[Culverin]

well i'm sure you guys have all heard that asus is putting out a soundcard?

and it's components are supposed to be better than the top x-fi cards on the market.

i'm not too sure how it is going to stack against the emu cards or anything else.
but i'd like to see what you guys think?

if nothing else, it is a HOT looking card

http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=5082&s=1

any guesstimates on the pricing?

 

[Clutz]

I don't think it will fare well against the Emu line of cards. It looks like they've put too much emphasis on 'bling' factor - perhaps that's overly judgemental, but my guess is that they're trying to make a sound card that looks fancy, rather than one that sounds really great.

 

[The Burn Pt.2]

When they put an led inside a digital coax jack...
Then again don't be too quick to judge. The chipsets they use are not bad, but don't expect wonders.
Targeted for computer game players and the such. Not a very demanding audience if you want my honest opinion...

 

[NoPants]

Actually gamers have pretty demanding reqs when it comes to sound cards

if the sound card doesn't have a separate cpu for processing signals it loads that work onto the main cpu, causing intense load

although for the sake of this forum, I guess it is true that this might not have much in the way of audiophile-grade goodness

but I thought it was a nice gesture that they put shielding on haha

 

[The Burn Pt.2]

Well if it were really for gamers it would have faster processing and better game integration, and other creature comforts.

 

[ROBSCIX]

Nobody seem to mention or notice this card is a C-Media 8788 card. Asus is attempting to rebrand the chip and act as though they designed it themselves...sorry no. The X-Meridian has LED in the Coax jacks but that is for optical communication. The RCA has a adapter for optical cables. I am wondering if they adopted/stole that idea....

 

[wanderman]

that is a very sexy card, but led's in the back of a case are useless. Hopefully the release a version with a nice 5.25 front plate.

 

[Bizzel]

Is that a fan? Surely that could only be bad for sound quality, electrical interference and whatnot?

 

[LeonvB]

Quote:

if the sound card doesn't have a separate cpu for processing signals it loads that work onto the main cpu, causing intense load

Actually that's no longer true. Even AC97 (the worst I can think of in current PC's) only causes a few percent of CPU load.

 

[error401]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wanderman /img/forum/go_quote.gif that is a very sexy card, but led's in the back of a case are useless. Hopefully the release a version with a nice 5.25 front plate.

Are you kidding? As soon as I saw that I thought it was a brilliant feature. Haven't you ever been poking awkwardly behind a PC without enough light to figure out which port is which? This'd be a godsend for whenever I need to swap some connections around, just see which colour of light gets blotted out and you know which socket you've plugged it into.