Philips Rhythmic Edge?

[Dantax]

Does anyone know if the Philips Rhythmic Edge is a decent card for VIA based chipsets? I currently have a Soundblaster Live! Value running on a KT133 board, and am looking to upgrade to a KT266a board soon. I've had a lot of trouble with various sound anomolies using the latest Live drivers, and found that the default Win2k drivers work quite well with it. This means that I haven't really been able to take advantage of any extra features of the card, and I haven't missed them.

I've heard that the Acoustic Edge works well with VIA chipsets, but what about the much cheaper Philips Rhythmic Edge? BestBuy currently has it for $20 after rebates, and if it'll get me nice quality sound, where I can play MP3s while doing other things and play some games, then it looks like it'd be a nice solution.

So has anyone tried this one?

 

[Guest]

Acoustic Edge owner here, but I think I may be able to help. I was one of the guys earlier who commented how well the Acoustic Edge gets along with Via chipsets. I still think that, but I have to correct one thing I said about the rhythmic and seismic edge products.

It appears that there are two different versions of both the rhythmic and seismic edge. The older version (models 702 and 704) use an older DSP (Thunderbird 128) that is known for having some driver issues. I would not suggest picking up the 702 model of the Rhythmic Edge.

However, Philips has released "refreshed" models of both the Seismic Edge and Rhythmic Edge that are models 705 and 703 respectively. These newer models use the Thunderbird Avenger DSP that powers the Acoustic Edge. So, as far as hardware and drivers, these are very similar to the Acoustic Edge, just with some speaker support cut out.

So, if you can be assured that you are gettin the 703 Rhythmic Edge for a good price, I would say it is worth it. If the sale is on the 702 model Rhythmic Edge, I would pass on it and go with something else.

Oh yeah, my info on the different DSPs comes from:
http://www.3dsoundsurge.com/drivers/AcousticEdge/index.html


Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. - Mark Twain<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by DesertCat on 11/08/01 03:51 PM.</EM></FONT></P>