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The audio solution on the BT2 was brought to my attention by a friend of mine that takes his PC based audio very seriously. While the BT2's solution isn't the high end hardware he's used to, he had some good things to say about the SoundMAX Cadenza product that Intel have used to give audio to the BT2.
While the ICH4 bridge actually generates the audio data, that's pretty much all it does on the BT2. It is then handed off to the AD1980 version of the Cadenza hardware that gives you the following features.
• Full 20-bit audio processing featured on the latest Intel® desktop boards with ICH4.
• Complies with Audio CODEC '97 specifications to ensure robust sound quality and PC reliability. The integrated circuit performs analog-to-digital conversion and allows simultaneous recording and playback.
• Offers professional-quality digital audio with 96 dB signal-to-noise-ratio and 44.1 kHz sampling rate, delivering PC sound quality commensurate with consumer audio equipment.
• Includes PureAudio noise reduction from Andrea Electronics that detects and removes repetitive ambient noise, enabling a clean, reliable signal for voice input applications, from voice over Internet to speech recognition.
• Features SPX Technology - Sound Processing eXtensions - designed by game sound experts to let you hear the most realistic, immersive audio a game can produce. With SPX, sounds effects are not simply "played back" but are animated and manipulated in real-time.
• Features Sensaura 3D positional audio and environmental enhancement, which modifies the phase and group delay of outgoing audio signals so users experience an immersive, three-dimensional sound experience.
• Provides a high quality MIDI wavetable synthesizer featuring advanced Downloadable Sound capabilities (DLS2) for games and music. With DownLoadable Sound capabilities, Soundsets can be modified or even replaced entirely by new sounds, giving composers access to thousands of musical and effect sounds that equal those of professional soundcards.
So a lot of marketing speak with regards to 'animating' your audio source before playback but cutting through things, a 96dB, 20-bit processor isn't typically generic in terms of audio solutions that are built into motherboards. Combined with the digital output connections on the ATX backplane and a true 5.1 hardware solution (with all required connectors) and you have a similar product to something like the Audigy, on your motherboard. It's up to you to decide if the quality is any better, but I couldn't really tell any difference to my Audigy during simple listening tests and it's certainly not a generic stereo output source.
All in all, using the SoundMAX hardware on the BT2, Intel have given the board some decent audio processing and something to make you think twice about buying a dedicated sound card for your new BT2 based system.
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