Thread: Philips Acoustic margin

Only when it seemed similar the sound card market had settled down, we see another competitor enter the fray. Construction off years of feel in client sound markets, Philips is only as probably as any other company to succeed in today's competitive sound card market. Of Philips' latest 3-board sound card line-up, the Acoustic Edge is the flagship card, extended entire the characteristic that one could ask for, adding 5.1 speaker support.


Despite the abundant complete agenda manufactures, big and small, there are now alone three companies with developed amount 3D complete technology. Creative Labs and Sensaura (used on about all non-Creative boards) are the two acclaimed brands. QSound Labs is the third amateur in this industry. While QSound is a celebrated assertive in the 3D complete arena, it does not accept as abundant namesake in the gaming industry as it did in the past. QSound Labs still develops admirable algorithms, and in ablaze of their achievement with the Acoustic Edge, I would hardly aphorism them out as a 3D complete competitor.




Like best top 3D complete cards today, the Acoustic Edge supports abundant accompanying 3D complete streams (96), and additionally supports every accepted 3D complete API: DirectSound3D, A3D 1.0, EAX 1.0 and 2.0, and I3DS2.


Using QSound's 3D algorithms, the Acoustic Edge is one of the few complete cards to action gaming 3D complete achievement to a six approach or 5.1 apostle arrangement (four speakers, a subwoofer, and a center most channel). While the 5.1 achievement isn't appreciably bigger than a acceptable four apostle output, it is still a footfall in the appropriate direction.


The Acoustic Edge ships with a standard fare of audio applications, adding Sonic Foundry's Siren Xpress for MP3 encoding, Sonic Foundry's ACID for digital music creation, Yahama's S-YXG50 Soft-synth for best MIDI playback, QSound's Audio Pix for mixing audio and picture files to make video presentations/slide shows, and PowerDVD 3.0. Of note, Power DVD 3.0 is an excellent bundle item, which offers top DVD decoding and 5.1 channel software Dolby Digital decoding out of the box.