Budget Sound Card Choice

[Balaso]

blitz more on this plz. I belive I first ran into the problem with my onboard sound when I connected my front pnl audio. I never got it to work so I disconnected it and since then, onboard fails to work.  

[Blitzkrieg]

On the boards I've seen this on, there was a 7x2 or 8x2 (don't recall exactly)header on the motherboard where the front panel audio wires connect to the motherboard.  Prior to connecting anything to these headers, there are little 2-pin jumper shunts placed across certain pairs of pins in this header.  To connect the front panel audio per the manual, I had to remove the jumpers from the header.  From here, I've seen three different variations in the towers of various manufacturers....

a> The front panel wiring for the audio ports (comes built in to the tower) looked strange.  Strange as in: The signal side (+) of the right and left channels had a short wire crimped into the connector along with the wire that goes to the jack on the front panel.  This little wire is intended to replace the jumper that was removed from the header.  If this little jumper is not connected to the other pin that used to be occupied by the jumper for this channel, the onboard ports won't work, and, depending on which pin ur signal wire is connected to, the front panel ports may not work either.  (This disfunction is especially a problem when using a case as in situation c below...but I'll address it there.)

b> The front panel wiring was designed to "disable" the onboard audio ports when the front panel port is in use.  The harness for this setup had a right and left channel return wire (RTN) in addition to the signal and GND wires.  This setup was a bitch to make work (but I think that had to do with the mis-labeled connectors in the harness).  This design replaces the jumper with a connection made by the headphone jack when nothing is plugged into it.  If you plug headphones into the front jack, the connection is broken, thereby disabling the onboard ports until the headphones are disconnected.  Incidentally, I have seen this jack-connection be bad/inconsistent....may want to try the resolution to situation c below, even if this is how ur tower is set up.

c> The front panel wiring for the audio ports does not incorporate any kind of replacement for the jumper removed from the header.  In this case, there is no wiring to make the connection that existed with the jumper on there; it is necessary to fabricate your own "jumper" to make the connection.  Me personally, I used the jumper I took off....  I soldered the front panel wire to the jumper and put the jumper back on the header (had to cut the factory connector off the tower's front audion harness to do this).  This allowed both the front port and the onboard ports to be receiving audio signal simultaneously, regardless of which was in use.  I've only run across this problem once, but just so you know its out there and a possibility....

I wish I could be more specific to your board/tower than this, but the manual for your board is 10Meg and I can't get better than 13KB/s from Asus here at work right now so I can't look at the book for your board as I type this....  If it gets a little later and the network load lightens up around here, I may be able to take a look, but this is the best I can do for now.....  Hope it helps....

Blitz

[Blitzkrieg]

Finally got the manual down through our pitiful network....

While its not the setup I was anticipating, it is similar.  On your board, there appear to be two headers related to the output of onboard audio.  One is for the physical connections to the front panel audio port(s); the other is for determining whether the board is allowed to "auto-switch" between the front ports and the rear onboard ports.  According to the manual (page 25), the two jumpers must be removed to allow the front ports connected to the front panel header (page 39) to function.  If the jumpers are in place, the board is essentially hard-wired to the rear port.  This may explain why your front ports never worked (if you did not remove these jumpers).  Though it does present a problem when considering that the rear ports also do not work.  Unless, of course, these jumpers are not there or are placed incorrectly.  You can check it out for yourself in your manual, or download the manual from asus and see it there (page numbers are from the downloaded version of course...).

Hope this also helps.

If ya need anything else or more info tonight, call me at home later on this evening...preferably before 10...  I think you have my number, but, just in case, i'll pm it here momentarily....

Blitz

[Blitzkrieg]

LOL!! Sure have been viewing this thread for awhile there B!!  Am I long winded or what??!!  LOL!!

Blitz

[Balaso]

lol, no just comparing your post to my mobo at the time. Thank goodness for my laptop, keeps me connected while I perform surgery. Sad news, I need some mobo spacers/stand-offs and I found out today that our local compUSA closed down. So, hopefully someone has them so I can swap out the mobo's. (no , my current one doesn't have any. Yes that could be the reason my mobo is screwed up...lecture me after I get the problem fixed)

[FourScience]

Just an update....

I installed my Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit card on my Asus A7N8X-Deluxe mobo, disabled my onboard audio in BIOS, and installed the kX Project driver (indie version).

I started up some MP3's, sounded crisp. Started up some CS:Source, and everything was  a little different. With my new card the sounds have more clarity, and my MP3's don't sound so "cheap." I haven't found a situation yet where the clarity makes-or-breaks my auditory perception in-game, but I'm happy with the difference in sounds.

I could have possibly achieved the same clarity and performance with my onboard SoundStorm audio, by tweaking the equalizer, but I'm happy that my video card sounds so crisp with pretty much no configuration, just a hacked driver.

[SK_CROW]

Good to hear.  Happy gaming!

[E.J.FUDD]

<~~ picked an invidia 6600 256 ect ect...

to bad i dont have any thing ready to plug it into...