Asus 785G mobo has Absolute Pitch Sound

Author: Richard Swinburne
Published: 4th June 2009
Comments (14) Stumble
Asus 785G mobo has Absolute Pitch Sound

Asus' HTPC sound has a separate power connector for independent grounding and better audio quality.

COMPUTEX 2009: Asus is making a HTPC specific micro-ATX motherboard with AMD's latest 785G chipset, AM2+ CPU and DDR2 memory, as well as a feature it calls Absolute Pitch Audio. Basically this is a separate molex plug on the PCB that allows the onboard audio to have its own 'cleaner' power source, greatly reducing crosstalk across the PCB and creating higher fidelity audio. Well, as high as onboard sound can be.

The feature is also common to Asus' Xonar soundcards, but no Xonar chip makes its way onto this motherboard. Instead, the audio is powered by a VIA HD audio chip. Asus said that to differentiate itself from the competition it has worked closely with VIA to improve software and create a unique solution.

This board, and others in the future, will get DTS' latest "Surround Sensation: Ultra PC" (with separate options for headphones and speakers), that bolts on another software layer over the top of DTS:Neo PC.

DTS: Neo PC upscales stereo content to multichannel and DTS Surround Sensation takes this multichannel content, or native multichannel audio, and converts it BACK to stereo, creating a virtual surround. It's convoluted at best, and equivalent to Dolby's Virtual Surround and Dolby Headphone Technology already on the market.

In addition to this Asus uses a tasty black PCB, a single PCI-Express x16 2.0, two PCI-Express x1, one PCI, five SATA 3Gbps (with one eSATA), DVI, HDMI and VGA out from the rear I/O. The PCI-Express x1s might be a little useless though - one is directly inline with the northbridge heatsink and the other sits underneath the x16 slot.

CPU power is a normal 4+1, but an HTPC isn't going to need super high power hardware with the 785G that features AMD's latest UVD 2.0 anyway.

Discuss in the forums.

Asus 785G mobo has Absolute Pitch Sound Asus 785G mobo has Absolute Pitch Sound

Asus 785G mobo has Absolute Pitch Sound
Quote Paradigm Shifter 4th June 2009, 16:03
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Hm. Nice in theory, probably little difference in practice.

And it's an extra thing to have to plug in. More cable routing fun. :)
Quote mclean007 4th June 2009, 16:39
Presumably it will still work fine without the molex being connected, just that using the molex will deliver a cleaner power supply?
Quote mclean007 4th June 2009, 16:41
Are we going to see power supplies with special modular shielded oxgen free copper / silver / magic fairy dust molex cables to feed the cleanest possible signal to the board, just as some hi-fi clowns will drop £100+ on a shielded kettle lead with gold plated connectors for the same (imagined) reason?
Quote Vash-HT 4th June 2009, 16:46
Quote:
Originally Posted by mclean007
Presumably it will still work fine without the molex being connected, just that using the molex will deliver a cleaner power supply?

I don't think so, if the power and ground are separate for the audio circuitry then you'll need the extra molex connector to provide it. If it worked without the extra power connector that would mean it was tied in to the main power and ground somewhere which would defeat the purpose of it in the first place.
Quote tejas 4th June 2009, 17:03
What a pointless feature... typically ASUS.

Why don't they give the 790FX AND SB750 chip their own molex connectors respectively and why stop there? Why not give the networking chip it's own molex as well.

Enthusiasts are going to buy a dedicated sound card anyway rather than using on board although the Realtek solution used on AM3 MSI boards are more than enough for my rigs.
Quote tejas 4th June 2009, 17:03
typo sorry I meant 785G and SB750
Quote ch424 4th June 2009, 17:09
What makes the power that comes down a molex any cleaner than the stuff that comes down the mobo cable? Surely if they really wanted a clean power supply for the chip, they could just put a nice regulator on it?
Quote Ending Credits 4th June 2009, 17:20
Crosstalk from the motherboard. AFAIK they create a beastly amount of noise.
Quote Jozo 4th June 2009, 17:58
I would find it more reasonable to put the soundcard on a daughter board like ASUS does it on they RoG series.
And to put RCA connectors and not 3.5 mm ones.

Don't get how will extra power source help much in crosstalk as it can happen on the way from that (unshielded) on-board soundcard to it's connectors.
Quote zim2411 4th June 2009, 18:59
Seems like this is for a nonexistent market. Anyone serious about audio will have a dedicated sound card, and most HTPCs should be using HDMI, which would just bypass this all.

Also, what is the molex connector doing on the bottom? That would just irritate the hell out of me if I had this in my case.
Quote ashchap 4th June 2009, 20:47
I think this looks like a great idea if it is indeed the mobo power supply that usually causes interference. The main reason I bought a sound card was because the noise from the inbuilt sound was too loud - if this gets rid of that then I'm all for it.

Hopefully they have done some research and actually solved a problem rather than just adding stuff that does nothing... maybe I'm being to naive - review please!
Quote Bindibadgi 5th June 2009, 04:58
Quote:
Originally Posted by mclean007
Are we going to see power supplies with special modular shielded oxgen free copper / silver / magic fairy dust molex cables to feed the cleanest possible signal to the board, just as some hi-fi clowns will drop £100+ on a shielded kettle lead with gold plated connectors for the same (imagined) reason?

I'm sitting next to a Director at Seasonic in Hong Kong airport this morning and he lol'd ^_^ (but no, no oxygen free wiring)
Quote feathers 5th June 2009, 09:01
Absolute sales pitch.

:)
Quote mclean007 5th June 2009, 09:41
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vash-HT
Quote:
Originally Posted by mclean007
Presumably it will still work fine without the molex being connected, just that using the molex will deliver a cleaner power supply?

I don't think so, if the power and ground are separate for the audio circuitry then you'll need the extra molex connector to provide it. If it worked without the extra power connector that would mean it was tied in to the main power and ground somewhere which would defeat the purpose of it in the first place.
It would be simple to have it wired into the main power when no molex connected but automatically isolating itself when molex connected. That said, you raise a good point - the molex lines and the mobo line will often be connected at the PSU end with no noise isolation, so mobo noise will travel quite happily back up to the PSU and into the molex lines (by way of example, apparently some nVidia graphics cards have this problem and can cause buzzing in the PSU). Surely it would be easier and better as ch424 suggested just to regulate power going into the sound chip?
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