Your review was very helpful.

However, one thing that I found is the glaring omission of the assessment of the RECORDING capabilities of the sound card.

Did you checlk if the recording feature actually worked?
Thanks.

Audigy2 DSP still works at 16/48 fixed. So whenever you use EAX or any effets by the DSP you lose all the24/96 quality.

I saw the update and didn't understand why you still haven't edited info about the Audigy ADC being 24/48 and more important, why you haven't updated the number of DirectSound3D voices in Audigy2. I provided two links to similar articles when you asked for sources.

Awesome right up. One question, however. In your previous roundup you gave the Editor's Choice to both the Hercules Fortissimo III and and the DMX 6Fire DMX, yet you only chose to use the 6Fire in this roundup? Why is that, might I ask?

#25: I wondered the same thing when I got my Revo 7.1 (about onboard inputs) and was frantically searching through the manual trying to figure out where to plug in the audio cable from my DVD drive. Simple answer to set your mind at ease - you don't need to. Unplug that audio cable and throw it AWAY. When you install the drivers for the card, it asks you if you want to enable Digital sound - it's recommended, and you want to say Yes. The card gets digital sound through your 40 or 80-pin ribbon cable and you no longer need the analog audio cable. Sweet, huh? After hearing this card for a week, you couldn't pay me to go back to Creative. It's that good.

I have this card too. wonderful little thing to use in a Shuttle box. The only bad thing is that I can't seem to listen to audio being run from my AIW to the Audio-In jack whiel watching cable. If I record, I can playback and hear the sound, no problem. It's just when I'm trying to watch the show while it's on. Just gets to me.

The Revo is a great card hardware wise but as far as the driver goes .. there are few well recorded bugs that are unique to it .They may not show up at first . Sound quality is certainly way above anything Creative ever released.

Farfolen - Jimmy with the settings. Somewhere something is either muting or setting the linein volume to zero, but recording overrides that.

AG #48 - What drivers/system hardware/etc? While I only get stereo in GTA3, that's the game's fault for forcing stereo... I'm not getting sync issues in UT2K3, though.

This review was biased towards the Terratec DMX from the beginning. It was obvious from the first page and on every following page.

Great review. If there ever was a review I was looking forward to, this was it. It only missed the Terratec Aureon 5.1 Sky and 7.1 Space line. They both have 24-bit/192KHz playback so their chip should be the same (Envy24HT). A couple of minor points:

1. You keep stating the Audigy's ADC as 16/48 while it's actually 24/96. Not that it matters too much anyway but it's incorrect. Refer to these 2 links on Creative's website to see for yourself:

http://www.soundblaster.com/products/audigy/compare.asp
http://www.soundblaster.com/products/audigy/specs.asp

2. Audigy2 has doubled the number of DirectSound3D voices played back at the same time from 32 in Audigy to 64. That's why 3D Mark 2003 can only run the 60-sound test on Audigy2.

The other big feature of the Revolution? Bass Management. You can se individual crossovers for any and all of those 7 speakers, or just tell the Revo what kid of speaker you have, and it will set the crossover for you. Show me the Creative card that does that. For an HTPC application, the Revolution is unmatched.

The review was good, but could have been better and more accurate by including some real-world (as opposed to performance) gaming observations. I've tried this card, and while the performance hit was indeed noticable, especially with any 3D audio enabled in current games, 3D audio wouldn't work properly at all in some games: no rear speaker output (GTA3), sound and visuals everso slightly out of sync (UT2003), and miscellaneous issues in a few others, though I can't recall the details, so I won't go on.

The card's sound quality was phenomenal, but I'm a gamer who likes his positional audio, and I've never had a problem with my Audigy2 or Fortissimo III in this regard. I wish this card had better hardware support for 3D audio.

Great review.

1 question: in the future can you do an MP3 test that uses a decoder that supports 24bits? Such as Winamp 2.81 with the MAD plugin?

Also you'd better get started on those double blind soundproof chamber tests! kidding...

RightMark Audio Analyzer does interesting tests/numbers by looping lineout to linein and checking out the results. I can run that if there's interest.

Recording tests might be fun, especially for those of us trying to run cheap home studios.

Maybe rip a CD (or preferrably DVD) audio track, record the same one through Line In and compare the two?

By the way, nice choice for the last song, I learned how to play that this week...

Good writeup Diss. Good idea on crippling the cpu speed to put more strain on the overhead.

Mayhaps the additional slowdown of the Revolution compared to the DMX is due to the 192khz vice 96khz processing of the ship? Course, using 44khz sounds, I don't really know.

Also, one typo in there, "strenght" on page 3.

ER

I'm starting to lose my regret for purchasing the Audigy 2. Now that the reviews are out on the new VIA card, I see that it is about on par with the Audigy 2 in most situations. The performance impact is important to me, so I am happy to hear that my current card ranks up at the top in that department. =)

-eckslax

I guess the 'burning question' is:
Does the damm thing get along with a VIA chipset board better than a Creative soundcard?
I find it interesting that this was not tested...............of course first you have to admit that VIA chipsets and Creative soundcards have 'issues'.
I also find it interesting that the thing is a 'resource hog'. In your original review this was noted against Creative cards and compared to a Creative card this one sucks up more resources, but now that is OK.
Hey....don't get me wrong, I'm all for variety/choice, but aren't these reviews getting a bit less review like and more a listening test?

card sounds great! i am using it on a kt266a and haven't had any pops or clicks. the only problem is the broken line in. i bought it to record electric guitar, but without being able to monitor the line in (in real time) it's kind of useless.

This card is very recommended over at avsforum.com, so if you are into home-theater pcs this is certainly a card to consider.

Stupid question: With no internal connectors, how does CD playback from a CD or DVD drive work?

At $250, the card is out of reach of many consumers

Why is a $400 video card acceptable if it performs well, but a quality sound card for more than $100 is out of line?

Heh sorry AG7, but $96 shipped is sub $100... what you bitching about =)

So the lesson is, stick with onboard nForce2 unless you need 7.1 speaker support. ^_^

It's too bad the folks at Maximum PC and PC Gamer magazine (who are under the same umbrella, incidentally) will never ever admit that there might actually be better audio solutions out there than what Creative Labs has to offer. They know where their bread and butter is coming from with the full page color ads that I see in their magazines. Creative was awesome back in the ISA days, but they needed to buy out someone else to get into the PCI market. Since then, their products have suffered from driver issues and PCI latency issues. Oh, and let's not forget Digital Rights Management. I haven't used Creative Labs' sound cards in my computer for quite some time now and have no regrets dumping them.

By the way, what's with Tech Report trying to break through my firewall each time I post? I got the following two messages from Zone Alarm: Tsk Tsk.

The firewall has blocked Internet access to your computer (TCP Port 8080) from www.tech-report.com (205.177.13.112) (TCP Port 48645) [TCP Flags: S].

Time: 4/2/03 9:01:50 AM

The firewall has blocked Internet access to your computer (HTTP) from www.tech-report.com (205.177.13.112) (TCP Port 48646) [TCP Flags: S].

Time: 4/2/03 9:01:52 AM

CircleSurround? For mixing up an MP3 soundtrack or song to 5.1 it works great. The one thing bugging me... The nForce2 could upmix, too... automatically. If I leave CircleSurround on and fire up a 4 or 5.1 speaker source, ONLY the simple stereo gets processed. A major irritation, when you can't figure out why all the dialog on your movie is missing...

As for the virtualization, I like it better than what nForce2 did, and that was my previous high mark.

Nothing audio/video is happy on Via. Apparently even the new PCI on the 8235 south has some serious quirks that only the 4in1s can ameliorate, and those aren't a 100% fix. I was on a KT400 this last week... The Rev7.1 would pop and crackle a very little bit, but the Audigy was just unlistenable. The onboard Via-powered junk sounded better than the Audigy. For the older 8233A and below souths, just forget about it. No high end sound card could be happy in such a PCI Hellhole. Get a GTXP, as they work around Via very nicely, though at the expense of not sounding as good as current cards, and having their own quirks.

As for the Rev7.1 consuming more resources and being 'bad', I didn't find that to be an issue here. I never bashed CL for that, and I don't think it's an issue for most folks. I'd trade another 5% of my 3D speed to keep my Rev7.1, without any need to deliberate. It sounds THAT good, decoding AC3 into 5.1 32bit packed float, or even just playing a good MP3 through CircleSurround.

Doesn't mean the performance gap between the 6fire and the Rev7.1 escaped my notice, though..... M-Audio - Fix that ASAP!

I've been keeping tabs on the M-Audio Revolution 7.1 card for a few months now and this is the first review I've seen in the PC hardward enthusiast sites. The review is great because it compares the new card with the others and gives a clear view where the new kid stands in respect to sound quality and gaming performance.

One of the unique features that the Revolution offers is SRS Circle Surround II which coverts stereo sound to surround sound. I would have liked to read some comments on how well it worked.

Thanks for the review!

Is it just me, or is it mildly annoying when people claim something is Sub $100 because you can find it for a $1-$5 cheaper than $100? The cheapest I found it on pricewatch was $96 after shipping.

CompUsa is carrying it for 99.99$ nearly everywhere. For once they have a good product, at a normal price....