Here we check out one of Gainward's latest products, Hollywood@Home SoundXplosion combo pack. This pack contains a 7.1 surround sound external (USB) sound card and a set of 5.1 surround sound headphones, and facets Gainward's Xear 3D technology. These two are tried at gamers and movie fans, but will they like it?

Introduction

Video and sound once regarded as just think extras on a home PC, they now define state of art. A 1.5TB hard drive setup with 3Gigs of RAM and a top end Xeon might be good for server room, but we are talking home PCs here, and if there's not a 7.1 surround sound setup with an NVIDIA 6800 is not there then you are behind the times.

Go into Gainward, a company that created a name of it with its PC multimedia products. It has become a well-known name in PC multimedia. Here we take a look at a few new offerings, Music2Go, a USB 2.0 attached Dolby Digital EX 7.1-channel surround sound external sound card, and SoundXplosion 5.1 surround sound headphones. These two items come bundled in Hollywood@Home SoundXtreme pack, or separately for the Music2Go and SoundXplosion headphones.

From our earlier experiences, we recognize that both external sound cards and surround sound headphones are a tough sell, no matter how innovative the design may look. External sound cards are frequently seen as bulky extras, and lower to their internal counterparts. As well, surround sound headphones are plagued by a string of less-than-satisfactory models, as software surround sound options do not actually do what they are supposed to, and hardware dependent options are hard to come by.