Auzentech X-Fi Home Theater HD 7.1 Soundcard review Auzentech has been developing an HDMI soundcard for quite a while and this new card is said to be loaded with features for any audio tasks. Today... More...
no optical out, wtf is that??? I have 2 awesome home amps, but neither have hdmi ports, so I rely on optical for the best sound, that really sucks...
There is an optical output. Actually it uses a toslink adapter insert for the S/Pdif Coax jack. With this card you don't have to use HDMI you can use analog and still have the high def formats.
Thx. I was really surprised when testing it on how fast it was during 3Ds testing. I tested all cards more then once... I would think a Forte would measure in a similar fashion.
does coax honestly provide the same clean sound, as well as properly distributing the different channels?
Coax justs send the digital signal to another location such as a recevier for decoding so the quality of that unit decides the quality of the audio. Yes, you can have surround audio with this card over digital connection susing DDL and DTS-C. You will not have the same high resolution sound over the coax as you would over the HDMI connection if that is what your asking.
Please can anyone help me? For AUDIO stream only....do i have to connect also DVI-D HDMI cable with Auzentech and VGA or I'm ok with HDMI HDMI with RV/AV and the sound card? I got this card ordered and I'm unsure about this.... perhaps the review author could help.... i would sure greatly appreciate that.... The reason I'm asking this is http://community.auzentech.com/node/205 RV/AV cannot handle audio stream only? Is that really true?
Hmm but every PC speakers sucks compare to any hometheater system, be it 2.1 or 5.1 so doesn't it defeat the purpose of having a soundcard of almost 300$ only to make use of DTS-HD or Dolby-TrueHD if you only have cheap analog pc speakers? It would even be overkill for the Z-5500 I'd bet. Second problem is that to use Hifi speakers you need a av receiver but almost none of them even very expensive and recent models, have a 7.1 analog ports so ur still stuck using lossy DTS-C or DDL :3eyes:. I guess however that it is still better than being on analog on much worse speakers.. :/ Never expected such a difference in hardware acceleration with a Prelude. Nice to know also about the X-Ram being automaticly used for OpenAL games. I thought it was a feature "born dead" that no one other was ever gonna use other than Prey/Q4/UT3. Since the HTHD and Forte use the same version of the X-Fi chipset I wouldn't see why the performance would be different so it's great to know this too.
Who said you have to use cheap PC speakers? To note, the Z-5500's are NOT good speakers. I have seen many receivers with analog inputs, common features on many of them, even cheap models. Modern soundcards have outputs that can connect to any HT system or Amps and speakers. Buying an expensive, high quality source and connecting it to poor quality speakers is a waste. There is alot of misconception surrounding the technology on those cards, especially in relation to Vista, EAX and OpenAL. I am going to have to put up a sticky. Also, if you want to keep talking about this card and speakers, etc...you should move to the sound section.
great review, very interesting card! tnx for the info :nerd: one issue though lol, there is a broken link on page 6 c1:
Hello, first of all I will say that this is my first post in the forums, I enjoy this websites product reviews quite a bit. Something I would like to figure out is whether or not I understand how to get these high definition audio codecs to play. If I have a receiver that supports dolby true HD and DTS master audio, then all I need to do is plug an HDMI cord into a radeon 5000 series video card correct? I already have power DVD 10 ultimate so that is not an issue. Now when I was reading this review it said that the sound card is able to pass through that lossless audio without the need for a receiver. Is this through analogue, optical? I currently have a Bose Cinemate 2.1 system and it has a tiny built in receiver that accepts either analogue or optical. Would this sound card be able to benefit this system? I am planning on upgrading my sound system in the future but I was wondering if I would see any immediate benefit from this sound card. I play games, listen to music and watch movies on my HDTV and this sound card seems to have the first two covered, I just want to make sure I have the movies figured out.
In theory that should do it, sure. Through analog, S/Pdif doesn't have enough bandwidth for these high def codecs. Well those standards are surround sound so you would be missing alot of the sound available. Unless you have a full surround system I would wait. This card has all bases covered...one of the best soundcards there is hands down.
