Palliator
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2004
- Posts
- 4
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First, thanks to everyone on this forum. I've been lurking here a while and have taken some advice as I upgraded much of my sound setup. Anyhow, I have some first impressions on the Audiotrak 7.1 that hopefully someone out there may find useful. I've owned a lot of cards over the last 10 years or so, but lately I've been frustrated finding a card that "does everything" I need it to. My previous card was a Creative Audigy 2. Unfortunately, as I upgraded my audio equipment (headphones, receiver, amp) I found the output quality to be lacking. My gaming needs are modest, stereo is good enough so the writing was on the wall for that card. My only apprehension for ditching it was my fondness for the Utopia Soundfont. I tried pairing it with a AV-710, but I wan't impressed by the driver support nor did I find having two cards to be an elegant solution. I'm particular about my PC setup, so the less the better for me. I seriously thought about an Emu card, but I tend to use my PC for DVDs (AC3 pass through) and yes, some gaming, so I thought that wasn't the right choice as I would still need another card. The Prodigy 7.1 was the same price as a 0404 ($99). So far, the Audiotrak is working as hoped. Unlike the Audigy, my receiver is showing 44.1 kHz streams. In other words, no fixed sample rate on the SPDIF. I haven't used the built in headphone amp much as I have my own, but it was powerful enough to drive my HD-580s at a decent volume. When you enable the amp in the Console, you can hear a "click" coming from the card. Reminds me of the mechanical relays on my old 3Dfx card.
Subjectively speaking, the sound is great. I am not an audiophile, but even with that said it is obvious that my listening to high end sources on the Audigy 2 was a limiting experience. I didn't know that really until now. Driver support is quite good. I was worried the card wouldn't work with ATI's Multimedia Center (I have an AIW9700). I had trouble with no sound while watching TV using the built in Nvidia Soundstorm. Some users with the Revo 7.1 have the same problem. No problems with the Prodigy, neither with muting or carrying the signal to the digital output. I must say I appreciate the fact that the drivers will fit on a floppy disk! Not that I need them to, but a far cry from the huge amount of space the Audigy 2 installation took! Gaming has been good enough for me, no issues so far. I haven't bothered using the Sensaura output yet since as I already mentioned, stereo output to my headphones is good enough for me. Maybe later I'll try Sensaura to see how good the headphone algorithms are. From what I understand, a Q-Sound driver is in beta testing. No lockups, stuttering, or nasty things like that so far. I still have to try some recording in Sound Forge later and I have only really been using Foobar/kernal streaming for music listening but I thought I'd offer some input on this card. It doesn't seem to be very common as I had a hard time finding places that carried it. If you think the Emu cards are overkill for your listening needs and you require the card to do gaming, DVD AC3 pass through to your receiver, and basic Windows sounds this might not be a bad option...
