Auzentech HomeTheater HD Preview: Bitstreaming True HD/DTS-HD MA
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 2, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Let’s...Get...Busy
Pardon the early 90s reference, it’s the first thing that came to me and I didn’t want to use the word “unboxing” on this page; but that’s effectively what it is.
While the ASUS Xonar HDAV comes in a box you’d expect from a motherboard company, the Auzentech X-Fi HomeTheater HD is a bit more polished. You’d expect it would be for a sound card that costs $250.
Inside the slipcover you have two separate boxes; one holds the card and the other has all of the cables and driver disc.
The setup works like this. You run a cable from your video card (or video output on your motherboard) to the Auzentech card. It combines the digital signal with the audio output from the sound card and sends it down a single HDMI cable from the card itself. Auzen provides a DVI-to-HDMI as well as a regular HDMI cable to aid you in this process.
You also get an analog break out cable for ins and outs.
The X-Fi HomeTheater HD is a full height PCIe x1 card:
Despite its length there's no retention notch for well designed motherboards that include a compatible clip. There's a lot on the card, including an interesting set of jumpers:
The first jumper block lets you configure how the video signal gets sent to the X-Fi HTHD: either video HDMI input on the back of the card or over the PCIe bus. Apparently NVIDIA and Auzentech have been working on a way to pass video (or audio) over the PCIe bus instead of an external cable. This feature doesn't appear to work on any NVIDIA chipsets today, but it may at some point in the future (or with a future NVIDIA chipset).
The heart of the X-Fi HTHD is Creative Labs' X-Fi audio processor. It's most definitely overkill for what we're using the card for, but you've gotta justify that pricetag somehow.
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Wellsoul2 - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
Seems like alot of hoops to jump through...I'll just stick with my $80 ASUS and PCM optical out.
IMHO if Microsoft had just said no to DRM we would have a better
OS with better sound by the hardware layer as in XP.
All this DRM just impedes technology.
It's not scientific but to me the sound in Vista is not as good as
XP with the apps I use.
Fallen Kell - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
You are kidding me right? XP's Audio Mixer was HORRIBLE! If anything had to get touched by the OS (say for instance volume control), the audio was immediately downsampled to 16bit.CookieMook - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
I for one have an NVidia 8800 GTS (640 MB) card and get video through the X-fi Home Theater HD to my JVC-RS1 projector. However, I get HDCP issues whenever trying to view Blu-Ray content via Power DVD 9 Ultra. If I bypass the X-fi HTHD card, I have no problems with HDCP. Anyone else get video but HDCP failing with this card?adder - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
does this card output decoded DTS MA,DTS HD via analog 7.1 outs,since there are lot of people with older recievers.Fallen Kell - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
I don't think that this is the intended target for this card. I am not saying that it can't do it, but I don't think it does. If you simply want analog out, I believe any sound card which has 5.1 or 7.1 analog outputs will send the audio that way, but I believe that there are certification issues when doing analog out and you can only use the lower quality audio streams when doing so on a PC.maddoctor - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
It can do the analog. You must look the serial like connector in the card and multiple colour cable that intended to connect with. These will go to the speakers.gwolfman - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
@AnandI have an Intel DG45FC mini-itx board running Vista Ultimate x64 that I'm currently using for my HTPC with PowerDVD. I use it to bitstream standard DTS and DD to my Onkyo TX-SR606. As you stated, I am constantly having to play with the audio configuration settings to have it work correctly. If I get it working correctly, a few reboots later (for unknown reasons) it starts magically sending LPCM instead of DTS/DD. I have to spend 20+ minutes with PDVD and Vista audio settings and multiple reboots to get it back. Sometimes I even need to disconnect the HDMI cable going from my HTPC to my receiver to get it to come back; sometimes doing that I lose video on my HDTV and have to reboot again. It's way annoying!
Dreamwalker - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
I tried it few weeks ago, recommendet on AVF forum and I'm really impressed. Not only it supports much more video formats (.mkv,...) it should also be able to do all the lossless audio passthrough, at least judging from their webseite and all the logos.I would really like to see if it works with the Auzen.
Fallen Kell - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
The lossless pass-thru is ONLY with the Asus card mentioned in this article. There is a thread dedicated to this over at AVSForums:http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=10...">http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=10...
tim851 - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
It's just the same with the video games industry. All those contraptions designed to prevent illegal copying are only hurting those, who have paid for their games. Pirates can get fully cracked versions of games, that don't even need to be installed, that you just put in a folder and play without ever thinking about admitting developer distributed spyware to your PC, about forced registrations or about incompatibilities with installed software.The paranoia of the content industry is so dumb and so proven to be ineffective, that you just know there are alterior motives.