soundstorm audio explanation?

[hawkeye_wx]

I don't know much about computer audio. The motherboard I've been using for the last year had onboard cmedia 2-channel audio. No doubt an audigy 2 or something would give me much better sound, but I've been satisfied with the onboard stuff. My motherboard just died and I now have to get an nForce2 to replace it. I'm reading reviews that talk about the soundstorm audio. What I don't know is exactly what I am getting if I buy a board with soundstorm. My audio/speaker setup: I have a mid-end dolby digital receiver. I own four decent speakers but currently I only have enough space in my computer room to use two. Right now I have a regular stereo cable going from my computer's line out to the receiver.

Is it pointless to get soundstorm if my speaker setup will not change? I obviously can't use surround sound with two speakers. Will I get the same quality of sound if I get the non MCP-T(i.e. nForce2-Lite/no soundstorm) motherboard? What if I get the soundstorm and replace the stereo cable with an optical cable from the computer's audio connector to the receiver? Could someone explain all this stuff about the audio?

By the way, my computer audio use mostly consists of listening to mp3s(most are crap quality) and occassionally playing shooters and a handful of other games.

One thing I certainly don't want is crackly sound. I don't know if that has to do with IRQ conflicts or something else, but the motherboard I bought for my Mom a while back had crackly onboard sound and I ended up buying her an SBLive Value. I'm not entirely opposed to buying an Audigy 2, but someone will have to explain that card's audio as well.

 

[Bman1238]

With the soundstorm, you will get better sound quality and better gaming performance. The soundstorm is whats called an APU (Audio Processing Unit) that has its own independant clock frequency and processes the sound and takes a load off the CPU. soundstorm has awesome sound quality, but the sound blaster audigy 2 has slightly better, but in games you will get better performance with soundstorm.

Article at :Tomshardware.com

 

[benutne]

With the soundstorm, you will get better sound quality and better gaming performance. The soundstorm is whats called an APU (Audio Processing Unit) that has its own independant clock frequency and processes the sound and takes a load off the CPU. soundstorm has awesome sound quality, but the sound blaster audigy 2 has slightly better, but in games you will get better performance with soundstorm.

Article at :Tomshardware.com

Ditto. I have the Abit NF7-S,and the sound quality is nothing short of fantastic. If you use the optiacal cable out to your receiver, sound will be MUCH better than with an analog cable. Your reciever will do all the decoding needed whether you have two or six speakers, it makes no difference.