Sound premature clipping - which Mobo?

Some sound cards are known to be incapable of being driven to full level, i.e. the analogue part, via "line in", clips well before the maximum level is reached. This causes immense problems if trying to record sound, for example making CDs from one's vinyl. One particular chip - the Ensoniq 1373 sound chip - is/was used in certain cards such as Creative Audio PCI cards and manifested the problem greatly.

I built a PC 4 years ago and put such a card in, thinking it would be better than the on-board sound of the Soltek Mother board - oh! How I was disillusioned! In the event the on-board sound was perfect, it would fully drive the recording and noise and distortion levels were low. I cannot find "Soltek" anywhere now.

I have just built another PC, primarily for my good lady. My old one which she was using finally expired. The Mother board was a Biostar. Naturally I tried its on-board sound capabilities. Grrrrr! It clips at 0.5 dB before full level.

I shortly want to build a new machine for me. I need a Mother board whose sound part works correctly or, as a last resort, a PCI card which is known to work correctly.

All advice and information gratefully received.

 

I think you will find "onboard sound" has moved on immensley since your last build.
Buy a quality make board (Asus,Abit,Gigabyte DFI) and give it a go, if its not up to the job then you can always put in a sound card.

 

That's the problem - it's gone backwards. The Soltek board of 4 years ago was perfect. The Biostar of last week is wrong. I am hoping the Asus might be better, it has VIA chips, the same as the Soltek.

What happened tp Soltek??

 

I am not quite sure what has happended with Soltek, but you can't buy the boards in the UK except maybe on Ebay.
There appears to be a website but no support
http://www.soltek.de/soltek/news/index.php