There are some other audio codec manufacturers, but codecs from them are rarely seen on motherboards. A good example is Cirrus Logic, a company that manufactures very high-end codecs used mainly by home theater receivers. One of their codecs, CS4382, was used on a few very high-end motherboards from MSI (K8N Diamond Plus and K9N Diamond Plus, for example), providing a state-of-the-art audio quality for these products (signal-to-noise ratio of 114 dB). In the past, they also provided low-end audio codecs and controllers using the brand “Crystal.” Cirrus Logic and Crystal products start with the letters “CS,” and you can see a list of their codecs by clicking here.

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Figure 5: Cirrus Logic CS4382 codec and Creative Labs controller on an MSI K9N Diamond Plus motherboard

Another popular controller/codec manufacturer from the past was ESS, which had chips starting with the letters “ES.”

Another brand that you can see around is IDT. A list of their codecs can be found here.