Do I need good motherboard sound when using gpu?

imginy · 30 Oct 2017 at 23:06

Hi Guys,

I'm about to order a cheap motherboard for coffeelake and was a bit worried about the sound not being as good.

Does it matter to me when I run all my sound through my graphics card via hdmi into my home cinema?

TallPaul1878 · 30 Oct 2017 at 23:11

No. The graphics card has no effect on sound being transferred through HDMI. Most motherboards have good enough sound quality and if you are just using the TV then there's nothing to worry about.

Maybe if you had a top notch surround system then you might want some sort of amp or DAC

imginy · 30 Oct 2017 at 23:14

TallPaul1878 said:
No. The graphics card has no effect on sound being transferred through HDMI

So are you saying the motherboard will change the quality of the sound going through my graphics card in to my home cinema?

imginy · 30 Oct 2017 at 23:23

Not sure if I explained my self properly,

my current setup for gaming is hdmi out on my gtx 1080 and into my receiver then on to my tv. I am about to change motherboards and worried if I get the cheap one it will lower the quality of my audio.

Will a better motherboard give me better sound out of my graphics card?

TallPaul1878 · 30 Oct 2017 at 23:25

imginy said:
So are you saying the motherboard will change the quality of the sound going through my graphics card in to my home cinema?

No it will have no effect. Whether you use HDMI from the graphics card or on the motherboard IO.

Just plug it in and try it all when you get it. Most onboard sound is quite good out of the box. Try it out and if you really want to improve it then look at an external USB Amp/DAC

TallPaul1878 · 30 Oct 2017 at 23:27

imginy said:
Not sure if I explained my self properly,

my current setup for gaming is hdmi out on my gtx 1080 and into my receiver then on to my tv. I am about to change motherboards and worried if I get the cheap one it will lower the quality of my audio.

Will a better motherboard give me better sound out of my graphics card?

Yes a better motherboard will have better onboard sound. But you'd still see greater gains from a separate dedicated device.

imginy · 30 Oct 2017 at 23:36

TallPaul1878 said:
Yes a better motherboard will have better onboard sound. But you'd still see greater gains from a separate dedicated device.

The only thing I'm using my pc for is gaming and will be using Dolby digital 5.1 from the gpu to the receiver.

Will this use the onboard sound?

Edit: I ordered motherboard now thank for your help.

Went for gigabyte aurus 3

mistersprinkles · 1 Nov 2017 at 03:43

There is technically no sound coming from your motherboard if you are running audio out through your GPU via HDMI or DP. There is technically no sound coming from your graphics card either, as no processing is taking place. HDMI is a digital transport, as is DP. It sends 0's and 1's and any processing is done downstream via the device receiving the signal. So if you are piping sound from GPU to TV, it's the DSP and DAC in the TV that will determine the sound quality you get, and not anything inside your computer. The only time your computer is actually producing sound is when you have an analog device hooked up to your soundard or onboard audio via a 3.5mm jack (or RCA if your device supports it, which some do).
We've been in the digital age for a long time but it still confuses people for some reason.

Cheers.

imginy · 1 Nov 2017 at 08:23

mistersprinkles said:
There is technically no sound coming from your motherboard if you are running audio out through your GPU via HDMI or DP. There is technically no sound coming from your graphics card either, as no processing is taking place. HDMI is a digital transport, as is DP. It sends 0's and 1's and any processing is done downstream via the device receiving the signal. So if you are piping sound from GPU to TV, it's the DSP and DAC in the TV that will determine the sound quality you get, and not anything inside your computer. The only time your computer is actually producing sound is when you have an analog device hooked up to your soundard or onboard audio via a 3.5mm jack (or RCA if your device supports it, which some do).
We've been in the digital age for a long time but it still confuses people for some reason.

Cheers.

Thanks for explaining this to me.

mistersprinkles · 1 Nov 2017 at 19:39

imginy said:
Thanks for explaining this to me.

No problem. BTW if you are using a soundbar, receiver, etc hooked up to your TV, the TV isn't doing any processing either, as digital transports such as HDMI or SPDIF are used to pipe audio to these devices. With digital audio it's always the device at the end of the chain that processes the signal.

However there is something to be said for proper setups. For example, not all digital outs are created equal. USB is a better audio transport than HDMI which is a better audio transport than SPDIF. And not all USB is created equal either. Using an audiophile grade USB card or a motherboard that has isolated DAC purposed USB ports will help, but at that point you need to have sunk a lot of coin into your DAC, speakers, etc to notice that difference, and it only matters to hardcore audiophiles.

imginy · 1 Nov 2017 at 20:12

mistersprinkles said:
No problem. BTW if you are using a soundbar, receiver, etc hooked up to your TV, the TV isn't doing any processing either, as digital transports such as HDMI or SPDIF are used to pipe audio to these devices. With digital audio it's always the device at the end of the chain that processes the signal.

However there is something to be said for proper setups. For example, not all digital outs are created equal. USB is a better audio transport than HDMI which is a better audio transport than SPDIF. And not all USB is created equal either. Using an audiophile grade USB card or a motherboard that has isolated DAC purposed USB ports will help, but at that point you need to have sunk a lot of coin into your DAC, speakers, etc to notice that difference, and it only matters to hardcore audiophiles.

Yeah I just have a basic panasonic 5,1 setup nothing expensive and I know to go straight from the card to receiver and not put anything through the tv.

I knew hdmi could do more than the spidf but I had never heard of usb sound.

TheVoice · 13 Nov 2017 at 00:55

mistersprinkles said:
No problem. BTW if you are using a soundbar, receiver, etc hooked up to your TV, the TV isn't doing any processing either, as digital transports such as HDMI or SPDIF are used to pipe audio to these devices. With digital audio it's always the device at the end of the chain that processes the signal.

That simply isn't true I'm afraid, my TV lets me choose what audio format it outputs as do most devices e.g. PS4, BT TV box, Now TV box etc.

mistersprinkles · 13 Nov 2017 at 02:37

TheVoice said:
That simply isn't true I'm afraid, my TV lets me choose what audio format it outputs as do most devices e.g. PS4, BT TV box, Now TV box etc.

Ok fair enough but it's not doing a D/A conversion

Rroff · 13 Nov 2017 at 03:24

The DAC in the end device ultimately will decide the sound quality in this equation - and unfortunately it isn't very well documented in many cases and often almost and afterthought using lower quality parts. For instance of one my monitors does 16bit/44.1KHz PCM sound, somewhere around 90db SNR and just about acceptable THD and is pretty average at best while the other does 192KHz/24bit and surprisingly competes with a decent soundcard for SNR, etc. - or at least beyond my ability to measure it without specialised equipment and pretty much impossible to notice any difference by ear.

Woden · 13 Nov 2017 at 03:33

If your going hdmi gpu->av receiver->speakers then its the av receiver doing all the processing the gpu and motherboard won't have any effect.

It's really no different to hooking up your playstation to it.

spoffle · 13 Nov 2017 at 03:54

TallPaul1878 said:
Yes a better motherboard will have better onboard sound. But you'd still see greater gains from a separate dedicated device.

This isn't true. The sound coming from the motherboard into a reciever will be a digital stream of audio. The "quality" of the on board sound is irrelevant as it's just passing the audio stream via HDMI. The same goes for graphics cards.

Rroff said:
The DAC in the end device ultimately will decide the sound quality in this equation - and unfortunately it isn't very well documented in many cases and often almost and afterthought using lower quality parts. For instance of one my monitors does 16bit/44.1KHz PCM sound, somewhere around 90db SNR and just about acceptable THD and is pretty average at best while the other does 192KHz/24bit and surprisingly competes with a decent soundcard for SNR, etc. - or at least beyond my ability to measure it without specialised equipment and pretty much impossible to notice any difference by ear.

Audio from your monitors? Ughhhhhhhh DUTTY! Treat yoself to some speakers.

TheVoice said:
That simply isn't true I'm afraid, my TV lets me choose what audio format it outputs as do most devices e.g. PS4, BT TV box, Now TV box etc.

It doesn't quite count as processing, at least not in this context. If you choose, for example, stereo on your TV, it'll just squash the digital stream into left and right channels. It's there to allow you to set the right sort of audio channel stream to make sure it matches and properly routes the source stream.

Rroff · 13 Nov 2017 at 04:01

spoffle said:
Audio from your monitors? Ughhhhhhhh DUTTY! Treat yoself to some speakers.

Not using monitor speakers just the DAC in them and then have headphones or whatever plugged into output on the monitor - and I don't use that setup on my main systems - but its quite handy to connect up my tablets, etc. (which can do audio over HDMI) and better than using the onboard sound.

EDIT: Not really a speaker person these days anyhow - mostly use my HD600s aside from when gaming where I use a headset and some edifiers hooked up with my projector.

TheVoice · 13 Nov 2017 at 10:32

spoffle said:
It doesn't quite count as processing, at least not in this context. If you choose, for example, stereo on your TV, it'll just squash the digital stream into left and right channels. It's there to allow you to set the right sort of audio channel stream to make sure it matches and properly routes the source stream.

I can specify the audio encoding it uses (PCM, Dolby Digital, DTS Neo etc) though, same goes for the PS4 where you can choose the output format.