Hey guys, I'm looking into getting a new motherboard, and all the ones that I have seen online seem to have integrated AC97 audio. Since I know nothing about AC97, what I am wondering is, is it any good, or better than my SoundBlaster 5.1? Do you people using onboard AC97 audio have the ability to adjust bass/treble? (something I have to recompile the emu10k1 driver for to get it to work with my soundblaster)

creative labs SB 5.1 should be much better than any onboard solution.
but i don't think that you could adjust treble/bass without modifications. even in windows you're not able to do it.
so i think you should try the SB

onboards can have lots of features, but they are generally very slow and software based, the creative card will be fast and has great support.

I recommnd using alsa for your sound drivers, they are better quality/performance and have more controls, go to alsa.ourceforge.net

Fabian030:

alsamixer after using the alsa drivers gives you control over bass trebble, etc on any card that has support for it, including both my onboard and my creative em10k1 (live)

I know you will ask why I am using both onboard and em10k1, so I will answer now:
my em10k1 is my sound card for general use
I use my onboard to output audio to my tv when using my dxr3 in mplayer to play my media files to the tv as well.

(My dxr3 will not work in 2.6.0-test3, it is only grayscale, even the color bars any idea?)

uuhhh
wow
didn't knew that

alsa is nowhere near as good as OSS, at least not on my speakers. Turning the bass anywhere past 50 on the mixer results in a lot of noise.

So I'm assuming the ac97 is something that I can just turn off via the BIOS menu? Or do I have to do something to select it in some config file so sound is sent to my SB rather than the ac97?

there are all kinds of things you can do:
1) disable it in bios
2) disable it in kernel
3) prevent the module from loading if it is a module
4) prevent the alsa module from loading if you use alsa
5) break the motherboard
6) give me your computer

all these things can stop you from dealing with a card you do not want loaded.

on my SB-Live and Via onboard alsa works great, I have generic speakers and no problems.