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Introduction
Ok, so youre an online gamer, you have a high speed CPU, plenty of ram, a kick ass video card, high speed Internet, and everything is running smoothly. However still something is missing. You dont know what it is, but you can feel it -- like a splinter in your mind, haunting you, taunting you. You rack your brain for hours trying to figure out what it could be. You have tweaked out almost everything in your computer, all your hardware is top of the line except for alas you still have a stock sound card in your system. If all your worried about is getting the best midi sounds for snake, pong or pacman that will do, but for serious online gamers it just wont cut the mustard. Being a seasoned online gamer it is my duty to inform you that 3d sound is a quintessential component for the online warrior. Having a card with 3d capabilities gives you the edge of being able to hear your enemies and giving you an uncanny feel for your cyber-atmosphere. On the other hand even if youre not a gamer you can still enjoy the 3d capabilities when watching DVDs on your computer or even for an all night Napster marathon. Features I reviewed AOpens Audio Phantom AW744 Deluxe now the first thing I noticed about this card was its fiber optic input and output capability. Now I dont know about you guys but whenever I play with fiber I get all giddy, something about high speed transmission strikes a nerve with me. Based on the Yamaha YMF744 PCI 4 channel Audio Accelerator Chipset it delivers:
All this delivered to you anywhere from 8 kHz - 48 kHz S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface, which is an Audio transfer standard that permits the transfer of audio without the conversion to and from an analog format which in turn could degrade performance). Installation & Impressions Now if youve ever installed any hardware on your computer before you wont have any problem installing this card. If you havent done anything of the sort there are detailed instructions included. Now while I had the pleasure to test out this card I wanted to take full advantage of the fiber optic implementations, so what did I do? I hauled my test computer out into the living room and plugged it in to my good friends surround system. And presto-chango we went from a limited 4 channel surround to Dolby 5.1 thanks to his receiver and the fiber uplink. Now this is perfect if your home entertainment system and your computer share the same living space so instead of going out and buying all new PC speakers to compliment your card you can just uplink via fiber or digital coaxial and voila youre styling. We ran a number of tests from subwoofer excursion tests to Dolby surround tests, everything came out crystal clear playing DVDs was no different then playing them on his stand-alone DVD player, well except for the fact that the screen was 1/8th the size, but Im reviewing the sound card so what do I care. When it comes to the audio capture, well I didnt have any funky fiber toys to play with however I did have fiber output on the receiver I was using so I had to settle for that. One of the features I like about this card is its full-duplex ability to capture audio and play it back to you all simultaneously. On top of that the record quality you get out of it is equal to or greater than that of a professionally made CD, (CD quality sound is the CDA standard of 44 kHz DVD does not allow more than 48 kHz. This card delivers anywhere from 8khz-48kHz record or playback). The folks up at AOpen have included the following software:
With this card, along with almost anything else these days there are some compatibility issues. For example if your planning on running this card under windows 2000 and your not going to be taking advantage of the digital fiber or coaxial uplink, then unfortunately your going to be limited to 2 channel audio until (if) new drivers are put out. If you are running Linux there are drivers floating around on the AOpen web site however I have not had a chance to try them out yet. There is dos legacy support and win nt/95/98/me support although I have only run it under Windows ME and Windows 2000 Advanced Server so the rest is uncharted territory good luck and Godspeed. Conclusion To sum it all up if youre looking for an affordable card that will give you 3d functionality, scalability, a good solid base for a sound system then this card wins hands down. But if youre looking for something more advanced for more professional implementations and youre not scared of spending the big bucks then you might want to look elsewhere. Bottom Line
Ease of Installation: 91%
Overall Score: 82%
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