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Auzentech X-Fi Home Theater HD

Michael Brown — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:15:31 -0600

When we reviewed Asus’s Xonar HDAV 1.3 Slim in November 2009, we described it as a necessary evil for home-theater enthusiasts because of its unique ability to send Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio bit streams from a PC’s Blu-ray drive to an A/V receiver over HDMI. By the time you read this review, you should be able to do the same thing with any videocard equipped with a Radeon HD 5000-series GPU. How much value will Auzentech’s premium-priced X-Fi Home Theater HD retain under those circumstances?

The answer depends on how fanatical you are about audio quality. Auzentech’s PCI Express card features Creative’s awesome 20K2 audio processor and all the great software features that go with it, including the X-Fi Crystalizer for music playback, ASIO 2.0 support for audio recording, and EAX 5.0 and OpenAL support for gaming. The onboard Cirrus Logic CS4382 DAC boasts dynamic range of 114dB, and the stereo operational amplifier plugs into a socket, so you can swap out the stock National Semiconductor model for something stronger. There’s an onboard headphone amplifier, and a combo TOSLINK and S/PDIF connector on the mounting bracket, so you can use either optical or coaxial cables for digital audio connections.

There are cheaper alternatives to Auzentech's no-compromises X-Fi Home Theater HD card, but none that offer more features or better analog quality.

Analog audio connections are handled by a D-Sub connector on the mounting bracket. This connector mates to a proprietary analog audio I/O cable with four 1/8-inch stereo line-level outputs, one 1/8-inch MIC input, and one 1/8-inch line input. There’s a 1/8-inch headphone jack on the mounting bracket, too. Internally, the board has an Intel HD Audio–compatible front-panel audio header, plus the proprietary connections to accommodate Creative’s X-Fi Titanium I/O Drive.

We predict most people will eschew the multichannel analog outputs in favor of HDMI. But bits are bits, and if an HDMI connection is all you’re looking for, Auzentech’s solution won’t sound any more fabulous than two far cheaper solutions: a Radeon HD 5750 videocard or an Asus HDAV 1.3 Slim.

Unlike Asus, Auzentech doesn’t include the Blu-ray player software you’ll need to stream Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio over HDMI. At press time, CyberLink’s PowerDVD 9 Ultra ($90) was the only compatible software (Asus bundles ArcSoft’s TotalMedia Theatre 3 with its HDAV series cards). Cyberlink added this functionality to the OEM version recently, so if you received a copy with your Blu-ray drive, you’re all set.

We criticized the HDAV 1.3 Slim because it relied on the increasingly archaic PCI architecture. Auzentech’s card will plug into any PCI Express slot, but its 3.75-inch height prevented us from putting the lid back on our home-theater PC (AMD’s Maui reference design, which is housed in an nMedia HTPC 2000 case). We also had to remove the mounting-bracket screw because it blocked the card’s HDMI input.

The X-Fi Home Theater HD will be overkill for most, but gaming audiophile home-theater enthusiasts with deep pockets will dig its pristine sonic qualities and extensive feature set. And this being Maximum PC, we’re willing to overlook its high price tag and the fact that it doesn’t come with all the software it needs. But we’re withholding a Kick Ass award because the card is too tall to fit in a tall home-theater enclosure, and there’s just no excuse for not being able to put a screw in the mounting bracket without blocking the HDMI socket.

Soundcard Interface Woes

The Maximum PC Staff — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:15:12 -0600

I have a problem with my X-Fi Platinum setup. It worked fine on my old Dell 8200, but I recently upgraded my mobo to an EVGA nForce 780i and now the front ports don’t seem to work. What gives? I reinstalled the drivers several times and nothing. The main card works just fine, but the drive bay interface is the whole reason I bought the card in the first place.

—Rocco Nicoletta

Since the card works with the rear ports for both output and input, the Doctor is going to assume it’s something as simple as a loose connection or damaged cable that occurred during the motherboard move. You should power down and unplug your system. Open the side up and find the ribbon cable that goes from the I/O front panel to the X-Fi Platinum. Those old ribbon cables are easy to mess up and plug in incorrectly. Unplug it on both ends and then reconnect, making sure you have firmly plugged into the card and the auxiliary panel. Also, make sure you have the front panel’s four-pin power connector (the same as a floppy drive’s) plugged into the PSU.

SUBMIT YOUR QUESTION Are flames shooting out of the back of your rig? First, grab a fire extinguisher and douse the flames. Once the pyrotechnic display has fizzled, email the doctor at doctor@maximumpc.com for advice on how to solve your technological woes.

Asus Xonar HDAV 1.3 Slim

Michael Brown — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:00:00 -0600

A very necessary evil

There’s no good reason for the existence of Asus’s Xonar HDAV 1.3 Slim soundcard, and yet it’s a godsend for those of us who want to hear the high-definition soundtracks on so many of the Hollywood movies released on Blu-ray disc. Blame Microsoft for the contradiction: No one would need a product like this if Vista provided a protected audio path.

After all, this card doesn’t decode Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks, nor does it enhance the audio or the video; it just passes the signals through to your A/V receiver. Using the included HDMI cable, the card takes the output from your videocard, re-encrypts the soundtrack so that no one can intercept the bit stream to make a bit-perfect copy, and outputs the encrypted audio and video to a second HDMI port. For those without HDMI, Asus also includes a DVI-to-HDMI cable.

The protected audio path requires a software component, too, so Asus bundles a copy of ArcSoft’s TotalMedia Theatre with the Xonar. Not your favorite media player? Too bad, it’s the only one that’s compatible. For what it’s worth, we don’t have any complaints about the program. There’s nothing objectionable about its user interface; it can handle all the major codecs; and it supports BD-Live, so you can access whatever online content is linked to the movie you’re watching.

Your home-theater PC will downsample Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks unless it provides a protected audio path such as Asus's Xonar HDAV 1.3 cards do.

Asus actually has three cards in its Xonar line that are capable of pulling off this trick. The HDAV 1.3 Slim, however, is the only low-profile card in the lineup, and it’s available only in a PCI formfactor. That’s unfortunate considering that our current favorite home-theater PC platform, AMD’s Live Home Cinema, ditched that aging standard.

So we dragged our desktop rig, which is currently outfitted with an HIS Radeon HD 4770, into our home theater for this evaluation. We connected it to a Yamaha RX-V665 A/V receiver, which is in turn connected to a 42-inch ViewSonic N4285P LCD television. We used Klipsch Reference Series RF-35 loudspeakers. In terms of image quality, the PC clobbered the Samsung BD-P1600 stand-alone Blu-ray player we used for comparison. But the Xonar card doesn’t perform any video processing, so we can’t give it credit for that; more importantly, the PC didn’t sound any better than the Blu-ray player. Then again, the PC would be forced to down-sample the soundtrack without the Xonar card in the loop.

To get lossless Blu-ray audio out of your PC, you'll need to also play the movie using the included ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre player.

The HDAV 1.3 Slim has a front-panel output header that you can connect to your enclosure’s headphone jack, and a four-pin auxiliary input header you can connect to your TV tuner’s analog audio output. The mounting bracket has an S/PDIF output that can accommodate both coaxial and optical connectors (with an adapter), along with the aforementioned HDMI input and output. The card is compatible with the HDMI 1.3a specification and supports all three of its optional features: Deep Color (up to 48 bits per pixel, compared to HDMI 1.0’s 24-bit color), the xvYCC color space (which means the card uses the full range of values in an 8-bit space), and both lossless audio codecs.

Nonetheless, there’s really only one reason to buy an HDAV 1.3 Slim: So you can enjoy the splendor of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks while taking full advantage of your home-theater PC’s video capabilities.

Asus Xonar Essence STX

Gordon Mah Ung — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:36:15 -0500

Headphone audiophiles rejoice

There are a few dirty secrets in the tech industry, and one of the best-guarded among them regards multichannel audio—everybody wants multichannel audio but almost no one actually runs the speakers to use it.

Sure, we all cheered when PC audio went from 4.1 to 5.1, and then from 6.1 to 7.1, but who actually runs that many satellites around his or her PC? That’s why Asus’s Xonar Essence STX is a soundcard that’s long overdue. Instead of pushing pointless multi-satellite specs, the Essence STX is aimed at folks who spend more money on a set of headphones than some people put out for an entire surround sound set.

Three out of five editors picked the Essence STX over other soundcards.

The card shares the same audio processor and PCI-E bridge chip as the budget Xonar DX card, but the similarities stop there. Asus polished the PCB and components for the stereo and headphone crowd. Headphoneophiles will be especially pleased with the isolated power sources for the headphone and line out. Also catering to the audiophile crowd are replaceable opamps to let you tune the “color” of the audio. It’s not the first time this has been done, but it’s a nice touch. The card features Burr-Brown digital-to-analog converters and is rated at 124dB signal-to-noise ratio out the headphone jack. In addition to the 1/4-inch headphone jack, a pair of RCA outputs, a 1/4-inch line out, and a combo optical/coax SPDIF round out the card’s options (Dolby Digital Live is supported in digital).

We performed close listening tests using Dolby lossless TrueHD and a set of Etymotic ER4 earphones and found the audio to be clean and crisp. We also did an A/B Pepsi Challenge between the Essence STX, an X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty, and a laptop, using 24-bit/96KHz PCM audio, and the Essence STX was preferred by three of the five test subjects.

Though the Essence STX is not pushed as a gaming card, we did play a handful of games with the card and found the sound to be quite good. Although EAX5 is not supported, Microsoft Vista and sparse title support has mostly nullified the X-Fi API advantage today.

The upshot is that the Essence STX is a hell of a good card. Hardcore gamers will still want a real X-Fi, but for folks who are interested in getting the most from their earphones, the Essence STX is your choice.

Brando's "Tube Delight" isn't What You Think

Paul Lilly — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:10:15 -0500

We'll admit that a soundcard isn't the first thing that came to mind when we heard you could order the "Tube Delight" online. But that's exactly what it is, and it's the funkiest USB audio solution we've ever seen.

The portable PC soundcard comes encased in a transparent vacuum tube with a fade-in-out blue LED for power-on and idle status indication. It supports 16-bit 16KHz/32KHz/48KHz recording and playback with both rated at THD+N -73dB and SNR 85dB, and comes with the obligatory 3.5mm headphone and microphone ports.

Hong Kong vendor Brando has the USB soundcard on sale now for $32, which is as cheap as you'll ever find anyone selling anything having to do with a Tube Delight.

Image Credit: brando.com.hk

Ask the Doctor: Pluggin' the Analog Hole

The Maximum PC Staff — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:28:22 -0500

On my old Windows XP PC, I used Audacity to record music, etc., from the Internet with great results.

Recently I bought a Dell XPS 420 with Windows Vista 64-bit and now Audacity (or even the PC’s Creative Sound recording software) can’t record any audio. I came across some related forums and tried a couple of suggestions (check disabled items on the Sound properties, etc.), which haven’t worked.

In XP I used the Stereo Mix setting in Audacity but in Vista I don’t have that option. And recording from the mic isn’t an option, either. Is this a Vista “feature”? If so, how can I record audio from the Internet? Vista has grown on me so I’d rather not downgrade to XP.

—Suleman

You’ve got it, Suleman. Recording from the soundcard is disabled in Vista to prevent people from gettin’ music for free by taking advantage of the “analog hole”—that is, recording real-time sound output rather than actually duplicating files.

Sounds like you’ve already tried enabling disabled devices, the usual fix, so we don’t have any further advice. On the bright side, music subscription services like Rhapsody let you download from a selection of millions of songs for a small monthly fee (and keep them as long as you have your subscription), while Internet radio stations like Pandora, last.fm, and Slacker.com let you listen for free.

Update - Second Opinion: In April, you advised reader Suleman that there was no easy way for him to use his soundcard to record music from the Internet in Vista (“Plugging the Analog Hole”). Ask him if he has an old PC that can still access the Internet. I use one with a 600MHz CPU, 256KB of RAM, and an 8GB hard drive with Windows XP home. This is quite adequate for listening to music and surfing the net using DSL.

Connect the line-out jack from the Internet computer to the line-in jack of the machine running Audacity. Windows can’t tell whether the analog signal arriving at the line-in jack comes from the Internet, a radio, or an old vinyl LP. --Frank

Creative's X-Fi Will Pimp Your Ride

Paul Lilly — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 13:15:06 -0600

Tuning and tweaking cars and PCs are two hobbies that are often likened to each other because of the many parallels, and thanks to JC Hyun Systems, the two even share some of the same DNA. That's because the South Korean car audio supplier has just developed the first automobile infotaiment system using Creative's X-Fi technology.

"I believe all motorists seek to enjoy music and videos of the highest quality when traveling in their cars," JC Hyun Systems said. "They expect the same high standards of entertainment experience they enjoy at home, something which most car audio or car infotainment systems in the market have been unable to match so far. By integrating the state-of-the-art Creative X-Fi audio technology to the RUNZ CI-7100, I am confident that we can propel car infotainment enjoyment to the next level and set the standard for next generation systems to come in the near future."

The svelte looking RUNZ CI-7100 Dash-Car Navigation Device comes with a 7-inch display with an 800 x 480 resolution, an Intel dual-core 360/300MHz processor, MMSP2 MPEG video hardware engine, SiRF III GPS chipset, and Creative's X-Fi audio processor with support for CMSS-3D and 24-bit Crystalizer. Other features include an SDHC card slot, Bluetooth, iPod 30-pin socket, USB host, and support for a variety of media formats, including MP3, WMA, OGG, WMV, MPEG4, DIVX, and XVID.

Apogee Digital Ships $1000 Symphony 64 Pro-Audio Sound Card for Rich Audiophiles

Paul Lilly — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 14:20:44 -0500

Apogee Digital has begun shipping it's Symphony 64 soundcard worldwide. The PCI Express-based card supports up to 64 channels of 24-bit 192kHz digital input and output, or double the amount of I/O in Apogee's previous Symphony soundcard. Apogee has designed the card to interface the company's X-Series and Rosetta Series converters directly to the Mac Pro, the culmination of which would create The Symphony System, a complete pro audio solution.

Other goodies include Apogee's VBus technology, which gives users the ability to route stand-alone software instruments directly between Core Audio based applications rather than as plug-ins, and the company's SBus technology, which Apogee claims "doubles the DSP power of The Symphony System."

Gamers and PC users (as in, non-Mac owners) need not apply, and that's probably a good thing given the soundcard's $1000 price tag. Ouch!

Image Credit: Apogee Digital