How would you feel if Nvidia offered a new Sound Chip/Card?

[whitetigerx7]

With the clouds gathering over the soon to be grave of Creative and companies like C-Media and various others offering far greater quality audio solutions at competitive rates, many have been wondering since Nvidia produced it's nForce 2 MCP with SoundStorm 5.1 in collaboration with Realtek Semiconductor's ALC650 audio chip, if Nvidia would ever return to producing a true audio solution as a successor to their popular and renowned SoundStorm MCP in a PCI or other flavor.

For what the original SoundStorm enabled MCP offered, it was very comparable to the SoundBlaster Live 5.1 at the time. Many people in fact ditched their PCI audio solutions for the Nvidia MCP as it contained drivers from a reputable company that not only updated them often but had better quality at times. Even those who chose to install the backup ALC650 drivers noted the quality was still very good either way you went for audio.

So the real question is... how would you feel if Nvidia collaborated once again with another company such as C-Media, RealTek, VIA, etc. to bring a successor to the SoundStorm MCP with modern abilities suited to XP, Vista, and other operating systems, in either an onboard solution, PCI/PCIE card solution, or even a modular USB solution. How would you feel about buying a product such as this? What kind of driver and API support would you hope to see? Should it have full support on all majorly used operating systems?

[AEngland]

In my honest opinion, I think they should fix their own crap before even thinking about moving on to audio. I am not trying to put myself in the spotlight, But I and thousands and thousands of other people are victims to this nvlddmkm bsod and tdr. It wasnt resolved in SP1. I even have problems in XP with blue screens- I dont think this system has been stable since I bought it. Seriously, I think they need to get their act together. If anyone has any tips or pointers for me, I would love it.

[Guest Guest]

Agreed.. they should come out with a proper driver for every graphic card and set up (sli,quad sli etc) and make all nvidia graphic card owners happy before diverting their attention to other projects. If their main selling product isnt satisfactory, using man power to create another product will result in more crappy problems for the new product as well

[mobilenvidia]

Forceware 174.82 has an Audio driver included if this helps any and it's WHQL

[Bill]

I would certainly like a USB2.0 or Expresscard slot based 8 channel sound system to compete with Creative's solution.

It would have to be XP/linux compatible too though and be able to output dolby true HD decoded.

[whitetigerx7]

I think most of the issues are stemming not from the products and drivers but from Vista itself. I, for one, have had zero issues with my GeForce Go 6150 graphics chip and even though its a fairly low-end solution, it's been fairly reliable and stable in my laptop. I know many others who have had similar results with chips like the 8700M, 6600 GT, 7600, and other chipsets on both XP and Vista, but those who have Vista have reported several issues that weren't there on XP.

I think if Nvidia were to resume an audio solution, other than the HDMI audio solution, Vista might be an issue, but unless Nvidia were to develop a new SoundStorm around Vista and get it fully featured, I feel it could be one of the best audio solutions to date.

[ByronGman]

That is not Vista's fault; it is Nvidia's fault for not getting their drivers to preform with Vista:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/27/nvidia-...-crashes-in-20/

The very fact that people experience different performance and stability levels when using different Nvidia drivers should obviously tell you that is the problem and not the OS itself.

[Michael Marley]

I would certainly like a USB2.0 or Expresscard slot based 8 channel sound system to compete with Creative's solution.

It would have to be XP/linux compatible too though and be able to output dolby true HD decoded.

Can USB2.0 even handle enough bandwidth for high quality 7.1 audio? I also seem to remember having read that USB audio is a huge CPU hog.