LOSTCIRCUITS

Summary

PC-based sound is an attractive alternative to high-end home theater systems. The combination of true surround-sound decoding not only for DVD playback but also for positional audio in gaming, along with the capability of archiving precious Vinyl in digital media format combines the capabilities of high end recording studios from some 5 years ago with the power achieved by the latest high end gaming systems. The flexibility and upgradeability of the PC along with the option of archiving by burning optical media and makes such a platform a killer combination. We have taken two of the real high-end offerings on the market, that is the AOpen AX4GE Tube and the Terratec Aureon 5.1 Sky for the first installment of a series of high-end PC sound solution reviews.

The emphasis of these reviews will not be on sampling rates, neither will there be any digital sound quality measurements, we'll leave the latter to deaf lab rats. The focus will be on subjective sound quality, 3D positional sound and analog-digital encoding and playback. Those who expect "I heard the bullets wheezing around my ears" and similar should not read any further.

Old-fashioned vacuum tubes as the one used on the AOpen AX4GE Tube are still the solution of choice for warm, high-end sound that cannot be reproduced by solid-state media. We will have more details on the following pages.

How It All Started

At one time PC sound was synonymous with Soundblaster. Creative Labs had a firm grip on the multimedia audio market, and if it wasn't Soundblaster compatible, it wasn't worth the PCB its circuits were printed on. The demise of the ISA slot and the software change away from DOS caught Creative napping, however, and other companies took the lead to bring the sound card to the PCI slot. ESS emerged with stereo PCI sound cards, and Aureal stunned gamers with the concept of A3D positional sound first from two, then four speakers.

Creative jerked themselves awake with the purchase of ESS and began a lengthy litigation war against Aureal. Not content to let A3D rule gaming sound, Creative developed their own positional sound API and named it Enviromental Audio Extensions, or EAX. In order to catch up to the mindshare Aureal had curried with develpers, Creative released the EAX API to become part of Microsoft's DirectSound. Sequential versions of both EAX and A3D competed for the attentions of game designers while Aureal-based cards battled the Soundblaster Live! for sales. Eventually Aureal ran out of cash (due in part to legal costs incurred fighting Creative) and Creative purchased their main competitor in the sound card market. Nvidia, who had built a reputation for designing 3D video chips, quietly hired some former employees of Aureal, but nobody really knew what Nvidia wanted with them.

For a while it looked like Creative would again enjoy the dominance they had during the ISA days, but competitors began to emerge to chip away at the mighty SBLive series. Cirrus Logic developed audio DSP's that could challenge Creative's EMU10K chip feature-for-feature. Philips entered the fray with their Edge series of sound cards, but seems to have neglected the line lately. Nvidia revealed what they were doing with those ex-Aureal employees when it unveiled the original Nforce chipset featuring not only a built-in Nvidia 3D accellerator, but a new audio solution that took 5.1 channel support a step further than anybody else with on-the-fly Dolby Digtal encoding.

VIA, who had made a few chipsets themselves, reacted to Nvidia's step on their turf by purchasing ICEnsemble and their Envy line of audio chips. Even the lowly onboard AC97 codec has made leaps in quality. Aopen went so far as to introduce motherboards with an old-fashioned vacuum tube to give the onboard sound the characteristic "warmth" lacking from transistor amplifiers. Creative has stayed current with the Audigy and Audigy 2 chips and kept at the forefront by introducing features like Firewire and high resolution DVD Audio playback. PC multimedia sound has gone from scratchy 8 bit mono to full-blown 6.1 and 7.1 channel powerhouses that can not only rock your living room with Dolby Digital and DTS film soundtracks, but also send a tingle up your spine with the sound of your enemy's footstep just before he frags you.

All of that brings us to these products. There are other companies active in the PC sound arena, like Abit and the aforementioned Philips, but I think we have represented here the products that are really serious about advancing the state of the art. Nvidia's nForce2 MCP-T is present in the form of the Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard. This motherboard will be used for evaluation of all sound cards.

The other motherboard present is the AOpen AX4GE Tube, with its unique approach to onboard audio. On the PCI card side the Cirrus Logic genre (which also includes the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and VideoLogic's Sonic line) is represented by the Hercules Game Theater XP 6.1. Creative's contender is the 6.1 channel Audigy 2. VIA's EnvyHT chip appears on the Terratec Aureon 5.1 Sky. Details on the contestants will follow, but first we'll cover some technical background.

Next Page:    => Love Is All Around =>