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Introduction
The Acoustic Edge is powered by Philips own SAA7785 ThunderBird Avenger DSP chip. This audio accelerator can process 256 sounds simultaneously and actually offloads digital mixing and Directsound processing from your CPU. This becomes important when you consider that the card has some sophisticated features that would otherwise put added stress on your system. As it is, many of the cards special processing features are free. The chip can also process 96 streams of 3D accelerated audio including positional reverb, so it is a fairly powerful and full featured DSP chip. Most of the time we try to avoid printing out specs on our reviews, but in this case it is something you want to take a look at: Card Specs:
Processing Features: Philips believes this card sets itself apart from the SBLive 5.1 and the Santa Cruz because it is the very first card to enable true 5.1 audio from ANY source. That means that even stereo sources will output in 6 discrete channels using Qsounds patented Multi-Speaker System technology. This technology essentially extracts positional information from a stereo stream, and maps it to a 5.1 or 4.1 setup to produce discrete and distinctive channels of surround sound. This is a pretty good pitch, because right now all surround sound cards will output the exact same sound on the front channel as on the rear channel, so that the rear channel is nothing more than a mirror image of the front stereo signals. This applies to anything based on the Vortex2 or the Sensaura Canyon3D chips, and even to the newest SBLive 5.1 and Turtle Beach Santa Cruz cards. Ive been playing with sound cards for a fair while now, and most 3D algorithms have failed to impress me to any degree. Obviously this changed when the EAX and A3D APIs were introduced. But still, all those Qsound algorithms in the specs wouldnt have made me bat an eye, had you simply listed them to me. But this time around, these algorithms actually made me sit up and take notice. Why you ask? They work. And they work very well.
next: QMMS in Movies »
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