High-End Audio: Creative and Terratec

Terratec Drivers: Strictly Basic

Unlike Creative, Terratec uses a single control panel for all of the card's functions. The controls are very well laid out on clearly-marked tabs. So at first sight, everything is very positive. After that, it all gets a lot more complicated for certain functions.

However, we noted that that the level controls for the multi-channel playback are impractical. It has to be said that Creative's virtual joystick is much better adapted than Terratec's multiple linear potentiometers. Terratec wins, however, in the way it controls the S/PDIF links with extensive and very obvious possibilities, at least for anyone who understands their nature and usefulness because the average user will almost certainly have some difficulty.

Good grades should also be awarded for the ASIO control function, in which choices such as buffer size, the frequency of sampling, and its relationship to latency are obvious pluses. The chipset used by Terratec provides only a minimum of sound processing, so you won't find functions comparable to those offered by Creative. Instead, processing software is required for this functionality.