Intel HD Audio Arrives

Generally speaking, the Realtek HD Audio solution delivered good but not great signal quality performance and received no boost from running at 96KHz/24-bit. For our signal quality testing, we turned off Intel Audio Studios DSP algorithms, since they change the spectral characteristics of the audio output.

RightMark Audio Analyzer Tests

	96KHz/24-bit	44KHz/16-bit
Noise level, dB (A):	-85.7	-85.5
Dynamic range, dB (A):	80.7	81.8
THD,	0.0065	0.0067
IMD,	0.018	0.019
Stereo crosstalk, dB:	-82.4	-85.3

As you can see, Realteks 44KHz/16-bit numbers arent bad, though theyre not the best motherboard-down audio numbers weve seen either. Theyre also nowhere close to approaching theoretical on dynamic range, which would be around -96dB. THD and IMD numbers are quite good, however--on par with decent home stereo gear.

Going to 96KHz/24-bit, we got no improvement in performance, which was disappointing. We would have been pleasantly surprised to see the Realtek part break the -100dB barrier, but we were hoping to see it get into at least the mid-90s, but it wasnt to be. Distortion was still nice and low, but its pretty apparent that whatever noise floor is present affects both resolutions equally and also masks whatever improvement 96KHz/24-bit was going to net.

Next page: Audio WinBench

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