Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Motherboard Audio Review

[bigjacko]

LOL, mother board and audio are one of the easiest thing to fool the buyer with marketing.

 

[sam]

Unless you have a separate board for the audiophile grade DAC, I guarantee there will never be a good motherboard for PC.
Large manufacturers only have to pass their normal reliability and compatibility tests.
Spending $0.01 to improve audio? NO WAY

 

[Palladium]

Anyone is surprised that a lowly $9 Apple dongle beats this thing?

Apple already has by far the best CPU in the business, in terms of performance per watt. Making a audio dongle with far less technical complexity it's a child's play to them.

 

[ZolaIII]

Apple already has by far the best CPU in the business, in terms of performance per watt. Making a audio dongle with far less technical complexity it's a child's play to them.

While Apple does have best performing ARM core's implementation on mobile in terms of efficiency it's actually behind reference ARM design but bigger problem for Apple is that that lv of performance is not sustainable (thermal throttling limit).
https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15207/SPECint2006_S865.png

 

[twolazytwothink]

I'm not sure.
Is it really a good enough level dac? Looks like apple dongle is way better than this.

 

[A800]

I have been satisfied with the performance of the predecessor, the ALC1150.
Of course implementation also counts.

 

[magicscreen]

I'm not sure.
Is it really a good enough level dac? Looks like apple dongle is way better than this.

Can you hear a difference in a volume matched double blind test between this motherboard and an apple dongle? No.
Can you hear a difference in a volume matched double blind test between this motherboard and a Topping D90? No.
So it is good enough.

 

[zepplock]

You can get GPU noise even with an external and independently powered DAC:
https://archimago.blogspot.com/2013/02/measurement-asus-xonar-essence-one.html

It does not look like Xonar had external power though, it was still powered by computer PS.

 

[bennetng]

It does not look like Xonar had external power though, it was still powered by computer PS.

https://www.everythingusb.com/asus-xonar-essence-one-21293.html
https://www.asus.com/Essence-Hi-Fi-Audio/Xonar_Essence_One_MUSES_Edition/gallery/

 

[zepplock]

https://www.everythingusb.com/asus-xonar-essence-one-21293.html
https://www.asus.com/Essence-Hi-Fi-Audio/Xonar_Essence_One_MUSES_Edition/gallery/
View attachment 62533
View attachment 62534

I see. My bad I thought it was one of those external cards that go into 3.5 bay of computer cases where CD usually goes.
I read through Archimago's article and I still don't understand where noise is coming from. Is it because some parts of DAC use USB power? Or is it coming via DAC power main?

 

[PolkFan]

Apple already has by far the best CPU in the business, in terms of performance per watt. Making a audio dongle with far less technical complexity it's a child's play to them.

Best CPU for wittle phones and tablets. A $50 Athlon 3000G will beat it still.

 

[PolkFan]

Can you hear a difference in a volume matched double blind test between this motherboard and an apple dongle? No.
Can you hear a difference in a volume matched double blind test between this motherboard and a Topping D90? No.
So it is good enough.

DAC is good enough the AMP is NOT i would only use that for casual listening just to simply get noise but i wouldn't expect anything else.

 

[Raimei Templar]

Thank you for measuring a modern gaming motherboard and showing why people really should invest in a amplifier for their headphones. I keep trying to tell people on reddit to stop telling everyone their motherboards are just fine and constantly get told I am horribly wrong...between the very poor amount of power on tap and the super high output impedance its just not gonna be suitable for almost any headphones on the market.

There is a very good article which tested 3 other motherboards and found very similar results (https://www.igorslab.de/en/big-real...tors-fans-temperatures-and-the-onboard-sound/ )

None of them were suitable to drive most headphones in all situations. They get loud enough if you are listening to loud content but thats about it, and output impedeance being so high impacts the FR of most headphones.

One big factor the previously mentioned article found as well is that the voltage outputs could drop at times under high cpu loads, like for instance playing games which is not ideal. Due to that possible voltage drop it can be worth investing in a external dac if you are playing games.

 

[PolkFan]

Thank you for measuring a modern gaming motherboard and showing why people really should invest in a amplifier for their headphones. I keep trying to tell people on reddit to stop telling everyone their motherboards are just fine and constantly get told I am horribly wrong...between the very poor amount of power on tap and the super high output impedance its just not gonna be suitable for almost any headphones on the market.

There is a very good article which tested 3 other motherboards and found very similar results (https://www.igorslab.de/en/big-real...tors-fans-temperatures-and-the-onboard-sound/ )

None of them were suitable to drive most headphones in all situations. They get loud enough if you are listening to loud content but thats about it, and output impedeance being so high impacts the FR of most headphones.

One big factor the previously mentioned article found as well is that the voltage outputs could drop at times under high cpu loads, like for instance playing games which is not ideal. Due to that possible voltage drop it can be worth investing in a external dac if you are playing games.

If i had the money i'd get him more so we could have more reviews on motherboards i'd really like @amirm to review more as this isn't done in the PC industry at any review and when it is it's barely touched on and more and more PC gamers are getting into audio.

 

[bigjacko]

In my experience, my HD6XX plug into mother board is very close to decent external dac amp. The difference was very small, I could only tell the difference when hard ABing for half an hour. What I found was the bass for mother board is a bit slow and not defined, that's it, everything else was the same. If I did not do AB but focus on music, I would never found out mother board is worse than dedicated dac amp.

 

[companyja]

I think it's a fundamental misunderstanding of having a good DAC chip on the motherboard versus having good sound output. Realtek chips are probably as transparent as most of the stuff that gets paraded about in $100-ish DACs, AK4490-4493, ESS and the like, but inside the motherboard they're not going to get their chance to shine. This gigabyte motherboard is a good example since even with a good ESS chip the implementation just brings it down to the same baseline onboard sound level. People who say motherboard audio is good enough nowdays probably equate DAC chip to actual performance. Hell, I've seen people say motherboard audio is good enough, who are using USB headsets...they don't even realize their gaming peripherals don't use onboard audio

 

[companyja]

There is a very good article which tested 3 other motherboards and found very similar results (https://www.igorslab.de/en/big-real...tors-fans-temperatures-and-the-onboard-sound/ )

That's pretty interesting, I didn't know that onboard audio pushes out more power to the front panel/case connections than the rear I/O:

can we get a test to see if there's any difference in power and output impedance through front jacks? I'm assuming amirm did the measurements with the rear jacks on the motherboard itself...

 

[bboris77]

Amir, any chance of measuring those USB DAC-UP2 ports? I am sure a lot of us would love to see if these help in any way with external DACs, especially those with internal transformers that use a 3-prong power cord.

 

[PolkFan]

That's pretty interesting, I didn't know that onboard audio pushes out more power to the front panel/case connections than the rear I/O:

can we get a test to see if there's any difference in power and output impedance through front jacks? I'm assuming amirm did the measurements with the rear jacks on the motherboard itself...

Even with the front you will be getting less then 10mW of power.

Modern boards have been doing this lately and what sucks is the cases front audio connectors is a cable that goes through the whole case and gets introduced to noise in some setups the countless times i've heard users say when they game they can hear a buzzing sound is crazy.

This article makes it clear DAC's good enough AMP's not good enough when it comes to motherboard audio on expensive motherboards

Again keep in mind your laptop-bestbuy desktop even if its $2000 uses cheap boards and power supplies.

 

[amirm]

can we get a test to see if there's any difference in power and output impedance through front jacks?

That's what I measured. the "DAC" tests were using the rear connector and "headphone" tests used the front (top in my case). As I showed, the front one does output nearly twice as high a voltage than the rear.