Terratec's Aureon 7.1 FireWire Attempts Plug-and-Play with Pro Sound Card Performance

Drivers And Software, Continued

In addition to the drivers, Terratec supplies software for optimum operation of the infrared remote controls supplied with the equipment. The software supplied is not restricted to controlling the card's hardware nor to software supplied by Terratec (such as WinDVD) but can be adapted to software of your choice by programming (although, of course, the programming is not all that easy). This is interesting for quite a number of purposes.

The actual software supplied consists of WinDVD and Sound Rescue in special Terratec versions. WinDVD is software that plays Video and Audio DVDs. The Terratec version offers two options, but with limitations. When playing video, you can only access Dolby decoding (Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby EX). DTS is not available as standard; if you want it, you will have to upgrade to a paid version of WinDVD. Similarly, for Audio DVD, you can read it but not in the HD (High Definition) version; the tracks seem to have been resampled at 48 kHz. Here again, you will have to obtain the paid-for version if you want to overcome this limitation. It's rather frustrating, even if the commercial reasons for this arrangement are perfectly understandable.

The introductory WinDVD screen showing in green at the bottom left the options that are activated. The rest have to be paid for.