Chaintech Via Envy HT $27 - No Rebates!!

[Oxonium]

My first deal posting. I found this on Newegg a couple days ago and quickly ordered one. I've never seen one an Envy HT card for this price. Rebate-free makes this even better. Free shipping too.

Chaintech AV710

 

[weepul]

chaintechs make sound cards?

are they any good?

//krunk (^_^x)

 

[Ionizer86]

We'd need user input, but Oxonium's point is that it has the Via Envy HT chip (same one as the $99, M-Audio Revolution 7.1). This chip seems very popular (see Mad Dawg $30 7.1 sound card thread)

<--uses nforce audio.

 

[K63]

The DACs are not 24/96 on this card and the only way to get that is via SPDIF...

Overall, a much worse card with much worse drivers than the Revo....

Another card that is presently an unknown is the Mad Dog Entertainer 7.1 at CompUSA for $29 after rebate. I'm curious as to how good that is...

 

[farstar]

all I'm looking to do is offload the sound chores from my cpu to a sound card, will this or one of the other ~$30 cards do that??

Thanks

 

[ghackmann]

This one will probably not help much, because the chipset in question (Via Envy24HT) does not have DirectSound acceleration. The software codecs it uses are probably more efficient than the ones that come with most motherboards, but CPU utilization will still be higher than with a card that uses DirectSound acceleration, especially in 3D games.

Most of the cheaper sound cards are built off CMI chipsets, which IIRC do have hardware DirectSound acceleration, although the audio quality of most cards leaves a little bit to be desired. If you can afford to spend a little more, $50 will buy you a Santa Cruz, which does 2D and 3D DirectSound acceleration and has terrific DACs to boot.

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

There is a review of this chipset at Tom's. Does not look like there is much of a difference at all as far as CPU utilization even though there is no DirectSound support.

 

[Tuanies]

It uses a standard VIA DAC, which isn't as good of quality as the Sigmatel ones used on the Revo

 

[thommy]

Can this card do 5.1 output via spdif?

 

[Wingster]

If I hook up one of these up directly to a high end receiver (HK AVRs, Denons, etc) via digital out, would it make any difference among all these $20-$200 sound cards? I mean, does the sound card matter anymore since the receiver does all the decoding and amplification? I am just concerned about playback of crappy spdif sound cards vs high end ones.

the 24/96 is for digital -> analog, right? so if i pass the pure digital signal thru to the receiver, that number would be be totally negligable?

 

[ghackmann]

The short version of it is:

In theory, it doesn't matter which sound card you pick for digital out, as long as it's got S/PDIF ports. In practice, some sound chipsets mess with the digital stream for no apparent reason. IIRC the Via chipset is one of the safe ones.

Be warned that you can only get 5.1 sound out of prerecorded sources like DVDs if you're using S/PDIF. To get better than stereo in games, you have to use the card's analog outs. (The nForce MCP chip is the only exception I know of, but it requires getting a new motherboard.)

 

[Wingster]

I'll just wait for the next sound card that can encode 5.1 digital stream from direct sound LOL. I'll live with DPLII for now

 

[Wag]

In theory, it doesn't matter which sound card you pick for digital out, as long as it's got S/PDIF ports. In practice, some sound chipsets mess with the digital stream for no apparent reason. IIRC the Via chipset is one of the safe ones.

It does matter if you want 96/24 support. The The 24PT can do it, although the drivers don't support kernel streaming or ASIO so all the sound gets passed through the kmixer.

Supposedly Longhorn (whenever it comes out) won't have the kmixer anymore.

 

[Wingster]

I am using a SB Live 5.1 Platinum with its coax spdif out. The reciever does 24/96, but the card does 16 bit. Assuming I take all the digital effects and stuff out of there, would I get the optimal sound quality (wouldn't make a difference if i use audigy 2 plat ex.)? Or do you think this old card would add noise.. but then it's digital so i want to be certain.

 

[Wag]

Do you really need 96/24 output? There isn't much pre-recorded material at 96/24, just a few DVD-DADs (different from DVD audio). Unless you're recording your own stuff you probably don't need it. It would be usefull if for DVD-A playback, but since there is licensing issues surrounding this, only Audigy2 supports it.

Other than that, the cards seem to use crappy components, so if you want the best audio quality, you should go with a M-Audio Revolution.

 

[Slaimus]

Originally posted by: weepul
chaintechs make sound cards?

are they any good?

//krunk (^_^x)

I had a Chaintech CMI8738 card with optical I/O daughterboard for $10, and it worked fine.

 

[thommy]

I got this card yesterday, and so far it's working flawlessly. Even MP3s via toslink sound MUCH better than with RCA cables. GREAT budget card!

 

[jeffspam]

I just posted this to the avsforum site, but I don't know how many people read that, so here's a repost:

I just received the Chaintech AV710, which I ordered from NewEgg on Friday, that also has the Via Envy24HT-S chip. I can preliminarily report that this sound card (which I bought based on price: $27 incl shipping, and no rebates) has the following chips on the card:

Wolfson 8728: provides stereo high sample rate audio (from Wolfson info page: "SACD? COMPATIBLE, 24-BIT, 192KHZ AUDIO DAC WITH DIGITAL VOLUME CONTROL")

VIA VT1616: provides (quoting VIA's product info page) "6 channel outputs with 18-bit resolution" and "18-bit independent rate stereo ADC"

Note that the Cirrus Logic CS8415 found on the Mad Dog card is missing. The Chaintech card has a couple of blanks spaces, one of which is likely populated with the CS8415 on the Mad Dog card.

I haven't tested it for audio quality yet, but I imagine it's going to sound the same using two-channel audio as the other Envy 24 based cards (which have the same VIA and WM chips). I'm sure the Mad Dog card will sound better with multi-channel audio, but I'm planning on using the optical out over to my receiver for that anyway. I wish it would provide a higher input sample rate/bit depth, and ASIO drivers, but for $27, I'm not complaining.

If the Mad Dog card didn't involve a rebate which will take three months to process, I might have gone for that one instead. But I hate rebates, and didn't feel like getting burned.

 

[unclebud]

mad dog does a lot of rebates also, makes me nervous
have a hard time getting rebates from companies that ARE in business (as it is)