I have had these for a while now, and it's time to write a review. I upgraded to these from the Santa Cruz sound card. The main reason being it supports up to 192hz recording and playback. Presented with the sound card, are the drivers on CD, which are basic and don't bloat your OS. The sound card can support up to 7.1 speakers, individual rears and center blah blah. It also has a high quality Line In, which uses the ViaEnvy chipset, and sounds identical to their professional line of cards, like Delta or Audiophile as I have used to too. The driver puts a m-audio icon on the task tray, and upon click it you are presented with a straight forward applet. Which allows for quick change fro 2.1 setup all the way to digital setup. Also there are presets for Klipsch speaker and a few others too. You can save your presets if you want different volume levels, or different crossover Hz, or changing from large speaker to small. Also the input tab has your Line In volume, and allows for ASIO buffering set @ 512 samples by default, which allows for responsive midi playback, and raising this allows for more compensation when doing audio recording. Then there is a surround tab which supports Sensaru, which is basically A3D and basica EAX; however this slows the performance of your games, soo I dont bother. There is also surround processing using TRS aznd true SRS techonology. I tested these with UT, and Mp3's and wave files and monitoring and mixing and mastering. These bad boys are as accurate as you can get. You will not see much difference from audigy to this, unless your a audiophile heehhe. I recorded using 92hz from my Korg Triton Studio straight to the Line In, and it does excellent static hiss free recording which doesn't reduce the quality of the sound. These are perfect for the budget professional. As going with higher end sound cards, the only difference will be 1/4 jacks or RCA inputs. As far as UT, it sounded excellend, and coupled with Klipsch or using the Digital Out of to connect to harmon kardon reciever using Bose 5.1 setup. These things don't dissapoint, and your DVD's will come to live using Dolby Digital. Playing Mp3's will sound exactly how the artist meant for them; wave file are also top notch. Using the UNO midiman and then also connecting from keyboard to line in. I tested the monitoring with these, and let me tell you the Triton Studio sounds perfect, when I compare to playing it @ Guitar center using yamaha studio monitors. Using Sonar 4 Producer Edition. I made a track with about 10 audio tracks, each using 2 or 3 real time effects, like Waves Gold, or Cakewalk plugins. Using it's ASIO driver, these things compliment the PC well, as I was getting about 80 percent peak cpu usage with 9 audio tracks playing with about 18 real time audio effects. I then mixed it into one wave, then mastered it using T-Racks24. I was soo impressed with these, and the pro to semi pro musician will fall in love with these. The bang for the buck is incredible as these could be found for around teh $120 range I believe. On to the scores. Quality - 10 - The sound card has a high quality Digital Out made of gold, and the mini jacks are quality too, with coloring on each. Packaging -10 - The box this came in is huge, and really justifies the purchase lol, You have the drivers then also free Windvd recording DVD suite software etc, and Pro Skater game etc. Excellent bundle. Sound - 10 - These things sound identical to their audiohphile or delta line of cards. The highs mids and bass, along with recording purchases will leave you speachless, and listening to the music instead. Drivers - 10 - All you creative guys will be pleased, as once you install the latest drivers which are from a year and a half ago, you will never have to touch it again. It has absolutely no bugs, and is stable ASIO. Pros - Allows the studio musician to complete his studio. Excellent professional sound. Made out of high quality ViaEnvy24 chipset. The drivers are top notch. Cons - The outs are mini jacks, and not RCA or 1/4th. I could care less though, as I use a converter to mini jack for this. I hear no difference in the recording from my keyboard using this or RCA jacks of the audiophile sound card. I hope you all enjoyed this, and do yourself a favor when buying your next sound card, opt for these instead of Audigy or Hi Fi, and you wont be dissapointed I guarantee my brothers and sisters. Thanks again all..
Any way you could arrange to upload some screenshots of that applet? I'm curious to see what all options are there, and how they are layed out. Got an upload of that file, then, too, so we can see the recording quality? I'd be curious to see how this card stacks up to, say, an Audigy 2zs Platinum using the kx drivers. Seems to me the A2zs Plat would have the upper hand with those drivers - not to mention the 1/4" jacks it has on the front.
The very guy that posted that "flame me all u want" post is clearly a fanboy of M-audio and imma add he HATES C-labs from what he posted in the other post this review is clearly bias DUN BOTHER ASK HIM FOR OPINION ask the other gurus like robo for a fair review. Lesson nvr ask fanboys or haters ask the sound guru ROBO WHO knows i think he is a paid promo agent from M audio , which could be very very very true . C-labs had always produced good hardware with rather poor drivers i have to say but heh i have heard this M-Audio cards in action before i must say they DUN impress me with the sound for the audigy series is better IMO, but what really impressed is just the pricing they are significantly cheaper as for drivers i wouldnt know. C-labs > M-audio (Sound quality / Gaming Audio EAX feature + Future X-ram enchancments / Large Community support dun have to depend on C-labs) M-Audio > C-labs ( Pricing ) So even if u say M audio got a hell of a audio quality C-labs still betters it in many ways. A perfect score review will nvr be taken seriously believe me
No, Perfect scores mean nothing. AS it is impossible as there is no perfect product. This card is good, but it has it's issues. You don't seem to mention those so it's not a fair unbiased review. For example The card only supports EAX2, which is a pretty old standard. take a FPS hit when playing games and it would use more CPU cycles the a card that does, such as an Audigy2. The Revolution 7.1 only supports up to 33 3D channels. Drivers do not contain an Equalizer, or even basic timbre control. Does not have Digital input SPDIF. No Midi port. Does not contain any internal connectors - CD,AUX,TAD,SPDIF. So you cannot connect you DVD,CD drives with your analog cable. Now I could continue on this path but I think you get the point, You cannot give a product a perfect score, and you didn't mention anything that is wrong with the product. I don't think this card would be on par with anything from the Delta line given it's specs and DAC's. So to wrap this up there is no perfect product, so you cannot say I own this and it get's perfect tens all the way down. That either means that because you own it your not being objecitve, or you are not testing it properly. DOn't get me wrong this is not a bad card by any means and it has alot of good points. but it also has it's down side as well. WHen guys are considering buying a new card they want the whole picture Not the one that says there is nothing better on the market than this, Becuase you are not giving them an accurate picture and that is what they are asking for. Just a thought.
totally agree with robscix ... but i really have to say the VIAenvy chip is really up and coming but with the new X-Fi series of chips from C-labs it will probably take the limelight away from any other sound product from any company. DELTA and Audiophile series uses an entirely different chip so they cannot becompared. DELTA and Audiophile should only be compared to the professional audio series like those from C-labs EMU division.
Well if comparing the cards fairly and from an objective point of view the Via Envy chipset, is better than the chipset that comes with the Audigy2. Allow me to explain, The Audigy 2 can only support hi-resolution(24,96-24,192) Playback for only 2 channels. The envy chipset succeeds with all 6-8 channels. If you A2 guys don't trust that statment refer to your specs. other than that the card are pretty much even, one pulls away here, the other is better there..YEs without the EMU cards we wouldn't have the nice cards from creative that we have now, which borrow heavily from the Pro Division-EMU. Gaming is where the A2 is far superior because the Revo has no competing technologies, well none that can compete with EAX3-4....just a thought. note: I cannot remember exactly which mode, I think it's the 24-192 mode though...just a theoretical discussion anyhow..
Anyone who says that there is no quality difference between an Audigy2 and a M-Audio revolution have never heard them both head-to-head. I have, and I can attest to the much better audio quality (from a quality source, of course) of the M-audio. There are also cheaper Via Envy cards that don't use the high-quality components of the M-Audio and you can really tell the difference. In other words not all Envy cards are created equal. There are 2 reasons to go Via Envy: Better quality, better software/drivers There is 2 reasons to go creative: less cpu usage, eax - both are desirable for games.
Actually, it does all 6 channels in a 5.1 system fine. The limitation comes in with the onboard DSP. IT is limited to 16-bit/48-khz. Ergo, any time you want to use any "effects" - CMSS, EAX, equalizer, etc - it has to use the DSP and the 24-bit/192-khz precision goes away regardless of HOW many channels it's got. As long as you disable CMSS, EAX*, equalizer, bass boost, etc - you are fine, true 24-bit/192-khz in as many channels as you want. (Well, okay, only up to 8 - the DAC on the card is a single chip, 8 channel DAC, so....yeah) * I'm specifically referring to the "EAX Effects" in the control panel, of course, that effect music playback (etc). This has no relation to in-game EAX effects...although, again, any use of the DSP means you lose 24-bit precision. No matter in games, since most game audio is sampled at 8- or 12- bit precision, ANYWAY. Many newer games are using 16-bit audio - heavily compressed - but no games out or in production use 24-bit audio source files.
Hmm good to know, I remember seeing that level only possible with stereo, but I haven't looked at the specs in a while. Your probably right...but as you said, you have to perform a few tricks..and Yes the 10K2 DSP resamples the stream... But as you said games don't use High precision anyhow. but using that quality of DAC will still sound better than a DAC thats only capable of 16/48Khz.. If you were considering recording anyhow it would probably be better to consider something else... Ths level of quality the DSP uses is considered DAT quality, better than CD, not as good as DVD Audio....
