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Any benefit to using cheap sound card instead of onboard audio?
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BadMouth:
I usually disable networking and other unused processes to free up every last bit of processor power for emulators.

I have a couple real cheap sound cards laying around that I have no use for.
They do have the creative logo printed on the chips.

Would it free up CPU cycles if I used a card for sound instead of the onboard?

I'm not talking about expensive sound cards that sound better, but the kind you can get brand new for $6 on fleabay.
JDFan:
Depends -- what OS are you using ?  If XP then if the card offers direct Audio Hardware Acceleration then yes - If the  card does not have the audio Hardware acceleration or you are using VISTA\Win 7 then no real difference since MS rewrote the audio sub system beginning with Vista and no longer allowed the Hardware Accelleration to be used (unless you also used Alchemy ) so the benefit of using a dedicated sound card was no longer beneficial vs. using onboard chips so no real advantage to using a cheap sound card anymore.
BadMouth:

--- Quote from: JDFan on May 23, 2013, 03:56:54 pm ---Depends -- what OS are you using ?  If XP then if the card offers direct Audio Hardware Acceleration then yes - If the  card does not have the audio Hardware acceleration or you are using VISTA\Win 7 then no real difference since MS rewrote the audio sub system beginning with Vista and no longer allowed the Hardware Accelleration to be used (unless you also used Alchemy ) so the benefit of using a dedicated sound card was no longer beneficial vs. using onboard chips so no real advantage to using a cheap sound card anymore.

--- End quote ---

Thanks for the informative reply.  :cheers:

I did some googling & reading, but I'm unclear as to whether the software would have to support direct hardware acceleration.
Let's say the card does support it.  Would MAME utilize it or would that audio still get passed to the software audio engine?
JDFan:
IIRC - When Vista came out Microsoft rewrote the audio stack so that it could no longer be accessed directly (they say that the direct hardware access to the stack was causing much of the system instability so didn't want third parties being able to access it anymore since people blamed MS for the system crashing and not the third party ! ) which pretty much made using a addin sound card futile (until creative labs developed Alchemy which used some other workarounds to regain direct access) - That and the multiple core CPUs that most are using now has pretty much meant the end of using the cheaper discrete sound cards since the newer onboard chips along with multiple CPU cores has meant there is no real advantage to using them any more and if what MS says is true they might actual introduce more problems with stability.

If you are using an older single or perhaps even dual core cpu and XP then you might see some benefit from the card but otherwise they are pretty much obsolete (unless you are talking some of the higher end cards that improve the quality of the sound output)

In answer to your question though I believe (but have been known to be wrong in the past !) just the OS has to support the hardware accelleration in order for it to be used and not the specific program such as MAME.
lilshawn:
the way MS modded the audio stack is the shits and i hate it. as much as I love 7, xp was way better.

with XP I could run multiple audio streams from different sources to different audio systems... play games on my main desktop screen using the speakers or headphone adapter as it's source. and play a movie file on my 2nd screen (HDMI to TV) with the audio stream from the video going out the digital/HDMI.

with the way they rewrote the stack, you can only have one device at a time so it's all or nothing,...even though they show multiple volume controls for the devices and programs

also if anybody knows a way to fix (break) windows 7 i'm also interested.

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