I wonder if I can run my Sirius Sattellite radio throuh this?

Wow I'm the first (and Only Sucker for this one) My MB has SPDIF but it isn't 7.1 So I'll Take this one If I don't want it I'll Wootswap It.

Later,
cegarrett

manfrin wrote:Can this take in normal 1/8'' stereo jacks?

Also, this stupid captcha doesnt work. I am ceritian I am putting in the righ tletters, but it doesnt work. WONDERFUL.

try certainly putting in the right letters in your posts, then maybe we'll believe you.

Hm... $100 on woot, $120 elsewhere - for a (what?) 7.1 sound card... is this worth? I don't think so. Who the hell needs 7.1 from a computer anyway?
Come on woot, give us something that actually makes sense.

spin54 wrote:This HAS to be a joke. 99.99 for a who the hell has ever heard of them brand sound card? Go to newegg and get the BEST sounding soundcard on the market (X-Fi) for 111.

Hmmmm......
No DTS
No Dolby Digital Live
No TOSLINK out

X-Fi is superiorly crappy for Home Audio - ask anyone thats tried it in a HTPC. It sucks. Creative it too cheap to pay for licensing to get DTS or Dolby certified, this Auzentech card gets crazy reviews for its sound quality. That all refutes your "best sounding card" argument.

Heres some reviews on this card.

http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/reviews/sound/Auzentech_X-Plosion_6.html

http://www.atruereview.com/HDA_X_Plosion/soundcard3.php

http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/hda_xplosion/page_4.shtml

Look Woot, I work 30 hours a week and I am a high school senior.
I wait up til 12 every night hoping the find the bag of crap or a great deal on something. I practically get no sleep. The least you could do is sell some crap. I mean come on I'm tired and my grades are slipping not to mention the black circles under my eyes.
Is it too much to ask? All i want is some crap in a bag.

please...

o.O i got an audigy 2 like a year back or so for less, and its 7.1 surround... how is this ne better?

my neighbors would shoot me if i got that, anyways you can find better name brands with lots better quality else where for not that much more, no woot for me today :( /cry /sniffle /burp :P

The main purpose for this card is getting proper surround sound over a S/PDIF link. No other sound card can do this with DTS, and very few can do it with Dolby Digital. If you use a home theater reciever with your computer, games and anything else that doesn't have a native Dolby/DTS stream (basically everything but movies and HDTV) is stuck to PCM stereo only unless you use 6 or 8 analog cables to hook your sound card to your reciever.

If you don't use a reciever or are happy with analog, then yes there is absolutely no point to this sound card. Of course for people like me who do use a reciever, it's great.

Now if I just hadn't bought a 7900GT today I'd buy it.

I don't know much about sound cards, but Extreme Overclocking gave it a "Highly Recommended" rating. Quoted from their review, "After using the X-Plosion sound card for several weeks, I don't know how I ever managed without it. In fact, I plan on purchasing another card for my HTPC."
http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/reviews/sound/Auzentech_X-Plosion_1.html

manfrin wrote:Can this take in normal 1/8'' stereo jacks?

Also, this stupid captcha doesnt work. I am ceritian I am putting in the righ tletters, but it doesnt work. WONDERFUL.

Huked onn foniks rilly werked fur mee!

lmao : )
_________
edited by mod to fix name in tags, as requested by dubloe.

This thing sucks for a soundcard... $99 , yeah

srb122 wrote:80 bucks on New Egg

I see 115.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829156001

Bit expensive for me, but newegg has some good reviews and gets 5/5 stars:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustRatingReview.asp?Item=N82E16829156001

spin54 wrote:This HAS to be a joke.

99.99 for a who the hell has ever heard of them brand sound card?

Go to newegg and get the BEST sounding soundcard on the market (X-Fi) for 111.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829102188

The Xplosion is one of a very few sound cards that can encode Dolby Digital. The only other Dolby encoder is the nForce 2 SoundStorm found on some motherboards.

Yes, the Creative X-Fi can decode Dolby Digital, plus it is probably capable of Dolby Digital pass-through in case you play a DVD, but not encoding.

With X-Fi you'll need four cables, with the HDA cards you'll only need one (optical or coax).

Although plenty of motherboard use C-Media chips, I think you'll find they don't use this particular one.

100 clams?

It's a frickin' sound card.

Mmmmmm.... Good audio woot.

Review:
http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/reviews/sound/Auzentech_X-Plosion_1.html

yhawash wrote:hmm why not just buy an audigy?

With the Audigy, the ONLY way you can get multi-channel sound from games or WMVHD video is by using the analog outputs.

This card has realtime hardware Dolby Digital/DTS ENCODERS which will encode the multi-channel sound to a single bitstream so you only need to connect the digital audio output (1 cable) to your receiver/pre-amplifier.

It is similar to nVidia's SoundStorm technology from a few years back, except DTS Connect uses a higher bitrate (1.5mbps).

MAC friendly?

This card is definately something worth checking out. to those who are looking for a new sound card.

ExtremeOverlocking.com "HIGHLY RECOMMENDED" the card...

Click for Review

well, I did speak before I read. and I still claim X-fi is great. IT will be amazing when taken advantage of, but as for this card. Also great reviews.

And for those wondering about EAX support...

"The Auzentech HDA X-Plosion supports A3D 1.0, EAX 1.0 & 2.0 (via Sensaura software emulation), C3DX, DirectSound 3D, and others. EAX (currently up to version 5.0) is simply audio enhancements that add more "punch" to games via a standardized API (developed of course by Creative). There is a movement to support a more open-source API called OpenAL, which hopefully over time we will see more games and hardware support rather than the proprietary EAX standards. Most games that support even the latest versions of EAX usually support the older versions too, so that's not really a huge issue. Some games just don't handle EAX sound well and often (at least to me) EAX is more of an annoyance than an actual "feature". I remember on my old SB-Live when playing Counterstrike some EAX effects (like a long delay echo) would stick on and would not reset until a map change."

Taken from extremeoverclocking.com

Zaz723 wrote:Will this help make my Ipod speaker set ups sound better?

No, it will not make your ipod sound better. Nothing will make your ipod sound better. Stop asking ipod questions. Your ipod plugs into speakers. Speakers plug into this thing. Wrong way? Yes?

It's an internal PCI card. You install it in your PC, not your ugly white box. And with any luck, it'll put out enough power to make your house shake on its foundation.

Though I wouldn't know ... since I use Creative Audigy 2 ...

Yeah, this card is actually pretty good.

Unlike almost EVERY card on the market (all creative cards included), it puts more than the stereo signal out through the DIGITAL outputs. Also, creative tends to write bad software and make nasty conversions to the sound to output at a different frequency.

There are many cards on the market better than creative for sound (creative however, is the only company that works hard on gaming, but the others arent far behind) such as m-audio and terratec.

The overall concensus is that the HDA beats out the Audigy on the Low End but the Audigy is more stable at the higher frequencies. In general, though, these cards perform almost identically when it comes strictly to sound quality.

One feature that the HDA card has that the Audigy ZS cards do not is DTS Connect which is similar to DolbyDigital Live which allows for the encoding of full 1.5mbps sound and the upconversion of stereo into DTS sound that home receivers can take advantage of.

If you are a gamer DO NOT buy this card. Unfortunately the sound quality does nat carry over into the gaming spectrum. My Audigy nets me almost 10 -15 fps over the HDA card. The HDA is outperformed in both 3D sound and EAX which makes sense seeing as how Creative pioneered those technologies.

That is all I have for personal reviews. Check www.ZipZoomFly.com for a better price on the HDA and a low price for audigy. Prices include free 2 day FedEX.

htamas wrote:Hm... $100 on woot, $120 elsewhere - for a (what?) 7.1 sound card... is this worth? I don't think so. Who the hell needs 7.1 from a computer anyway?
Come on woot, give us something that actually makes sense.

amen. i turn the sound off on my computer so that i can hear the hard drive chatter just before it is about to crap out.

off of dealnews.....

Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum PCI Sound Card from $75 shipped after rebate

I read the manual and the first 10 or so google hits for this card and I can't find any actual specifications. Can anyone find dynamic range, SNR, or THD for this card? I'm already using an M-Audio Revolution, but I'm always looking for an upgrade in my soundsystem. Also, I'm unconvinced that DTS is a good thing for stereo audio. If you have a stereo source and your sound card is putting out DTS, your sound card is making stuff up. I'd much rather just have my sound card put out stereo for a stereo source, DD for a DD source, and DTS for a DTS source - my home theater receiver can deal with any of them, and I can upmix from there if I absolutely need to do so.

Never heard of this brand before. Looks pretty decent, though. I've got a Creative Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit Sound Card that I picked up awhile ago for about 1/3 of the price of this, though, so I'll pass. Nice woot, though!

I picked up a Turtle Beach Montego for a lot less. It has 8 channels and supports Dolby Digital Live on the digital optical output. The DDL feature sends 6 channels of PC audio to your external Dolby sound system so you can hear all of your PC surround sound audio (like when playing games) through the digital output. Without this feature, the digital output will only send stereo audio from your PC and you have to use the the analog outputs for multichannel sound (unless it's Dolby Encoded, like on DVDs).

Here's the link for Montego:
http://turtlebeach.com/site/products/soundcards/mtgoddl/producthome.asp

This is the old HiTECH company, just changed it's name to AuzenTech. Good card.

Funny to see all the nay-sayers going on about buying a Creative card.

Hello, this card isn't intended for gaming. This is a HTPC card. Dolby Digital Live & DTS connect - means it converts game surround sound and other surround sound sources to a standard Dolby or DTS bitstream, for digital out to a receiver.

That said, I'm sticking with a cheaper DDL 5.1 card as my HTPC is on a tight budget. I'm not hung up on getting DTS instead.

This is an AUDIOPHILE card, not a gaming performance card. Intended for connection to an external amp or home theater receiver.

Edit: Apologies to GreenMonkey for the deletion of :

GreenMonkey wrote:

You people are funny.

There is a 24-page thread about this card on AVSforum, for those that are interested in a HTPC card.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=605522&page=1&pp=30

I'll give it a try. The Audigy is a Mickey Mouse way to get 5.1 - works through analog outputs with a nice "hum" in the background. The digital out on the Audigy plays only 2-channel. We'll see . . .

Neat - but I wish someone would make a high quality 2 channel card with left-right RCA outs for my Winamp-to-Harmon/Kardon amp & Klipsch speakers. (Some of us only care about stereo music.) I make due with a Creative Labs USB thingie... but I can't help but think there has to be a better card out there...

bpm101 wrote:

The fact that it is not integrated makes it better

Just because it is seperate doesn't make it better. Geeeez.

GreenMonkey wrote:This is an AUDIOPHILE card, not a gaming performance card. Intended for connection to an external amp or home theater receiver.

Well, that's just about good enough for me. Actually, my uncle had a reciever that he didn't want! I'm going to call him up and see if he still has that, and if he's willing to give it to me. I'll consider buying the card. That's a lot of bread, but I'm also working a bunch these days.

Oh wow a AuzenTech HDA X-Plosion 7.1 DTS/Dolby Digital PCI Sound Card, I especially like the doo-hicky-majigger on it...I can't fool you I have no idea what this is.

Looks good - if this was out 'n around when I bought my X-Fi Music card, I'd seriously consider this. However, since I don't have a receiver with a digital input(actually, no receiver whatsoever) nor do I have a speaker setup beyond a 5.1 Logitech X530, I think the X-Fi still beats it - the Crystallizer whatevers actually do make music and general audio sound better, and it just has more software support going for it in terms of bundled apps, games and 3rd party apps. If you do have such a receiver, the card looks pretty solid, though the woot price could be better. *cough*

For those that do care about EAX, the HDA does EAX via software ("The Auzentech HDA X-Plosion supports A3D 1.0, EAX 1.0 & 2.0 (via Sensaura software emulation", ExtremeOverclocking Review), which will hurt game performance when trying to use EAX. As for the ExtremeOverclocking review itself, I read it as being hugely biased with the writer having some sort of grudge against Creative. As such, I don't really trust any of his subjective comments whatsoever, and I suggest you read the review for the facts instead when making a decision.

rkyyz wrote:

Just because it is seperate doesn't make it better. Geeeez.

yah, it could be that having it be seperate is fine, as long as its equal. because seperate isn't inherantly unequal or anything.

actually, on most (there are exceptions) mobos the sound controller is an afterthough. even integrated partially into the southbridge and whatnot.

Like most "computer stuff", I go to read up on the item and the only word I understand is "Features"!!! Guess I'm never going to catch up with the digital world. Come on, Bride of Chucky!!!

Turn Key

I don't believe this. I just heard about this card today and thought it would be perfect for my HTPC, so I ordered one from newegg this afternoon. This evening, but minutes after I get the UPS tracking emai from newegg, I find out about this woot. Gah! So I'm $40 bucks down, but I guess fate was telling me something...

oh man i cant tell you how many times ive bought something only for it to show up on w00t the next night or two... well actually i can, it is 3 times. Now i think i have learned my lesson if ever i get the urge to get somthing cool, WAIT and check woot then buy it 2-3 days later.

I wish bring back the boom tubes on here for 10-15 that would be sweet.