Another motherboard audio question

Looks like I'll be getting an Epox motherboard, and although I originally was worried by the prospect of onboard sound interfering with my main card, the comments made last time I raised this have put my mind at rest, so ta for those.

Anyhow, it now has me wondering whether I could actually use the onboard sound chip for recording as an occassional alternative to my main soundcard or maybe in addition to it. So I'm trying to find out as much as I can about the audio chip.

Spec. is below, along with some questions I'm trying to get answers to.

'Built-in 6-channel AC97 Digital Audio VIA VT82C686B. Support for SoundBlaster Pro and FM synthesis legacy audio. Dual full- duplex Direct Sound channels. Supports game and MIDI port.'

What's meant by 6-channel? What does that sentence about supporting soundblasters and FM synthesis mean? Would this audio chip use soundfonts? Any ideas how I could find out about latency & S/N ratio?

Hi,

Built in 6 channel.... = 6 Channel will mean 5.1 dolby style + standard line out.

Support for soundblaster and fm... = Basically for older dos-based games, not important with Windows - FM synthesis is the horrible sounding MIDI sounds.

Soundfonts? = No, unfortunatly not - and trust me, the onboard MIDI will sound pretty lousy - i understand that there's some respectable software synthesisers nowadays though....

Latency & S/N = Don't know for that motherboard, but it's exactly the same chip as mine and it's laggy as hell using cubase - Mainly because of the lack of ASIO drivers....

Where you getting this from? PC world?

If so, check here http://www.ebuyer.com - I can recommend them - dirt cheap, good quality stuff - My new Elite motherboard just set be back 40 quid! With support for DDRAM too!

Bargain.

Hope this has helped,

says...

Yuk. Wait a minute though, don't the Yamaha XG cards use Fm syntheses?

Bugger!

Thats Ok, my Diamond Monster card has a great midi wavetable, and I have a Yamaha XG card too so I'm fine as far as midi sounds go.

Right. Sounds like the sound chip is useless to me then. I'll just disable it.

You must be joking!

No, I have a mate who runs his own IT business.

Hi,

in about two weeks time I hope to finish a software-project that aims at developing a generic ASIO-driver for all sound- cards which comply with WDM-kernel-streaming. It should run with W2K and XP and allow for latencies between 2-20 msecs. The software will be available at www.asio2ks.de

Best regards,