Soundstorm on a sound card - mini review

E|im · 11-03-2005, 12:17 AM

Mini Review

Antallica · 11-03-2005, 06:47 AM

Nice review

It certainly looks like a sweet piece of hardware.

Solid Snake · 11-03-2005, 08:19 AM

Never heard of this card, but lovely review. Thanks

Bung · 11-03-2005, 08:24 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by E|im
I paid $85 + $25 USD postage = $153 NZD for it and no tax as I asked the seller to tick the 'gift' box on the customs form.

No GST usually until the total cost is more than $400. Customs don't normally bother collecting <$50.

Tobiaz[nz] · 11-03-2005, 08:28 AM

wouldnt you need good speakers to go with this???

what have you got?

Oblivian · 11-03-2005, 08:59 AM

Hmm. Sounds like what I need for My Sony HT + B&W speaker getup. Gogo single RCA 5.1 output!

Oblivian · 11-03-2005, 10:30 AM

Damn, you should have mentioned this find BEFORE receiving it. No more listings for them and going by the forums going mad in the US there is a high demand now.

Im Doing some investigation while here at work busy as

It seems ONLY the 8768+ chipset from C-media does the realtime encoding. Which it seems this may very well have, not the std 8768.

Someone mentioned Ebay US may have WAY higher price listings than ebay Korea (confirming). And I'm looking into purchases from the maker itself (albeit in partly Korean ) but it appears they are soley probing the US market via Ebay at this time. Though the 7day return puts somewhat of a dampener on things.

Quote:

We appreciate your interest in our product. We are now setting up our account with etailers in the US and the product will be available to end users from early April. I will forward you the link and date of the product availabiltiy as soon as I have them

Reviews are mixed, picking on some of the limitations of the quality and lack of good drivers at an early stage. Other than that it appear MAXWIN and I shall be looking into one for my NF4 upgrade.

Homepage (Korean):
http://digitalaudio.co.kr/korean/korean_index.htm

Chipset:
http://www.cmedia.com.tw/product/CMI8768_plus.htm

Mentions in the past:
http://www.techspot.com/story16682.html
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20448

Reviews English:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...pagen umber=1
http://www.3dss-forums.com/cgi-bin/w...0&fpart=1&vc=1

Dolby Live explained:
http://www.dolby.com/consumer/techno...olby_live.html

Review in Korean: http://www.compuzone.co.kr/n_communi...le=Communit y
(Has more deatiled images of the board and its component layout)

This looks promising for someone to try and sort a mass order (with individual packages of course to keep 'costs' down

)

Will paste more if I find some.

E|im · 11-03-2005, 01:43 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Tobiaz[nz]
wouldnt you need good speakers to go with this???

what have you got?

Ahh bought some a few weeks ago. If you check the link in my sig they should be there somewhere.

Quote:

Originally posted by Oblivian
Damn, you should have mentioned this find BEFORE receiving it. No more listings for them and going by the forums going mad in the US there is a high demand now.

Yeah after I ordered mine a new listing appeared straight after so I assumed they had plenty in stock. Now that I check it seems they are out for the moment. On the back of the box it says their online store is here. It might be cheaper and a bit more flexible than eBay with multiple orders.

Oblivian · 11-03-2005, 02:09 PM

The US$ is owning at the moment. Im not sure the Korean$ is so strong.

Im thinking of doing a thinkgeek teeshirt order for that reason. $52us=68NZ

They advertise their card, but dont distro it from site

Oblivian · 12-03-2005, 11:30 PM

OK Ladies, I emailed the co and asked if they were releasing another batch.

And they replied! (I went into work breifly to see the return message)

They have an australian reseller that also services NZ. They expect stock in early April. Even asked if I want to be added to the product release email database for it to get updates on stock levels etc.

So we have a near local supplier for these cards now if anyone is interested. More details to come when I get back to work and ask them about it further now I have the aussie contact.

Disrespective · 12-03-2005, 11:41 PM

It's not like i need a new card as i have the Audigy 2ZS, but from your review it seems like the card is very nice and i'd be interested in knowing how much they could cost us in $NZ.

Keep us informed.

Mevunky · 13-03-2005, 02:13 PM

Remeber if you have 6 channel analog in the A2ZS is still a much better card.

With hardware accel, and also eax3 and 4, which this card does not support. The A2 will always be the best gamers card.

E|im · 13-03-2005, 06:31 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Mevunky
Remeber if you have 6 channel analog in the A2ZS is still a much better card.

With hardware accel, and also eax3 and 4, which this card does not support. The A2 will always be the best gamers card.

I agree if you have 6 channel analog in. I don't however and that's why I got this one.

Though I have tested both cards with my headphones and the Mystique sounds much nicer for music and in games well heaps better. I also got the Mystique because in some parts of maps in CSS, sound would drop out and start crackling like crazy. This one doesn't do it.

The Audigy 2 ZS can't be fully hardware processing the sound on the card because in demanding situations like above where there is a lot of load on the CPU it just starts crackling.

What's so special about proprietary technology like EAX3 and EAX4 over EAX2 + DD5.1?

Maverick · 14-03-2005, 06:53 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by E|im
I agree if you have 6 channel analog in. I don't however and that's why I got this one.

What's so special about proprietary technology like EAX3 and EAX4 over EAX2 + DD5.1?

I'm not sure how many 3D streams either card supports, also the processing overhead that HL2 sound engine has for Audigy2 cards with EAX3/4, vs. EAX2 may have something to do with it. It could be CLs drivers or the game that needs tweaking.

EAX3/4 is just a bunch of environment effects applied to sound sources to alter the sound depending on where you are and the sound source in the game is -so that the sound and the "world" seem to interact.
Still not a patch on wavetracing (Aureal A3D2.0) in my opinion, but I may be nostalgic and a little bias.

Sensaura is supposed to have the better HRTF Headphone algorithm, so if you are listening via headphones you *may* prefer Sensaura.

But the point of recommending the Audigy series for games is that games will be designed to run on CL hardware -as the designers intended.

Using Dolby Digital 5.1 output via your receiver (with full descrete 3D sound and reverb from games built in), may be unfair on the Audigy 2's 2 speaker output upmixed via Dolby Pro Logic 2. If you were able to compare the Audigy 2 with all 5.1 analogue outputs going through the same amp then that would be a fairer comparison for the soundcards.

E|im · 14-03-2005, 07:34 PM

Yeah, that makes sense, cheers.

Oblivian · 14-03-2005, 07:48 PM

Hehe. Lil engrish'd

Quote:

We are the distributor for X-Mystique 7.1 Gold for Australia and have reseller network in NZ. The ETA time for stock is around late April, do you need us to keep you update for the schedule?

Regards,

Gordon
Web: http://www.hdaudiovisual.com.au
Email: info@hdaudiovisual.com.au
Ph/Fax: +61 2 94494788

E|im · 15-03-2005, 01:04 AM

Hehe, here's a post from the avsforum:

I e-mailed the seller on e-bay trying to see if there was a way to get one and got this response:

Previous selling on eBay was just promotional sales. Currently we are establishing woldwide distribution network, so we will not list our HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 GOLD soundcard on ebay at the moment. Also we will notify our worldwide distributor list on new website at http://www.hidiaudio.com in near future, please check it.

E|im · 20-05-2005, 02:14 PM

So Oblivian have you got your card yet? Or going to give it a miss? The folks at OCAU seem to be buying quite a lot of them. Overall very high praise for it.

Interesting review on it here as well.

Oblivian · 20-05-2005, 02:35 PM

Yeh.. Still in a bit of a pergatory state eh.

Im still impressed by even the onboard out of the mobo, but wouldn't mind the encoder functionality to work with the home theatre.

The downside is they want me to fax my CC details, this of course.. isn't the best method of payment. But if they decide to fire up a web-based order system with NZ conversion I may be persuaded. At the time of the quote they said I could flag the Credit card fee as an out-of-australia incentive.

I may be tempted next bonus, or for a self christmas present.

Mevunky · 20-05-2005, 03:19 PM

I been doing some reading on headfi etc,

Some think the quality is just better than onboard but not by much. And just looking at the card theres way to many caps in the signal path and design is a bit of a shocker if you are after sound quality. So if you already have soundstorm for the encoding I wouldn't bother, there must also be other cards out their that encode DD.

E|im · 20-05-2005, 03:36 PM

Has anyone on head-fi actually used one? Or are they just trashing it because it doesn't look like what they think it should look like?

Oblivian · 20-05-2005, 03:42 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Mevunky
So if you already have soundstorm for the encoding I wouldn't bother, there must also be other cards out their that encode DD.

No soundstorm (see below.. NF4 ultra) unfortunatly. And nope, as far as I could find only 2 people used the 8+ chipset so far to do DD encoding.

Mevunky · 20-05-2005, 06:12 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by E|im
Has anyone on head-fi actually used one? Or are they just trashing it because it doesn't look like what they think it should look like?

Looks say nothing, but the parts do

The parts used speak for themsevles, theres enough caps in there to distroy any signal path also the parts used arnt of any great quality.

Also the chipset is

and the specs listed arnt that amazing.

"Massamune: Cards based on the C-Media CMI8768 or 8738 are hardly any better than modern standard onboard-sound codecs. You'd better go for a proper Envy24-based card, if you're interested in better audio performance."

And even then, the Envy is fairly average in all reality. But remember im comparing it to stand alone DAC's and CDP's but thats where the 0404 and 1212 can actually compete. Im happy with my Envy but you have to use an external DAC, the analog section is mmm average.

Opamps are removable, so could upgrade them, but not sure what volts the card is capable of.

But the point is it does the job of DD encoding and as said above it doesn't look like many other options. Since you are using it for digital only use, its mostly going to depend on how well your DAC rejects the jitter this thing will produce.

E|im · 20-05-2005, 06:16 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Mevunky
The parts used speak for themsevles, theres enough caps in there to distroy any signal path also the parts used arnt of any great quality.

How do you know the capacitors are in the path of the signal? Maybe they are for something else and it actually does have clear traces to wherever it needs to go?

When the ASIO driver is released in the coming month or so, what else do you need for bit perfect playback?

Quote:

And while the CMI8768/PCI-8ch has been available to motherboard manufacturers and add-in card makers for some time, it is the plus symbol that is important.

The CMI8768/PCI-8ch+ is a different chip so how can they comment on it if they haven't actually used it?

Quote:

If you use the DDL feature, you bypass the DAC on CMedia 8768+ chip and use the DAC inside your receiver, thats the beauty of DDL.

Quote:

That's the humorous thing: the analog outs aren't bad at all, definately in the Envy24 class. Has a good, solid presentation, and isn't laid back sounding like the Revo.

Mevunky · 20-05-2005, 08:00 PM

Quote:

How do you know the capacitors are in the path of the signal? Maybe they are for something else and it actually does have clear traces to wherever it needs to go?

They have no other real reason to be there...

"Users swappable existing OPAMPs to superior performance dual DIP type 8pin OPAMPs such as Burr-Brown OPA2134PA, OPA2604PA,etc."

This is very cool.

With the ASIO driver thats all you need, a player that can utilise the ASIO output and driver for bit perfect playback. IF the card doesn't resample internally, which many cards like this do.

Quote:

The CMI8768/PCI-8ch+ is a different chip so how can they comment on it if they haven't actually used it?

Same model number, asuming very closely related and everything else they have made...

Quote:

If you use the DDL feature, you bypass the DAC on CMedia 8768+ chip and use the DAC inside your receiver, thats the beauty of DDL.

Yes but when you use jittery oscillators and clocking on the card you feed one messed up digital signal. Unless you have a Benchmark DAC1 or something that rejects jitter well it will never sound good.

Quote:

That's the humorous thing: the analog outs aren't bad at all, definately in the Envy24 class. Has a good, solid presentation, and isn't laid back sounding like the Revo.

That is totally subjective to system synergy, something like overly bright or dull cables can make this change, so that is a totally subjective comment. Never use the analog out on my Revo and im sure it would sound nasty vs bit perfect digital out to a real DAC. Also which Revo, the 7.1 sounds worse than the 5.1, e.g. 5.1 is better.

The only analog ive heard worth hearing is the 0404 and even that wasn't to amazing a bit thin.

The point though the quality isnt the selling point of the card, the specs show that and also the lack of them. The features are what sells it. I bought my card not for quality, but its the only card that does what I want decently, the entire M-Audio 2496 adn 192 are both very average as well, even in digital out sections with average oscillators.

No matter how hard I look I can't find any audio related specs... would like to see some. Can't find a review that was done on any decent sound equip either. Nor an actual sound tests such as RIAA tests etc.

Features features features, quality is useless if it doesnt do what you want !!!