Are the new Realtek ALC1220 any good?

Mech0z · Feb 20, 2017

I am no audioholic, but my current Realtek® ALC887 on my old P8Z77-M is very bad together with my Sennheiser HD558.

I do not want to buy a dedicated soundcard if the new ones are good, I have heard a lot of people talk about how much onboard has improved, but I cant find any reviews of the onboard part of new motherboards.

So if I get a semi highend motherboard with "isolated" a Realtek ALC1220, should I see decent improvement over my current setup (Mostly annoyed by the lag of punch in the current)

IaVoR · Feb 20, 2017

I tried ALC1150 on my motherboard and was very good, no noise and a clear sound.

Gilles3000 · Feb 20, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mech0z

I do not want to buy a dedicated soundcard if the new ones are good, I have heard a lot of people talk about how much onboard has improved, but I cant find any reviews of the onboard part of new motherboards.

What realtek codec the motherboard uses has next to nothing to do with the amount of punch it delivers. That's mostly down to the onboard amplifier.

They're still not that great on most motherboards. I'd personally get an external AMP/DAC. You can use these on other devices too so you'll have good audio no matter where you go.

Something like a schiit fulla 2 would suffice.

Tacoboy · Mar 1, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mech0z

I am no audioholic, but my current Realtek® ALC887 on my old P8Z77-M is very bad together with my Sennheiser HD558.

I do not want to buy a dedicated sound card if the new ones are good, I have heard a lot of people talk about how much on-board has improved, but I cant find any reviews of the on-board part of new motherboards.

So if I get a semi highend motherboard with "isolated" a Realtek ALC1220, should I see decent improvement over my current setup (Mostly annoyed by the lag of punch in the current)

A Creative Labs Sound Blaster Z sound card should be better (or at least equal) any on-board audio, for motherboards that sells for under $250.

A $25 Asus Xonar DG should be at least a little better, then your current motherboard's on-board audio.

raidmaxGuy · Mar 1, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tacoboy

A Creative Labs Sound Blaster Z sound card should be better (or at least equal) any on-board audio, for motherboards that sells for under $250.

A $25 Asus Xonar DG should be at least a little better, then your current motherboard's on-board audio.

Some boards come with SoundBlaster on them nowadays (the Core3D is the basis for the SBZ). The SBZ is going to smash just about anything anyways due to the decent Signal to Noise Ratio. Integrated headphone amp is ridiculously powerful for what it is. I want to say that goes up to at least 96 Ohm impedance.

As @Gilles3000 said, it comes down to the amplification on the motherboard, not the ALC1220 chip itself. I would imagine it isn't too bad of a codec, I would have to look at the white papers. In fact, RealTek only has up to the 1150 codec available on the website at the moment.

BrightCandle · Mar 1, 2017

I can't even find the ALC1220 listed on the realtek site to compare its features. Its hard to know what it brings to the discussion if the manufacturer doesn't even list its basic features. I can find it on one Asus AM4 motherboard and then Gigabyte seems to have a load of them. All Gigabyte seems to be saying is 120 Dba SNR and an amplifier for high impedence headphones. Nothing said about improving the 3D surround implementation or anything like that. Its very much a "don't care about sound" kind of chip by the looks of things. Might be better SNR than the previous ones but doesn't look like anything excitingly different to make it different from the earlier versions.

raidmaxGuy · Mar 1, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by BrightCandle

I can't even find the ALC1220 listed on the realtek site to compare its features. Its hard to know what it brings to the discussion if the manufacturer doesn't even list its basic features. I can find it on one Asus AM4 motherboard and then Gigabyte seems to have a load of them. All Gigabyte seems to be saying is 120 Dba SNR and an amplifier for high impedence headphones. Nothing said about improving the 3D surround implementation or anything like that. Its very much a "don't care about sound" kind of chip by the looks of things. Might be better SNR than the previous ones but doesn't look like anything excitingly different to make it different from the earlier versions.

I think the SNR is improved by about 5-10dB over the 1150, as that is supposed to be 115/110dB. Based upon that, it will be quite comparable in that department, and circuit isolation and filtering (which is up to the mobo manufacturer to take care of) will set the actual bar. It would be cool to actually find out what the key differences are, but there is no writeup available.

TrevBlu19 · Mar 2, 2017

Bump

QuickShot · Mar 3, 2017

I don't know the specifics on how each board is setup, but I just switched to a Asus Z270 Hero(alc1220) from my Msi z97 G45(alc1150)

Using my Ath-m50x's I can hear a very slight difference in sound, there's definitely less noise. I've got a ModMic 4.0 attached, which seems to be notorious for being super quiet and having loud background noise if not supplied enough power. I ordered a cheap $5 usb sound card to plug the microphone into, which was better than my motherboard.

Microphone quality is greatly improved with the new board. Is it due to better amplication or the new codec? Idk, but everything sounds better. (Especially my mic)

poinguan · Mar 4, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by QuickShot

I don't know the specifics on how each board is setup, but I just switched to a Asus Z270 Hero(alc1220) from my Msi z97 G45(alc1150)

Using my Ath-m50x's I can hear a very slight difference in sound, there's definitely less noise. I've got a ModMic 4.0 attached, which seems to be notorious for being super quiet and having loud background noise if not supplied enough power. I ordered a cheap $5 usb sound card to plug the microphone into, which was better than my motherboard.

Microphone quality is greatly improved with the new board. Is it due to better amplication or the new codec? Idk, but everything sounds better. (Especially my mic)

you mean your $5 USB soundcard is better than the Asus Z270 onboard audio?

Gilles3000 · Mar 4, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by poinguan

you mean your $5 USB soundcard is better than the Asus Z270 onboard audio?

Thats not what he was saying, the $5 soundcard had s a better microphone adc/amp than the motherboard. While the onboard audio outputs on motherboards have gotten a lot better, the inputs still aren't that great.

QuickShot · Mar 5, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gilles3000

Thats not what he was saying, the $5 soundcard had s a better microphone adc/amp than the motherboard. While the onboard audio outputs on motherboards have gotten a lot better, the inputs still aren't that great.

Correct, the ModMic likes more power than my old motherboard z97g45 motherboard could output. So I bought that cheap usb card for the microphone, because it supplied sufficient power it sounded better with less background noise.

However, my new Asus Z270 board sounds better than my the usb card I bought.

Asus Z270 Hero > $5 Usb soundcard > MSI Z97G45 (For Microphone input only, the headphone output was bad on that $5 card)

ich1ban · Mar 7, 2017

I have the MSI Z270I M-ITX board which has the new Realtek.

Coming from using a dedicated high end card - Creative Xi-Fi Titanium HD, it doesn't sound too bad and the volume can get quite high.

The sound quality itself I thought is quite good, however the mic output is incredibly low, I need to set it to max +30 for anyone to be able to hear me.

Furthermore, I also noticed that when there's lots of sounds going at the same time, it begins to blur a bit and/or each individual sound is not as clear.

This becomes quite apparent when you're playing shooter games, whereby when there are a lot of gunshots and footsteps, it all sort of just muffles together and isn't that clear.

By using the Nahimic2 software and enabling "Smart Loudness" and setting it to like 30% or something, it makes it a little better - but no where near as clear as the Titanium HD ( I have not compared them side by side - just what I instantly noticed when I set up my new computer).

rrybacks · Aug 10, 2017

This is good audio chip for upgrade
Im upgrading from ECS MB with ALC 662 to Asrock X370 Taichi with ALC 1220 audio chip
The new chip sound is sound clear and no noise

It's nice to have

Tjj226 Angel · Aug 11, 2017

@rrybacks

This is a pretty old thread.

@everyone else. Holy crap

Gilles was the only one on point. Everyone else is talking out of their butt.

DrakkarCA1980 · Aug 21, 2017

I have the ALC 1220 on my motherboard. I own a SoundBlasterZ and I also own a Asus Strix Soar. I am VERY picky about sound quality.
Honestly you might think your sound is good with on-board audio - but the SoundBlasterZ or Asus Strix Soar absolutely DESTROY onboard audio (unless its the creative) PERIOD. In my use the SoundBlasterZ was best if your gaming a LOT, it's really strong with gaming and giving a great punchy bass to explosions and the headphones are amped up pretty high. The Asus Strix Soar didnt have quite the bass punch in games, preferring a smoother rounded bass. The Soar was best for movies and music, it gave a better overall impression and staging to sound without being too aggressive. The soar is what I am currently using - I think it's an ugly sound card but it has a Texas Instruments DAC and one of the beefyest AMP's on a sound card I've seen. I only stopped using the SoundBlasterZ because of driver conflicts with my motherboard but it was an EXCELLENT card.

All these options beat the pants off on-board sound. You can look at your motherboards sound output chips (usually on the lower left region of a mobo) and just look at the capacitors. Their usually garbage and too small to create any reasonable bass. If you like big bass you want big caps - thats when most of the current draw happens.

With your onboard sound card get a few different headphones plug them in and just listen to the silence. Then start a program that puts a load on your CPU and GPU without any sound. Do you hear any buzzing, beeping in the faint background. Some headphones wont expose this. I have a pair of BOSE that will. Its electrical interference over your motherboard and its very difficult for sound chips to isolate. Creative labs has done an awesome job preventing this though.

EDIT: UPDATE
Im going to have to redact some of what I said about onboard sound. I put the ALC 1220 through the paces and ... wow. It was WAAY better than I expected. Strange it has an AMP gain function for headphones that Ive only seen on the Asus. So what the hell lets play some BF1 with the on board sound (Gigabyte x399 Gaming 7 blah blah)... It sounded flipping wonderful. The Asus will get WAY louder and drive much more aggressive BASS but the ALC 1220 isint too far behind at all! And the best part is there is zero buzz. The Asus did have a tiny amount.

Nautilus · Aug 21, 2017

Onboard sound cards these days reached a point where avarage user won't be able to distunguish it from a high-end sound card. People with specific technical usage area however (artists, sound recordists, audio editors for movies or audio engineers) could easily spot the shallow resolution or lack of features in these onboard solutions.

That's partly due to "experienced ear" phenomenon and partly because they have the expensive gear to expose it.

People always start naming DAC units in these threads. What makes an audio solution great is not only DAC, but even if it was there are a lot more to it. DACs have too many spohisticaed technologies that are impossible to implement on an onboard solution.. Many of these techs for instance are proprietary and not possible to use on an onboard card.

To sum up, ALC1220 is a decent solution that sounds great for avarage user and will sound 99% the same to many of our ears without a high-end desktop monitors/headphones.

Offler · Sep 10, 2018

Would like to add some experience.

ALC1220 is installed on Asrock x399M Taichi. First I was quite sceptical on the possibilities of this onboard soundcard.

Manufacturer boasts:
https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/X399M Taichi/index.asp

Unnamed 120SNR DAC (which is revelaed to be Realtek ALC 1220)
Gold Audio Connectors
TI NE5332 amps
Nichicon Caps
Using different PCB layers for L/R channels
And some more common stuff like Impendance sensing, shielding and filtered power input

Here is a review of the onboard ALC1220 specifically used as "Purity Sound 4"
https://youtu.be/Zgmdv3GX87E?t=6m25s

The review contains some data on frequency spectrum output, and info about crosstalk between L/R channels. The results are not actually bad at all.

And another review regarding the same solution:
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASRock/X399M_Taichi/8.html

This review is generally positive.

the same Hw configuration on more expensive AsRock board is being marketed as "Creative SoundBlaster Cinema 3"
https://www.creative.com/oem/products/software/cinema3.asp

The only mystery which remains is, why Realtek isnt listing the ALC 1220 on its web page...
http://www.realtek.com.tw/products/productsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=24&PFid=28&Level=5&Conn=4

The DAC itself allows up to 32bit 192khz playback (not sure about recording).

Since i am not an audiophile, the card surpassed all my expectations and speakers i can use with it (Bose ComputerMonitor, purchased some years ago as a portable solutions)

Are the new Realtek ALC1220 any good?

Mech0z

IaVoR

Gilles3000

Tacoboy

raidmaxGuy

BrightCandle

raidmaxGuy

TrevBlu19

QuickShot

poinguan

Gilles3000

QuickShot

ich1ban

rrybacks

Tjj226 Angel

DrakkarCA1980

Nautilus

Offler

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