Wide World of Women

I can't find any official definition, just something relating to Intel's standard. For example, HD video is >= 1280 lines x 720 lines. Is bit rate a factor? Lately I've been looking at my sound settings to see the different device options and ports/jacks. Until now the on board audio was disabled. After I enabled it temporarily I see 2 extra devices(speakers and digital output at the bottom).





Very top is my monitor, which doesn't have speakers. Speakers are a 2.1 system via Line out. You can see the "Realtek High Definition Audio" caption there. It doesn't say high def for the devices in the sound card, but it does for the on board ones. Seems like it would be the other way around.

HD Audio is the PC audio quality standard developed by Intel and I believe Dolby Labs. It's been around for years but it took Vista and W7 to really make use of it (albeit, still somewhat limited).

It makes use of Intel chipsets that supports multi-streaming of audio from a single PC.... for example, one sound stream to your PC speakers and at the same time, maybe the same or another sound stream to your TV if you're hooked up.

That's its biggest feature. Other features deal with sound quality and Dolby logic integration. It allows the motherboard onboard audio to be pretty powerful and rich, it basically eliminates the need for a separate sound card for most users.



Do not confuse HD Audio with HD Radio, which is basically a different RF bandwidth with specially enhanced parity signals that carry much more information.