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Motherboard with good codec and integrated balanced line out and balanced line in
- Thread starter Marty111
- Start date
I have never seen a motherboard with balanced input/output. If you find one I want too see it!
Esi Julia@I have never seen a motherboard with balanced input/output. If you find one I want too see it!
AnalogSteph
Major Contributor
I think you may want to read up on the definition of motherboard there...
It's still just a sound card (i.e. a peripheral) with an integrated daughterboard.
I don't know any mo/bo like that either. Wouldn't mind if they started making 'em though. It wouldn't be hugely difficult to do, combine two unbalanced channels each out-of-phase and there's your decent enough balanced I/O. The part where it gets tricky is when you try to incorporate a mic input with low noise, gain control and P48V. And there's little hope of fitting something bigger than 3.5 mm jacks on there either, unless resorting to some kind of breakout cable solution.
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My point was there are internal cards with balanced IO
If it does exist, it will be so niche that I expect it will be more expensive than a standard motherboard + balanced PCI-e soundcard/interface.
Katji
Major Contributor
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Yes, sorry, needed to check it myself...broaden my understanding of [codec].
You are trying to solve the problem which was already solved - look for motherboard with Optical SPDIF.
There will be no electrical connection between PC/Mobo and your choice of DAC. Just pure light!
They can be real nasty buggers! What parasites are those? Possibly you’d need to call some exterminator for this problem
But seriously, what do you mean? Why no external DAC, or even an internal sound card? You could even hide a USB DAC inside a PC case if you have enough room.
- Thread Starter
- #14
Probably because the potential market would consist of 1 person.
AnalogSteph
Major Contributor
Oh crap, an "old" AMD system. (Says the guy still rocking socket 775.
) Well, at least it won't be this problem then. And you've got the best onboard audio codec of its day, the ALC889... even ADC filter ripple is superbly low. [1]Here is one guy who had issues with USB on his 990FX board, maybe one of the things that came up there would help. According to this, the BIOS setting for IOMMU may be worth checking, as well as making sure the latest BIOS is installed in general. Here's a guy with another 990FX board who says he's been fighting USB dropout issues "for years". And here is perhaps the most interesting hint, a guy with a DAW who got dropouts as soon as he turned on AHCI (which is always on these days)... seems ASMedia SATA controllers are sus. You don't have one of those, but you do have an Etrontech USB 3.0 controller to complement the southbridge's 2.0 ports - which ones were you using?
I suggest you run LatencyMon and have a look which drivers may be causing problems.
[1] Actually, you know what? If that works flawlessly for you, you could use some external gear to handle the conversion from and to balanced and levels and stuff, much like I am with an Asus Xonar D1:
I have a Mackie 402VLZ4 that goes into the line-in and can handle a pair of mics or guitars plus a pair of balanced line inputs plus another pair of unbalanced inputs. Master gain is set at about -9 dB so that input clipping (2 Vrms / +8 dBu) coincides with a healthy +17 dBu internal level on the mix bus (it could handle about +22 dBu); you would want to set this another 5-6 dB lower because your input can only handle ~1 Vrms.
I only have my monitors on the output so a Behringer HD400 plus assorted cabling (3.5 mm to 2x TS, 2x TRS to XLR) does the conversion to balanced sufficiently for the most part, and passively to boot. Those not averse to DIY and having a way to determine their output impedance may want to solder up some impedance-balanced adapter cables instead.
(You could get a mixer with an FX/AUX bus - like a Mackie Mix8 - so you can do a mix-minus and thus listen to computer output on the mixer main/headphone out while recording sources, but that's only worth it if you're happy recording in mono only. The Aux Send on that one is impedance-balanced so you could run that into a stereo line-in as-is and subtract the channels in your audio editor / DAW for a sorta decent balanced connection, so there's that. The reason I'm suggesting a Mackie is because they have an overall Aux Send gain control in addition to input channel pots, which again would be better for level matching as discussed above, and like any decent manufacturer they provide a block diagram. The Behringer Xenyx 802 has a gain on the Return side only, which is useless in this case, and you have to figure out the signal flow all by yourself. Lots of noobs are using Behringer gear, so their poor documentation is a real minus in my book.)
This setup is not as low-distortion as a Scarlett 2i2 gen3 (which wasn't out yet when I put it together) nor are the drivers a source of joy, but I reckon it achieves somewhat better dynamic range than the gen2 with similar (maybe a hair better) microphone EIN, distortion not degrading even at highest mic input gain and tons of overall gain on tap if need be, and cost me substantially less. Converter wise, the ADC is almost the same and the DAC is better. You probably have to enjoy tinkering with stuff and being thrifty to prefer a setup like that over a "plug'n'play" one-box solution.
BTW, when using an older Realtek chip like that, avoid recording at 44.1 kHz like the plague. Use 48, preferably 96 kHz. I'll have to try AAF modded drivers one of these days.
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