Auzentech X-Fi Prelude 7.1

As with all hardware on the market the first thing a potential buyer sees is the packaging. Auzen know this, so the front of the box has all the important information nicely laid out. The back has even more, specifically features that make this card different from the other X-Fi products out there. The contents are what you would expect, namely the card itself, a very colourful manual (slightly short on information, but very attractive design), the driver CD, two 3.5mm toslink optical adapters (to be inserted into the 25Gbps capable SPDIF connectors, transforming them into optical input/output channels) and a standard issue toslink optical cable. Overall a decent package, mainly due to the optical cable which they could have decided to skip.

Though some might think soundcards aren’t very complex that is actually quite far from the truth. Just looking at the array of capacitors located on the PCB confirms this, as does the passive cooling installed on the main sound chip, and while the card definitely looks impressive we can’t help but point out the awful brown color Auzentech have used for the PCB. This won’t really matter to most, but out of all the PCB colours available, brown has to be one of the least appealing.

On the bright side, the card has a couple of nice features that are often missing from discrete sound cards. Perhaps the most important one is the front panel audio support (10-1 pin). While this in itself doesn’t affect the features of the card or the sound quality, it is nice to be able to use the front-side case connectors for the microphone and headphones.

As expected from a 7.1 soundcard there are 6+2 connectors located on the side. The six 3.5mm jacks allow users to connect a microphone and line in cable, as well as the 4 7.1 channel cables (front, side, back, and center/woofer). The two SPDIF connectors located next to them double as optical input/output, allowing users to connect the card to digital sound systems, as well as capture sound from external digital sources such as the PS3 or some of the newer DVD players.

The feature list doesn’t end there however. Thanks to some high quality components used on the card it has a high performance DAC rating of 120dB, 123dB dynamic with the help of multi-bit architecture. The card also has 64MB of memory installed, freeing up system memory in games that support X-RAM (Doom 3 engine games and Battlefield 2142 amongst others). Thanks to the X-Fi chipset the Prelude 7.1 also supports EAX 5.0 (HD), arguably the best game sound effects system.

Also notable is the swappable OPAMP (Operational Amplifier) socket, which lets users upgrade the analog sound quality of the front left and right channels. Finally, the card is compatible with Auzen’s X-Tension line of boards for added features.