Does a motherboard with dedicated ASIO chip built in exist in 2021?

[chk071]

Interesting. I didn't knoe Realtek provides ASIO drivers for some of their sound chips.

As for the original post: I don't quite see the point. ASIO is not something for the common consumer market. I think what starflakeprj mentioned is as good as it gets.

And, considering that you can get a decent audio interface for 100 € makes me even more sceptical if we really need ASIO drivers for built in mainboard sound chips.

10 years ago, none of those onboard chips could match an audio card for 50 €, BTW. Maybe that changed now, but, I always bought sound cards from Creative, which sounded much better to me than those onboard ALC chips. My current card (Soundblaster Z) even sounds a bit better than the chip in my audio interface IMO.

[Passing Bye]

Some thoughts: I cannot know the future yet, so I cannot with 100% certainty say it "would be expensive".

What my intuition tells me is that it 'need not' be expensive.

I don't know precisely how much manufacturers pay for standard audio chips Business to Business but let's say its $10 per chip (in bulk, sounds slightly high to me)

So, how much would installing an ASIO chip instead add to retail cost?

I don't know.
Is it reasonable to guess the manufacturer would pay $50 per chip B2B? (too low? too high? (would be great if someone into hardware manufacturing could guide these estimates)

Now, how much would they charge extra to us for this superior audio capability/direct to digital outputs at retail? (bear in mind my 6 year old Asus mobo came with a realtek chip and optical out as a standard)

I don't know, but would be great if someone in the know could ballpark this too

I would be willing to pay $100 extra for a board like this and it feels like Motherboard manufacturers could still make a decent profit

Considering technical difficulty:
Ultimately it is the manufacturer's choosing to install one audio chip rather than another.
Essentially the integration and installation of many incarnations of audio chip is something they have done many times before in their history of production lines over the years. So installing a different audio chip model on their new mobos should not be a serious hurdle to overcome?

Gigabyte is selling Thunderbolt add on card for more than 100 bucks and boards that can host that add on cards are by default more expensive than ones that don't, so they would pretty much milk this thing much more than that.

Asus already have ASIO PCIe card they sell, something like Essence STX II which cost around 450 bucks, doubt they will include something like that in their board and charge 100 bucks for it extra.

If Asus can convince a gamer that he get's premium sound card for 450 bucks, than sell them entry level one over their integrated one for 40-50 bucks, than Asus have made amazing thing for themselves already and making charity board for broke producers isn't really a business model.

Even RME didn't do that, but they could actually, release budget PCIe card with few I/O for less demanding users and charge half of the price of AiO, if anyone can really pull off amazing performant ASIO PCIe card, it's them, but market for broke producers is about USB interfaces that can be had as low as 50 bucks for Behringer U Phoria 202HD, which is amazing thing for that price.

[djskope]

the expectation of your mobo being your super high-end audio reproduction device and your low latency audio interface is entirely unrealistic.

Well that comment didn't age well

Almost comical given the subsequent proof of concept (see screenshot) posted by starflakeprj

[chk071]

Yet to see though, if that audio chip is "super high end", and provides low latency. The presence of an ASIO driver doesn't really guarantee low latency, and, especially, low CPU. E.g., my sound card (Soundblaster Z) also has an ASIO driver, but CPU consumption is higher than with my audio interface. Same with ASIO4ALL, BTW.

[Guenon]

Well that comment didn't age well

Almost comical given the subsequent proof of concept (see screenshot) posted by starflakeprj

Like chk071 described there, you are confusing ASIO compatibility with things that aren't necessary for ASIO functionality. Having ASIO drivers doesn't mean that the device itself is high-quality audio. Even one of my old portable recorders has ASIO drivers, and while it has surprisingly low latencies using it that way, it isn't a "super high-end audio reproduction device" in any case

[Pictus]

RME is the king of performance!
The RME USB stuff has better performance than some PCI/PCIe/Thunderbolt
stuff from other manufacturers!!
https://gearspace.com/board/showpost.ph ... count=4631


Sadly the new Realtek ALC4080 is USB
https://www.igorslab.de/der-realtek-alc ... 0-insider/

[whyterabbyt]

There's no specific advantage to a motherboard manufacturer to do this, the market for such a thing is just far too niche in comparison to that for other feature points.
This is made obvious by the fact that the mainstream audio chip companies dont provide ASIO drivers as a matter of course.

[jancivil]

the expectation of your mobo being your super high-end audio reproduction device and your low latency audio interface is entirely unrealistic.

Well that comment didn't age well

Almost comical given the subsequent proof of concept (see screenshot) posted by starflakeprj

How so?


the concept *a super-high end device* is shown by this picture?
You're citing someone that started out saying

Unfortunately I don't think so. The market would be too small for that I believe. The closest you get would be a RealTek chip with dedicated ASIO drivers.

who proceeded to depict a window showing the RealTek chip with an ASIO driver. I learned something, I'd never heard of it. Are you actually unable to apprehend the difference between merely showing there is a chip and the chip doing both of the things I said, which is what I asserted was unrealistic? If Realtek was a "super high-end audio reproduction device", why does any one bother with the quality of converters and reputable more high-end audio interfaces? Ain't me looking comical.

So, someone has set their latency low, proof it's performing nicely is not shown by a picture. I'd assume it does, but the other thing isn't even touched on.

[Logga]

Hi!

Does anyone know any product links for modern day motherboards with native ASIO chip/drivers please?

IMO, if a major motherboard manufacturer like Gigabyte or ASUS would implement and fully integrate a reasonably powerful ASIO-native audio chip into their design (and not take the Mickey with pricing) I think it would clean up in this consumer base.

With decent marketing I think this idea could capture a huge chunk of the external audio interface market for those that mostly mix or produce 'in the box' (cost, convenience, fully optimised, pristine digital audio output via optical and spdif, ultra low-latency, zero setup, zero compatibility issues Vs external audio interfaces)

Is this sector missing a huge trick?

As said, a Realtek ASIO driver exists. But I tried it briefly and found it to be quite buggy and unreliable. Using an ALC1220. YMMV. It also takes exclusive control of the audio device, regardless of the sample rate settings, so it behaves more like Asio4all than like a regular ASIO driver.

While I agree that proper ASIO drivers for onboard audio would be nice to have, I think an even better solution would be for Microsoft to implement a good native low latency driver in Windows (collaborating with companies like Realtek, to make sure it works fine).
That way low latency audio would "just work" out of the box for all software, like it does on a Mac.

if you're producing entirely in the box, you don't need ASIO in the first place, because you can just use Windows drivers (or ASIO4ALL) - there's no external sound source, so all that stuff like monitoring latency etc. does not matter.

No, there are very good reasons to have low latency audio, even without any audio inputs. MIDI recording/playback, keyboard, mouse, touchscreen input... various interactive use cases benefit from it.

ASIO is not something for the common consumer market. I think what starflakeprj mentioned is as good as it gets.

And, considering that you can get a decent audio interface for 100 € makes me even more sceptical if we really need ASIO drivers for built in mainboard sound chips.

If you're on Windows and you want low latency, you don't have much choice, you kinda have to use ASIO*. It doesn't matter if you're a "pro" in a big studio or just a "consumer" kid who wants to learn piano with a MIDI keyboard and one of those interactive apps. And if you are that kid, it sucks that you have to buy a new interface with all that I/O that you don't need. It would be nice if you could at least have a decent ASIO driver onboard. This would also increase portability and make working with laptops more comfortable.
But in a way I agree with you, ASIO should not be required. Windows PCs should have low latency audio out of the box without 3rd party drivers, just like Macs have had for a very long time.

*I know WASAPI exclusive mode and Asio4all exist and they can have low-ish latency, but they're annoying to use, because they only let you use one app at a time, plus not all apps support WASAPI (or ASIO, for that matter).

[legendCNCD]

I agree, its way overdue for Windows to have low latency trusted path as default for audio.

[djskope]

Nice tactrix... you are teh winna!

[Guenon]

Nice tactrix... you are teh winna!

Okay, apologies in advance for another off topic reply after djskope's, but communicating badly is one of those pet peeves of mine, hah. Soooo... I just have to say, that's not how a strawman logical fallacy works in this context, after you have done this:

the expectation of your mobo being your super high-end audio reproduction device and your low latency audio interface is entirely unrealistic.

Well that comment didn't age well

Almost comical given the subsequent proof of concept (see screenshot) posted by starflakeprj

You had already replied in that manner, to that specific phrase, and in doing so you showed that you didn't understand the connection (or lack thereof) between a "super high-end audio reproduction device" and ASIO support. Calling it a strawman after that is an (often deliberate) logical error in a similar vein itself.

[The Noodlist]

RME is the king of performance!
The RME USB stuff has better performance than some PCI/PCIe/Thunderbolt
stuff from other manufacturers!!

Curious about AVB performance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRtH1hhDgE4

[Passing Bye]

Have this bookmarked, maybe one can find this interesting, show what kind of RTL one can expect from different devices and there's Realtek ALC892 numbers too, think this is more than good enough for folks who don't have RME expectations.
https://kailuamusicschool.com/tech/roun ... y-roundup/

[djskope]

Guenon

On this specific point, why are you really trying to help to shift the goalposts (so blatantly in front of everyone as well - lol!)

Do you think the impartial people that may be here are completely blind?

Again, here is exactly what I stated:
"a reasonably powerful ASIO-native audio chip"

Misinterpreting the above as a
"super high-end audio reproduction device"
is so silly and obvious, it must have been deliberate.

Also noted is the jancivil's use of the word
"expectation"
which he cleverly slipped in in an attempt to miraculously attribute his fake Straw Man's expectations to my more reasonable ones. (And, yes, I myself missed this clever switcheroo in my earlier, hastily read and written reply)

I note that on Jul 06 chk071 took the liberty to add some quotation marks to give Jancivil's transmogrified (and helpless) Straw Man a cheeky dig too: "super high end" - big man!

Guenon also later took the calculated liberty of using quotation marks "super high-end audio reproduction device", further implying that this was part of my original suggestion

Seems that '-Almost- Comical' Issue#1 doesn't seem to have painted a clear enough picture for some

Actually, I'm not a regular poster - but quite shocked to see such negativity on KVR - I thought it would be a welcoming place for fair and logical discussions about innovation. Imagine if an engineer for such a company came upon this page? The chances of them pitching this idea to R&D have not been helped by potential customers on a leading forum trying to irrationally discredit a valid and useful idea. What positive purpose do you serve in this thread?

Nevertheless, despite the dodgy debating tactrix and strange and stifling negativity here I think a few things have been learned about this potential avenue i.e. importantly, it is actually possible!

Might have been even more interesting for us Consumers if somebody could have chipped in relevant real-world stats for the financial questions, but surprisingly nobody on the KVR forums seems to know anything about such data? Or wishes to perhaps expose industry greed through unfair mark-up? (Would still welcome answers...)

On a more pleasant note, it is encouraging that some people have sought not just to misdirect meaningful discussion, but to actually provide some real and relevant data. (Shoutout to legendCNCD for Nvidia info, Passing Bye with his eye-opening stats for the Realtek chips, starflakeprj with his screenshot of a working proof of product... and ghettosynth for the popcorn!)