Two different makes of drivers are available for the Realtek ALC
onboard audio chips. Today we are putting them both inside the ring for
a head to head battle. Are you ready to find out which one is suitable
for you? If the answer is yes then read on.
About:
The Realtek ALC onboard audio chips are very popular among motherboard
manufacturers. The ALC chips became even more popular when nVidia
decided to integrate them into the nForce series. In the past nVidia
added the Dolby encoder to some of the onboard chips and named it
"SoundStorm". Unfortunately nVidia decided not to continue
this due to the big fees they had to pay to Dolby Laboratories.
Both Realtek and nVidia provide different drivers for the ALC products.
The main difference between the Realtek driver and the nVidia is the
Dolby encoder support for the SoundStorm series. In this article you
will find out that the Dolby encoder support isnt the key
difference between the both drivers.
Installation:
Realtek Audio Driver v3.72a
Package size is 11.6 Megabyte.
The installation went smooth without any issue.
nVidia Audio Driver v4.62
The latest nVidia driver in their website is the v4.57 which
doesnt include an installer and control panel.
You have to install the v4.57 manually from the device manager. Kinda
sloppy if you ask me.
The only way to obtain the v4.62 is from the latest leaked nForce
drivers.
The installation went smooth without any issues.
Control Panel:
Realtek Audio Driver v3.72a
Realtek has added a small logo of the motherboard manufacturer inside
the Realtek control panel. The control panel includes:
* Equalizer and Environment effects.
* Speaker configurations.
* 3D Audio demo.
* General information..
* SPDIF controller.
* Jack sensing (UAJ) - Universal Audio Jack, allows you to adjust the
jacks function. With UAJ it doesnt matter where you plug the
speaker devices.
* Microphone background noise suppress.
nVidia Audio Driver v4.62
nVidia Control panel is named nVmixer and has the following features:
