DDL sound cards - Recommendations?

[McWimp]

I am looking for some recommendations on DDL (Dolby Digital Live) sound cards. Looks like finally some are showing up on the market but I haven't seen a review that compares them - it's been a long time since Nforce2.

First of all here are the DDL sound cards I know of:

- AuzenTech HDA X-Mystique 7.1 Gold
- AuzenTech HDA X-Plosion 7.1 DTS Connect
- Diamond Xtreme Sound - 7.1/24 bit Sound Card with Dolby Digital Live
- Turtle Beach Montego DDL

Are there any other cards w/ DDL? Creative Labs seems to be sound asleep on DDL. I cannot find anything on DDL on their web site that would indicate upcoming DDL products.

The Diamond, the TB card & the Auzentech X-Mystique seem to go for the lower/mid-rage market with price of $50+ (Diamond) and $70+(TB & AT X-Mystique). The AuzenTech X-Plosion range is in the $150+ range but offers DTS for the paying the premium.

What are your experiences with these cards? Specifically

- Driver quality
- Sound quality via S/PDIF
- Support
- Performance (CPU usage)
- Windows XP 64bit support

I am tempted to buy the AuzenTech X-Plosion but I am afraid that the support will be bad and that the company could fold at any time. The sound card development recently changed ownership from Bluegears to AuzenTech as it seems.

How important are Creative Labs features like EAX>=3.0? All cards seem to only offer EAX <=2.0.

BTW I would really like to see a comparison of all currently available DDL cards on THG.

Thanx

 

[astrallite]

Try asking at anandtech maybe.

Creative isn't really asleep in this, their market is the computer speaker market, going digital seems a pointless investment since so few of their users use regular loudpspeakers.

Theoretically there isn't really any benefit of DTSC > DDL because of the low bitrate audio most games stream, but since we are talking about a compressed source getting compressed again, there *may* be tangible benefits, although its hard to speculate, since everyone has a different level of resolving speakers.

As for the importance of various instances of EAX...in theory it's just an equalizer and sound mixer (which you probably would have figured out if you've ever opened the EAX console). It's primary use would be to exaggerate certain (reflected) sounds, as well as mix the sounds of two rooms as you move through them to give a "transition" sound, and other effects I am sure. The importance of that is up to you. No one's done any psychoacoustical testing of this (for whatever reason) so at this point its a crapshoot either way.

 

[lcdguy]

i personally am using the X-Mystique and i am loving it. Mind you the only reason i got this card was because of the DDL. it allows me to have 5.1 surround for everything and also lets me use a single fiber optic cable for my surround sound instead of the jungle of audio cables for analogue.

If anyone is interested here's my audio setup and it works great.

HDA X-Mystique 7.1
Sony STR-DE697 Amplifier/Reciever
Yamaha NSP107 6.1 Speakers

The only downside is the neighbours complain about it being to loud

 

[loveryk]

I think that the reviews says it all. Auzentech have the best cards for DDL and DTS. If you are looking only for DDL, than go for the X-Mystique.

Here are the reviews I found on the XPlosion.

http://www.elitebastards.com/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19&Itemid=28

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

And here are some from their own website:

http://www.auzentech.com/company.html

You will not be able to find any information in Creative site, because, their focus is to develop their own chip, and than? than, you will need to buy their sound card...and than, their decoder, and than, their speakers...all in one to enjoy their sound card :?: