A while back, someone posted this link: http://www.aopen.com/products/mb/ax4b-533tube.htm which is to the manufacturer’s site of a company that makes a motherboard with a built in tube. There is, however, no price listed on the site for the board, and despite hours of searching on my part, I’ve been unable to find the site of anyone who sells the motherboard, or the price of said board. Anybody know of a site where I can find out how much that puppy costs and where I can buy one?
That was me.
Go to http://www.pricewatch.com and search for tube motherboard. It’s pretty dear…
A quick search turns up a lot of phrases like “estimated street price of $230”, which means it should discount for a lot less, and indicates that it isn’t out yet. One such article was dated June 10, 2002. Why don’t you take these guys up on their offer, if you’re really interested.
http://club.aopen.com.tw/activity/tube/en/default.htm
Bizarre, anyway. In general, I would think that if you were interested in serious audio applications on your computer, you would not be using the onboard sound on the motherboard. I would expect “tube sound” afficionados to buy a sound card which interfaced with a (probabably external) tube preamp.
Oh, you’re right - pricewatch has it for list $240-50 + shipping now. OK.
Interesting to note that the non-tube version of the same board is about $90.
Ok I checked the FAQ’s and didn’t see it…
So I ask…
Why would one want a tube motherboard ?
That’s what I was curious about, too.
The onboard sound uses a tube preamp rather than solid state audio, which some audiophiles claim produces superior sound.
As I said, if you believe that, I would expect a better route to be a sound card which simply provided signal output to an external preamp.
Among other things, the tube becomes another significant heat source inside your computer case, and the filament current probably means that this motherboard draws that much more from your computer’s power supply.
As well as the other disadvantages to onboard sound, which steals CPU cycles. Not a big deal in some cases - my home machine uses the onboard sound because I don’t play a lot of sounds. I’m not going to worry about the overhead from having the machine play an occasional music snippet or make an occasional obscene noise. If I were doing a lot of sound, I wouldn’t find it acceptable.