News Asus 785G mobo has Absolute Pitch Sound

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2009/06/04/asus-785g-mobo-has-absolute-pitch-sound/1

COMPUTEX 2009: Asus' latest HTPC specific motherboard includes the AMD 785G chipset with absolute pitch audio.

 

Hm. Nice in theory, probably little difference in practice.

And it's an extra thing to have to plug in. More cable routing fun.

 

Presumably it will still work fine without the molex being connected, just that using the molex will deliver a cleaner power supply?

 

Are we going to see power supplies with special modular shielded oxgen free copper / silver / magic fairy dust molex cables to feed the cleanest possible signal to the board, just as some hi-fi clowns will drop £100+ on a shielded kettle lead with gold plated connectors for the same (imagined) reason?

 

I don't think so, if the power and ground are separate for the audio circuitry then you'll need the extra molex connector to provide it. If it worked without the extra power connector that would mean it was tied in to the main power and ground somewhere which would defeat the purpose of it in the first place.

 

What a pointless feature... typically ASUS.

Why don't they give the 790FX AND SB750 chip their own molex connectors respectively and why stop there? Why not give the networking chip it's own molex as well.

Enthusiasts are going to buy a dedicated sound card anyway rather than using on board although the Realtek solution used on AM3 MSI boards are more than enough for my rigs.

 

typo sorry I meant 785G and SB750

 

What makes the power that comes down a molex any cleaner than the stuff that comes down the mobo cable? Surely if they really wanted a clean power supply for the chip, they could just put a nice regulator on it?

 

Crosstalk from the motherboard. AFAIK they create a beastly amount of noise.

 

I would find it more reasonable to put the soundcard on a daughter board like ASUS does it on they RoG series.
And to put RCA connectors and not 3.5 mm ones.

Don't get how will extra power source help much in crosstalk as it can happen on the way from that (unshielded) on-board soundcard to it's connectors.

 

Seems like this is for a nonexistent market. Anyone serious about audio will have a dedicated sound card, and most HTPCs should be using HDMI, which would just bypass this all.

Also, what is the molex connector doing on the bottom? That would just irritate the hell out of me if I had this in my case.

 

I think this looks like a great idea if it is indeed the mobo power supply that usually causes interference. The main reason I bought a sound card was because the noise from the inbuilt sound was too loud - if this gets rid of that then I'm all for it.

Hopefully they have done some research and actually solved a problem rather than just adding stuff that does nothing... maybe I'm being to naive - review please!

 

I'm sitting next to a Director at Seasonic in Hong Kong airport this morning and he lol'd ^_^ (but no, no oxygen free wiring)

 

Absolute sales pitch.

 

It would be simple to have it wired into the main power when no molex connected but automatically isolating itself when molex connected. That said, you raise a good point - the molex lines and the mobo line will often be connected at the PSU end with no noise isolation, so mobo noise will travel quite happily back up to the PSU and into the molex lines (by way of example, apparently some nVidia graphics cards have this problem and can cause buzzing in the PSU). Surely it would be easier and better as ch424 suggested just to regulate power going into the sound chip?