NewsApogee Digital Ships $1000 Symphony 64 Pro-Audio Sound Card for Rich Audiophiles
Posted 10/29/08 at 02:20:44 PM by Paul Lilly
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!
NewsCreative Announces X-Fi Notebook Soundcard. Again.
Posted 09/17/08 at 12:12:24 PM by Paul Lilly
Creative this week unveiled its Sound Blaster X-Fi Notebook, which as the name implies is an add-in soundcard for (cue the drum roll) notebooks. But wait, doesn't Creative already offer an X-Fi geared towards road warriors? The answer is yes, and the X-Fi Xtreme Audio Notebook has been available for some time now, but this re-release sports a slimmer profile, a new color scheme, and the ability to transmit wirelessly.
That's right - when paired with the optional Creative Wireless Receiver, the X-Fi will have the ability to beam music to your speakers rather than remain tethered. The new soundcard supports up to 4 wireless receivers, and each one can be placed up to 100 feet away from the notebook.
The slimmed down peripheral fits into both ExpressCard 34 and 54 slots (previous version is 54 only), and brings the usual assortment of goodies to the table, including CMSS-3D, EAX Advanced HD, and Creative's Crystalizer technology. You get a pair of headphones bundled in, along with a free download of PowerDVD with full DTS and Dolby Digital decoding support.
Look for availability by the end of month, with the X-Fi Notebook priced at $80 and optional receiver commanding $70.
NewsCreative Finally Releases Vista Functional X-Fi Soundcard Drivers
Posted 07/31/08 at 02:05:11 PM by Paul Lilly
We were beginning to wonder if Creative would ever update its X-Fi soundcard drives to work properly in Vista, and after the whole Daniel_K fiasco, we were about ready to throw in the towel. For those that stuck it out, Creative has finally released a new driver package that fixes the hardware Dolby Digital and DTS decoding in its X-Fi cards running under Vista. The company also added DVD Audio playback, a feature that previously went by the wayside when upgrading from XP to Vista.
The new driver also addresses a niggling bug that causes system crashes when switching to an unsupported sampling rate in the Audio Creation Mode while Dolby Digital Live is enabled.
All X-Fi soundcards except the Xtreme Audio version are supported with the driver update.
ReviewsAsus Xonar D2X 
Posted 06/18/08 at 08:23:19 PM by Gordon Mah Ung
Much has been made of the incredible speed advantages PCI Express offers over PCI. Beyond GPUs, however, we haven’t found much worthy of occupying those slots. Asus hopes to change that with its Xonar D2X card—the first soundcard we’ve reviewed that makes use of the PCI Express interface. The D2X is basically a PCI-E version of the Xonar D2 (reviewed April 2008). In our review of the Xonar D2 we lamented the card’s lack of advanced EAX support, something Asus has tried to fix here. But do their workarounds, well, work?
FROM THE ARCHIVEDaily News Brief: Asus Adds HDMI to Xonar Soundcard
Posted 06/05/08 at 04:22:27 PM by Paul "One4yu2c" Lilly
Asus revitalizes add-in soundcard wars, get up and close with AMD's Puma platform, Apple tries to entice students with free iPod offer, Nehalem benchmarks, and much more!
FROM THE ARCHIVEDaily News Brief: Hackers Prey on Epilepsy Patients
Posted 04/01/08 at 05:58:50 PM by Paul "One4yu2c" Lilly
Epileptic support forum hit hacked with images design to induce seizures, seven out of 10 Google searches at risk of infection, Daniel_K discusses his modified drivers, and more!
NewsDaily News Brief: Creative Publicly Denounces Modder & Sparks Internet Backlash
Posted 03/31/08 at 03:28:16 PM by Paul Lilly
Creative faces protest after public demand to cease modified soundcard drivers, TorrentSpy shuts down, Linux survives hacking contest, and much more!
ReviewsAsus Xonar D2
Posted 03/05/08 at 02:16:09 PM by Gordon Mah Ung
Who’d have thunk it? Long considered a dead zone, soundcards are making a resurgence. Driven by an outcry for audio that doesn’t sound like a box of snap, crackle, pop every time you access your USB ports, manufacturers are releasing new soundcards that surpass the free audio that comes with your motherboard. This month, we test an Auzentech card that uses a Creative Labs chip and Asus’s new entry into PC audio.
Click Read More for more.
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