New sound cards: interesting korean one, and creatives latest

[thomas997]

I noticed a few reviews of a new korean sound card, and it has some cool features.

http://tinyurl.com/8r3a2

An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.

- Dolby digital encoding
- Optical and coax connectors
- Socketed op-amps (that they encourage you to upgrade)

Sad thing is the dissapointing rightmark audio test results (crosstalk and interference). If it wasnt for that it would appear to be quite a good card.





Then theres the new creative X-fi that supposedly increases the quality of your low bit mp3s.

http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST-22364-2435-x-x-x

An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.

- The X-Fi chip itself has 51.1 million transistors, 10 times more than Creative's previous chip, the 4.6 million transistor Audigy audio processor.
- 64mb of ram (on certain models)

Personally I hate EAX, I wish games would switch to DD somehow.

 

[Stocker]

No comment on the cards per se, but

Good luck digitally manipulating low-fi data to get it better...

Wouldn't it be interesting if some Linux geek finds a way to run a computer-on-a-soundcard? That is WAY more processing power and RAM than old computers had. The amount of RAM on that card is more than all the hard drives in my house when I was a younger fellow.

 

[squalor]

Personally I hate EAX

Me too ! I miss Aureal A3D. Creative bought them so they could kill them.

 

[igge]

If you want high quality soundcards buy a Creamware Pulsar II. They may not be as cheap as Creative or have all that useless EAX or a gazillion transistors. But they do have DSPs & a sexy software package Creative/EMU could never compete with.