Cheapness and mediocrity prevails once again. It is a sad day.

Together with crappy TN panels the sheep mass really don't know better. :(

some would say good riddens...ears deserve better.

SoundStorm, please!

This news makes me sad...

ECS uses an IDT (the company now responsible for SigmaTel codecs) codec on their 780G 'black edition' ATX board (A780GM-A) and Intel still makes use of SigmaTel codecs...

Perhaps Asus will go with them for audio on their higher-end boards. If they go to all Realtek, like nearly everyone else, then they may as well be just another motherboard manufacturer.

Looking around, it would appear Analog Devices did not have any USB audio solutions with the exception of a noise-canceling stereo microphone. Though there doesn't seem to be any overlap between manufacturers who use integrated sound and produce USB audio devices, I can't help wondering if lacking in the external discrete market hurt ADI's integrated offerings. Certainly if a manufacturer had two subsidiaries, each needing different audio solutions, maintaining a common chipset or protocol would be preferred.

I see a Xonar in my future...

I don't understand surely they sold hundreds of these things?!

I have used several boards with them and combined with a good quality amp and speakers I was more than happy with the sound.

Hmm... IBM and then Lenovo has been using ADI codecs for a long time in both their business desktops and notebooks... it seems pretty sad to see a more respected player exit the arena. Realtek has slowly improved over the years, but are still definitely at the bottom of the barrel IMO.

As the owner of an Asus P5B-E motherboard who has used the onboard sound exclusively since day one, I was genuinely disappointed to read this news. Unfortunately, this type of news seems to be a recurring thing when it comes to onboard sound and even sound cards which don't sell in great numbers. Usually I interpret the first sign of trouble as infrequent driver updates (the last driver update for my onboard sound under WinXP was a year ago) and then I generally expect the vendor to bail like this. It's too bad, I like SoundMAX. I have to wonder how much support cards like the Xonar will get going forward.

Jebus wept, this leaves the integrated sound market entirely to the Crab.

I am saddened.

Did the crab ever fix their EAX issues?

I'm surprised no comments mourning Soundstorm yet.

Too bad the Envy24 chipset never really caught on... VIA dropped the ball big-time.

I wish realtek would clean up their audio codec act or die in a corner somewhere. As far as I'm concerned the only two options for decent integrated audio were SoundMax and Sigmatel. I think Sigmatel offers the better package but the loss of ADI kills competition for the next generation of codecs.

That's why I chose discrete audio instead of integrated. Even though you have to pay an arm and a leg to get discrete, integrated sounds like garbage in comparison.

It is too bad, the couple of times I used integrated on Asus boards with ADI solutions there was decent sound quality, better than Realtek. Non-integrated is the way to go though, I picked up a Xonar DX based on the review here. Maybe C-Media will move in to the integrated space, if they aren't already? Otherwise, fear the crab :-/

Reading closely I guess it's not as bad as it sounds at first, they'll continue to ship current products which are pretty capable. Perhaps there just wasn't much more advancement to be made.

Even though I use Creative cards in both my machines the motherboards have SoundMAX solutions onboard. I always preferred them to Realtek and even C-Media. Sounds like integrated audio wasn't bringing enough cash.

Dangit man... And they have some of the better integrated codecs i've heard on current boards