DH Review: Auzentech X-Fi Prelude 7.1 and ASUS Xonar D2

Zardon

Read The Review Here
_______________________________

CPU's and graphics cards are always prime candidates for discussion when building an enthusiast system. Rarely does anyone give soundcards a thought, even though aural pleasure should be as much a requirement as the ultimate eye candy.

In the last few years things have been pretty stale with Creative having a clear lead due to their Soundblaster Live! and Audigy cards. It was only recently that things got interesting again, with Creative’s new X-Fi line bringing new cards to the table, as well as several other companies’ proprietary solutions. Today we’ll be looking at Auzen’s take on an X-Fi soundcard and a 7.1 channel soundcard from ASUS which places special emphasis on Dolby and DTS support.

Chaos

nice review, overall i guess the Auzentech card was the better choice overall. How much superior to onboard HD audio do you think the cards offer. Would a 2.1 Klipsch Pro Media setup see much benifit over onboard HD audio

bug77

Z is going to 'love' me for this, but this is one of the weaker DH reviews.

1. Genius speakers to evaluate the performance of sound cards with 120db SNR?
2. No reason not to use EAX5.0 in games when the only perceptible difference is a loss in performance? Then again, this may be related to #1.
3. Not recommending the Prelude to audiophiles because of lack of DD/DTS? How many audiophiles have their music encoded in more than stereo?

Looks like a rushed review to me.

WhO_KnOwS

1. The Genius speakers were only used to judge how the cards would sound on an average 5.1 system. If you haven't noticed it was a Creative 7.1 set that was used as a primary surround test setup.
2. Using EAX5.0 over no EAX technology whatsoever - yeah, you'll hear a huge difference. Using it over previous EAX versions however and the difference ain't that huge. It is noticable, don't get me wrong, but it's not revolutionary.
3. True, the sound is encoded in stereo. But believe it or not many audiophiles have surround systems (admitably the front speakers are usually high end stereo speakers). And in cases like this you'll want more than just cloned channels all around you. My father is a professional cello player and as big an audiophile as you can find (hence the vinyl recording comparisons and the high end stereo speakers used). And we both agree that on a surround system the DTS/DD technology used to upsample the signal produced better sounding results than simple channel clonning.

Zardon

Oh not at all. I don't publish weak reviews - weak reviews get binned or re written - ive been an audiophile myself for 20 years and spent close to 50,000 on high end components so in my view as Editor in chief this review is well written for the target audience on DH. Would I have altered parts if we were a audiophile website? certainly. but true purist audiophiles, don't use "sound cards", digital audio or compressed formats and even a computer in the mix anyway so the comments are moot.

Peter answered your questions quite well, hopefully you are educated on the subject a little more now. I do however strongly suggest you read the reviews a little more thoroughly in future (after all you seemingly missed the Sonus Faber Domus speakers and Primare 121 Amplifier used as high end partners), seems your review complaints lately are somewhat clutching at straws.

germanjulian

happy with my asus

Shike

I beg to differ, with DVD-A slowly but surely dominating SACD and the selection growing, there's little reason to go back to vinyl. And if that were the case, who would give a crap about soundcard quality anyway? Why even attempt to review either card with audiophiles in mind? I'm not trying to be rude but it seems pretty contradictory to me.

Even more so, using a PC as a music server is becoming more appealing. Heck, consider some of the digital media streaming devices aimed at audiophiles and you should see what a gross generalization you've made.

You can get the ever sweet taste in your mouth just by looking at the products found on the FLAC website.

There's also no measurement of the impact changing the OPAMPs may present. The "warm sound" the Asus brings to the table may just be a whole $12-20 difference.

Lastly, I have to agree that most audiophiles aren't going to bother with DD or DTS.

You may think bug77's cristisms lack weight or warrant, but there's some glaring flaws IMO too.

In other news, I already have a Prelude on the way regardless. Can't wait for it to show.