The new Creative sound cards promise to deliver high-quality audio by using about four times the processing power of Creative’s Sound Blaster Live series. Thanks to its higher speed the Audigy chip can produce extremely realistic 3D sound.
The Audigy’s 24-bit/96-kHz digital-to-analogue converters significantly outperform the 16-bit/48-kHz DACs that today’s better cards contain. The new DACs put Audigy-based cards on a par with good-quality home stereo components and allow them to decode 24-bit DVD-Audio discs as well as standard 16-bit CDs.
Home recording enthusiasts will appreciate both the board’s 32-bit digital mixing capability and its excellent 100-decibel signal-to-noise ratio.
The top model in Creative’s new line, the £315 Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum EX, will suit the pickiest PC audiophile. Mainstream audio buffs will be satisfied with one of the company’s less expensive Audigy boards such as the £116 Sound Blaster Audigy Player and the £238 Audigy Platinum.
The Audigy line is built around a basic board with a microphone input, as well as digital and analogue outputs supporting six audio channels giving full Dolby Digital 5.1 3D sound. The card also ships with an IEEE 1394 port, called SB1394, for connecting external devices such as DV camcorders or setting up peer-to-peer networking.
The new card’s greatest potential promises to be its ability to produce truly jaw-dropping effects during 3D game play. Imagine the sound of your steps as you walk from the floor of a canyon into the closed confines of a mineshaft. In the real world, the sound in the two environments is quite different. Now imagine walking out of the mineshaft while a voice deep within it calls out.
The Audigy card promises to be able to reproduce such complex sonic environment changes. Music creation and audio editing are served by extensive bundled software. The Platinum EX includes full versions of Image Line’s Fruity Loops, Sonic Foundry’s Acid DJ 2, Steinberg’s Audio Suite, and Ulead’s VideoStudio 4 SE Basic, along with standard WAV editors and MP3 applications.
Midia: +353 (0)1-459 5188
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers