Why do all laptops come with naff soundcards

Punky921 · Post by **Punky921** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 7:29 pm

Most laptop sound cards are bad because most people don't do anything with laptop sound besides watch movies and listen to iTunes. It's not relevant for the average consumer (which we are not).

bicarbone · Post by **bicarbone** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 11:25 pm

Rave wrote:
rewind wrote:
Parametex wrote:People keep repeating this matra about macs built-in soundcard being good ...

It's actually not awfully good at all. Horribly noisy.

My second laptop (vaio) wins over the mbp hands down.
I don't know if the Mac Book and Mac Book Pro have the same sound card, but I have to agree with you here - the sound card on the MBP is a disgrace. It is extremely noisy and seems to play digital chatter into any silence - even between drum hits. (When you don't play any sound for a couple of seconds, it seems to turn itself off, and you hear real silence.)

Right, my MBP soundcard is crap compared with my previous powerbook's and does the same modem-ish noises as you describe... And apparently many of the MBP released last spring have this problem. It's not even the soundcard, it has to do with the motherboad itself, so if it's still under warranty you should have it fixed at an Apple store, because this is not acceptable, I reckon, for such a pricey puter.

rewind · Post by **rewind** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 6:58 am

bicarbone wrote: Right, my MBP soundcard is crap compared with my previous powerbook's and does the same modem-ish noises as you describe... And apparently many of the MBP released last spring have this problem. It's not even the soundcard, it has to do with the motherboad itself, so if it's still under warranty you should have it fixed at an Apple store, because this is not acceptable, I reckon, for such a pricey puter.

My MBP is no longer under warranty, and I have a shiny new MOTU Ultralite sitting beside me, so I don't really care anymore

SubFunk · Post by **SubFunk** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 5:04 pm

john gordon wrote:i use macbook pro and i sounds fine.must be your computers.

+1 for an internal card it's brilliant, low latency and decent sound...

no doubt a decent external is always better.

have not heard any PC internal that matches a MBP internal. and especially not the latency you get with the internal MBP card.

adventurepants_ · Post by **adventurepants_** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 9:53 pm

SubFunk wrote:
john gordon wrote:i use macbook pro and i sounds fine.must be your computers.
+1 for an internal card it's brilliant, low latency and decent sound...

no doubt a decent external is always better.

have not heard any PC internal that matches a MBP internal. and especially not the latency you get with the internal MBP card.

its an Intel on board chip, the same as is in many PC laptops. The latency is exactly the same or better with ASIO4ALL on PC.