FWIW, I took some time and went to the Intel website and looked around their
HD audio specification. This specifies how their chipsets expect to connect
to various audio codec devices.
It appears that if properly implemented this could provide pretty good audio
quality for capture. I was surprised.
There are a number of codec vendors supplying codecs which conform. Of
course the devil is in the details of how carefully the motherboard is laid
out. Analog Devices has the AD1986A if you want to look at a datasheet for
specs.
It claims 20bit resolution on all ADC and DACs, 96Khz and supports linein.
I don't know which if any PCs use this device.
73
jim ab3cv
