Thread: Auzentech X-Fi Home Theater HD analyze

When we analyzed Asus’s Xonar HDAV 1.3 Slim we reported it as a requirement evil for home-theater partisans because of its specific power to send Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio bit currents from a PC’s Blu-ray drive to an A/V receiver over HDMI.

By the time you read this analyze you should be capable to do the similar thing with any video card prepared with a Radeon HD 5000-series GPU. How much value will Auzentech’s premium-priced X-Fi Home Theater HD hold under those circumstances?

The response looks on how passionate you are about audio quality. Auzentech’s PCI Express card features creative excellent 20K2 audio CPU and all the great software characteristics that go with it including the X-Fi Crystalline for music playback ASIO 2.0 support for audio recording and EAX 5.0 and Open AL support for gaming.

The on board Cirrus Logic CS4382 DAC boasts dynamic range of 114dB and the stereo functional amplifier persists into a socket so you can switch out the stock National Semiconductor model for something stronger. There’s an on board headphone amplifier and a combo TOSLINK and S/PDIF connector on the mounting bracket so you can use either visual or coaxial cables for digital audio connections.

There’s a 1/8-inch headphone jack on the mounting bracket, too. Internally, the board has an Intel HD Audio matched front-panel audio header, plus the branded connections to adapt Creative’s X-Fi Titanium I/O Drive.

We anticipate most people will avoid the multichannel analog outputs in grace of HDMI. But bits are bits and if an HDMI connection is all you’re appearing for Auzentech’s solution won’t sound some more incredible than two far cheaper solutions a Radeon HD 5750 video card or an Asus HDAV 1.3 Slim.