly sure what the SoundBlaster is using in terms of system resources..... I'll look into this.