Audio Solution
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The onboard audio subsystem includes these features:
  • Two chip split digital/analog architectures for an improved signal to noise ratio greater than or equal to 80 decibels (dB) - measured at line out, from any analog input, including line-in, CD-ROM, auxiliary line-in, and video, stereo audio from a video source. This consists of these devices:
  • Ensoniq ES1373 PCI bus audio controller
  • Crystal Semiconductor Audio Codec '97 (AC'97) stereo audio codec
  • 3D Enhanced Stereo
  • Power management support for Advanced Power Management (APM) 1.2 and ACPI 1.0
  • Audio inputs
  • Three analog line-level stereo inputs for connection from line-in, CD and aux
  • Two analog line-level inputs for speakerphone input and PC beep
  • One mono microphone input
  • Audio outputs
  • Stereo line-level output
  • Mono output for speakerphone
Ensoniq AudioPCI audio chip This is a closer view of the integrated Ensoniq AudioPCI Audio chip. This solution is AC'97 compatible.

Ensoniq ES1373 PCI bus audio controller
  • Interfaces to PCI bus as a Plug and Play device
  • 100 percent MS-DOS legacy compatible
  • Access to main memory, through the PCI bus, for wavetable synthesis support; does not require a separate wavetable read-only memory (ROM) device

Crystal Semiconductor stereo audio codecThis is a closer view of the integrated Crystal Semiconductor CS4297 Stereo Audio Codec. This solution is AC'97 compatible.

Crystal Semiconductor CS4297 stereo audio codec
  • High performance 18 bit stereo full duplex audio codec with up to 48 kilohertz (kHz) sampling rate
  • Interfaces to the Ensoniq ES1373 using a five wire digital interface

The chips reside on the PCI bus versus the slower ISA bus. This allows for faster PCI 32-bit 32 megabytes per second (MBps) transfers of live instrument sound samples as opposed to the 16-bit 8 MBps transfers on the ISA bus. The wavetable is now stored on the hard disk instead of ROM on the audio card's printed circuit board (PCB) or motherboard. This allows for wavetables to be downloaded on to the hard disk without changes to the hardware. This component also provides all the digital audio and analog mixing functions needed for recording and playing sound.

Audio add-in card