Auzentech Announces Shipment Dates for X-Fi HomeTheater HD

[btarunr]

Auzentech, Inc. announced shipment dates today for the highly-anticipated X-Fi HomeTheater HD sound card. Reviewer shipments of the X-Fi HomeTheater HD will begin the second week of July. According to Auzentech the sound card will also go into full production at that time, enabling customer shipments to begin at the end of July.

"We are excited to officially announce shipment dates of the X-Fi HomeTheater HD sound card," said Stephane Bae, president of Auzentech, Inc. "We appreciate the patience of all our customers, distributors, and dealers who have waited anxiously for this sound card."



The release of the X-Fi HomeTheater HD sound card to reviewers and customers follows the completion of several rounds of testing by Auzentech staff to match the sound card to a full spectrum of home theater equipment. Auzentech reports that because the X-Fi HomeTheater HD is "a groundbreaking product in the home theater sound card space," its staff will actively support reviewers as they perform their tests.

The X-Fi HomeTheater HD is the result of cooperation between several companies that include Auzentech, Creative Labs, Cyberlink, and Silicon Image.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[erocker]

Need an audiophile's review and if it's good this will be my birthday present to myself.

 

[e6600]

when i saw the title i thought it was another creative card , then i saw it was auzentech

 

[HolyCow02]

What is so special about this? I have a 5.1 Surround system, but I am currently using my mobo's onboard. Will this be worth the upgrade?

 

[Darren]

What is so special about this? I have a 5.1 Surround system, but I am currently using my mobo's onboard. Will this be worth the upgrade?

Soundcard to produce 5.1 encoding of Dolby Digital or DTS from stereo sources such as MP3s and games and process the data via a HDMI cable whist also processing HD video through the same cable without degration or down convertion. It also features creative's EAX 5.0 in hardware as an added bonus, if you've got a home cinema system that supports the new HD standards DD True HD and DTS Masters its worth the soundcard upgrade.

 

[imperialreign]

Need an audiophile's review and if it's good this will be my birthday present to myself.

it'll probably be a while . . . techreport has great reviews, but they don't do audio that often . . .

it'd be damn nice if TPU had their own reviewers for audio hardware

 

[hat]

Unfortunately it's pretty hard to measure audio like you can everything else. For example scratching on a chalkboard doesn't bother me at all but you would think others would die from it...

 

[imperialreign]

Unfortunately it's pretty hard to measure audio like you can everything else. For example scratching on a chalkboard doesn't bother me at all but you would think others would die from it...

true - but we have the software (and some have the hardware) to test the actual output, and what the waveforms look like . . .

that's about the same as measuring a GPUs FPS in games . . .

 

[LaidLawJones]

I purchased an Auzentech prelude on sale($125) and the sound difference between on-board and the card was astounding. I could not believe the sound that was coming from my 2.1 Logitech's. The games that took advantage of the X-Fi (BF2) made the game so much more fun to play. I could hear people walking through the grass, pick up a jeep from way way out etc. I re-watched a lot of action movies just because the sound was now so good. To bad V64 Ult killed it, had to put Pro back in. If this new card is as good as the Prelude, it will be near the top of my "to buy" list.

LANPARTY DK 790FX-M2RS

# Realtek ALC885 8-channel HD Audio Codec
# High-performance DACs with 106dB dynamic range (A-Weight), ADCs with 101dB dynamic range (A-Weight)

 

[AsphyxiA]

meh, its just another xfi card. id rather have a card with a cmedia oxygen for audiophile sound. av200 sounds good too, however its just a rebranded oxygen

 

[AsRock]

Shame it don't have the older optical port on it or might of been interested. Although the soundmax II is good anyways. I get surround sound with just 2 speakers as is although not perfect as the speakers are only cheap but it's there.

I would get it of egg just to try it out then just pay the restocking fee's after.

 

[kylew]

Shame it don't have the older optical port on it or might of been interested. Although the soundmax II is good anyways. I get surround sound with just 2 speakers as is although not perfect as the speakers are only cheap but it's there.

I would get it of egg just to try it out then just pay the restocking fee's after.

It does have a normal optical port. It just comes with an adapter.

The coaxial port has an adapter for an optical cable.

Link

Scroll down to the fourth image from the bottom, for the image next to this text:

Digital Out Combo
Shift between Coaxial and Optical output with included adaptor.

 

[denice25]

that's good.... thanks for the post....

 

[AsRock]

It does have a normal optical port. It just comes with an adapter.

The coaxial port has an adapter for an optical cable.

Link

Scroll down to the fourth image from the bottom, for the image next to this text:

Cool, might be a tight fit depending how long the cable is. Thinking you might have to buy that as a extra . Need to see how well they support it too 1st.

 

[kylew]

Cool, might be a tight fit depending how long the cable is. Thinking you might have to buy that as a extra . Need to see how well they support it too 1st.

They come with standard optical cables too, but this is the small adapter that you need.

It actualy comes with the card though, and you can then use any normal toslink cable with it.

 

[Wile E]

meh, its just another xfi card. id rather have a card with a cmedia oxygen for audiophile sound. av200 sounds good too, however its just a rebranded oxygen

Except that this is every bit as high quality in output as the Cmedia based cards, AND has the added benefit of hardware processing, whereas the Cmedia chip is just a glorified I/O chip. It's not the Oxygen itself that produces the high quality sound, it's the rest of the hardware the vendors choose. There are low-end Oxygen cards that sound equal to the average quality X-Fi cards.


Back on topic: Any word on price? This will be my card next year when I rebuild my main rig, and retire this rig to HTPC/TV Gamer/Server duty, provided the price isn't too steep.

 

[Mussels]

all those comments... and no ones noticed the title calling it a homeTHREATer

damnit auzentech, leave my home out of this what did it do to you.

 

[Wile E]

all those comments... and no ones noticed the title calling it a homeTHREATer

damnit auzentech, leave my home out of this what did it do to you.

No, no, no!!! You have the intent all wrong. It's the home Threater because the absolutely stunning output abilities can shake your entire home to it's foundation if you don't exercise some caution.

 

[DrunkenMafia]

I recently bought the auzentech cinema explosion and it kicks the hell out of my onboard DTS sound in my HTPC. It was worth it imo. I only have a cheapo YAMAHA 5.1 amp too so I could imagine it would sound even better with a good setup.

auzentech

 

[nemesis.ie]

OK, so it sounds interesting. But picture this:

Lets say I have an A/V processor (or receiver) that supports the new lossless formats and I have the PC set to send sound and video over HDMI.

What will this offer versus the current sound card (on-board, cheap) that will pass the signal out over the HDMI? (assuming I have the source player set to "pass through" mode?

Is the only difference the "quality" i.e. the S/N ratio etc. of the stream between it being opened by the player and sent to the HDMI?

I can see where this would be good if you have the speakers connected by analogue to the pre-in of your receiver or straight to a power amp, or if your current receiver does not support some format, so the card decodes it rather than a CPU bound codec, but am not seeing (other than the quality question) where it has a benefit when using pass-through.

Someone please enlighten me.

 

[Mussels]

when it comes to digital, supported formats and encoding is really all that matters.

I beleive the point of this is that you can use a HDMI cable from your video card to your sound card to your home theater system, so that your sound card does the audio and not your video card.

 

[sethk]

In the past the quality of your soundcard was judged on its DACs, it's DSPs / resampling and it's analog output. We've already seen (going all the way back to the Nforce2) sounds options for live Dolby Digital / DTS live encoding, which squeezes 5.1 (or more) channels into half the bitrate of 2 channel CD quality sound. While this doesn't sound bad, these new solutions can now output uncompressed 8 channel sound at 24 bits/192 khz, which puts it at over 25x the bitrate of 2 channel full CD quality audio, and over 50 times the bitrate of Dolby Digital Live.

However, this sound cards main draw is digital output, and unmolested audio (so no processing) so the "sound quality" is really coming from your receiver. This cards job is to just offload HDMI audio out of your PC with as little change as possible. If you have a high quality HDMI capable receiver attached to your PC, and good speakers, it's probably going to sound great. If you buy this card and then plug in speakers or headphones, that's quite a waste, I would recommend other soundcards (include other models from Auzentech) that will produce as good or better analog output.

ASUS has a similar card out that is the only currently available model that can do true PC Blu-Ray playback with all the audio options, uncompressed, non-downsampled, and with bitstreaming options for the new Dolby and DTS MA lossless codecs.

ATI video cards come close, they can do lossless 7.1 audio as well, however not with commercial blu-rays. There are workarounds that involve decryption and ripping, but these two cards (the ASUS and Auzentech) will be the only PC options to allow you to play commercial Blu-Rays from your PC with full non-downsampled audio, without using any hacks or decrypters.