Topic: Motherboard with excellent onboard sound - recommendations?

[strangerinusall]

My current PC is equipped with an ASUS P5B motherboard with an onboard sound chip that really does a good job. Unfortunately the system got a bit instable over the past days and I am toying with the idea to build up a completely new PC. Just lost track what motherboards with onboard sound are ideal for audio (even video) post production (Cool Edit / Sony Vegas).
It may sound strange that I am looking for an onboard solution but my experience with the ASUS was very good.

Which motherboard would you recommend?

Thanks & Cheers

[mattmiller]

Why does it need to be onboard?  There's a good chance that a motherboard that is praised as having superb (or above-average, even) sound and video is going to be expensive compared to the cost of using a rock-solid barebones board and adding cheap sound and video cards.

[strangerinusall]

Of course, onboard is not mandatory. It is simply the fact that I made very good experience with the old ASUS P5B board. This simply surprised myself as well as I used to have operated with external sound cards before. Ever since I bought the ASUS there was no need to watch out for upgrades in this matter. So I hope that some of you might give an advice or two.

[runonce]

My current PC is equipped with an ASUS P5B motherboard with an onboard sound chip that really does a good job. Unfortunately the system got a bit instable over the past days and I am toying with the idea to build up a completely new PC. Just lost track what motherboards with onboard sound are ideal for audio (even video) post production (Cool Edit / Sony Vegas).
It may sound strange that I am looking for an onboard solution but my experience with the ASUS was very good.

Which motherboard would you recommend?

Thanks & Cheers

Is it possible that your current system just needs some cleaning?

Dust build up and then the onset of hot weather will have machines locking up all over the place...

[strangerinusall]

@runonce: Thanks a lot for your valuable advice. I cleaned the machine quite regularly and hope that I did the job well. But you never know...

The aforementioned instability manifests in a all of a sudden freezing of the entire system. This may occur after one minute, X minutes even the next day after starting the PC. I observed that this issue happens after the use of Foobar or VLC media players (I already deinstalled them, installed new versions, used various backups of which I know that they are running smoothly etc.). Nothing solved the problem. As I do not want to waste a lot of time, I thought it might be a good chance to upgrade the entire system.

But maybe my issue sounds familiar to you or anybody else on this forum and you want me to know how I fix it, then please feel free to send me your advice(s).

Thanks again

[admkrk]

i'm lucky if my rig will run 2 days w/out freezing up. but then again i'm also on my 3rd psu and 2nd mb. it's past time for a new rig for me.

i think(?) pretty much any decent mb will have a decent onboard chip these days considering the amount of pcs used as media centers anymore. i've only ever used the sound card to transfer dats so if transfers are your concern, i'd hope you aren't going through that route to begin with.

iirc, asus used a realtech chip in their mbs and most decent mbs used the same chip. things have probly changed in the last couple years tho. if you ignore the sound and plan your build w/out the sound in mind, you'll find that your mb options will all use the same chip if you look at that last.

[strangerinusall]

@admkrk:
Many thanks for your remarks.
It seems that your nerves are thick as a brick... I can´t tolerate a frequency of freezing as you described.

Do you have any suggestion which sound card might be a good choice to transfer recordings? Keep in mind that I am tweaking audio signals only - I am not a gamer....

[admkrk]

i used the audiophile2496 for dat transfers. if you can use either usb or firewire, which should be an option for any modern recorder, that would be your best bet tho. aside from not having any worries about the wave being changed it simply removes the real time transfer drag and lets you do it in minutes instead of hours. the sounds card has no effect on manipulating during post production, only in listening and your speakers are a bigger concern there.

even recording to my laptop i used usb. like i said, the only time i ever used the sound card was for tapes.

[runonce]

@runonce: Thanks a lot for your valuable advice. I cleaned the machine quite regularly and hope that I did the job well. But you never know...

The aforementioned instability manifests in a all of a sudden freezing of the entire system. This may occur after one minute, X minutes even the next day after starting the PC. I observed that this issue happens after the use of Foobar or VLC media players (I already deinstalled them, installed new versions, used various backups of which I know that they are running smoothly etc.). Nothing solved the problem. As I do not want to waste a lot of time, I thought it might be a good chance to upgrade the entire system.

But maybe my issue sounds familiar to you or anybody else on this forum and you want me to know how I fix it, then please feel free to send me your advice(s).

Thanks again

Elsewhere - someone mentioned CPU/heatsink thermal grease failure..maybe time for fresh paste?

The last time I had symptoms like this it was a CPU fan that had quit...

Sounds like you keep after your gear - so a longshot...