|  Articles | HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 Gold Review | HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 Gold Review | NGO Review: HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 Gold
Introduction
As you probably already know the Audio market is being dominated by
Creative Labs. From the current view it looks like a monopoly, and as
you probably know, monopolies are very bad for the consumers. For a
very long time now I have tried to find an alternative for the Sound
Blaster series but unfortunately I couldnt find a real competitor. Few
weeks ago I read at NvNews about a new sound card named HDA Digital
X-Mystique 7.1 Gold with Dolby encoding support and many cool features.
I pulled out a few strings and managed to get a sample of this card.
The one million-dollar question now is does the HDA Digital X-Mystique
7.1 Gold offer a real competition to the Sound Blaster series? Read
this review to find out.
About
HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 Gold comes from a less known company called
HiTech Digital Audio. Its powered by C-Media CMI8768 audio processor
chip. C-Media chips are already known around the onboard audio.
Personally I never had a chance to test their products before.
The card is equipped with a Dolby Digital Real-Time encoder and support
the latest Dolby technologies such as: DTS-ES, DD-EX. Dolby licensing
isnt cheap, if you remember NVIDIA has decided to remove the Dolby
encoder from the nForce audio due to the high fees paid to Dolby Labs.
The card supports both Analog and Digital Speakers.
We all know that the current status of the audio market isnt that
good. Only few high quality products are available and most of them are
from Creative Labs. The Sound Blaster products arent cheap. The HDA
Digital X-Mystique 7.1 Gold price is around 100$ USD which is very
cheap compared to the other products out there. Lets hope it can
deliver the goods.
Package details
- HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 Gold audio card
- 2Pin-2Pin CD S/PDIF audio cable
- TOSLINK fiber optic digital cable
- Drivers/Applications Installation CD
- User Manual
Product Specifications/Features
- C-Media CMI8768/PCI - 8 Channels
- Full-duplex 8CH 24bit/96kHz DAC / 2CH 16bit/48kHz ADC
- Integrated S/PDIF Input/Output supports 44.1kHz/48kHz/96kHz
samplerate and 16/24bits resolution
- Supports Dolby Digital Live Real-Time Contents Encoder.
- Supports the latest DTS-ES, DD-EX sound (6.1/7.1) playback (also
including Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 playback)
- Supports 44.1 kHz / 48kHz / 96kHz S/PDIF Output through both Coaxial
RCA and Optical Toslink
- Onboard COAXIAL RCA output connector, OPTICAL Toslink trasmitter for
high quality Digital Output
- PCI Rev. 2.2 compliant with 32bit PCI bus mastering modes
- Two S/PDIF Input for CD_SPDIF Input (S/PDIF-IN #1), Digital
I/O(SPDIF_EXT) Input (S/PDIF-IN #2)
- Built-in earphone buffer at Front Output (32Ohm Loading)
- External EEPROM Interface for Sub-Vendor/Sub-Device ID using custom
driver
- Four high perfomance OPAMP for Output control, Two high perfomance
OPAMP for MIC Input - increase gain level and improve SNR
- Onboard TOSLINK transmitter for up to 24bit/96kHz Optical Digital
Output, Gold Plated RCA connetor for Coaxial Digital Output
- 16Pin MIDI_IO Header for supporting MPU-401 MIDI UART Port
- C-Media Xear 3D 7.1 Virtual Speaker SHIFTER technology
- Sensaura CRL3D HRTF 3D positional sound enhancement with multi-drive
7.1, EnvironmentFX, ZoomFX, MacroFX, etc.
- DirectSound 3D HW acceleration
- A3D 1.0 , EAX 1.0, 2.0 (powered by Sensaura), HRTF-based 3D
Positional Audio (C3DX ), Direct Sound 3D SW
- Unique Karaoke functionality : Mic Echo, Key-shifting, Vocal
Cancellation
- Support Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows ME,
Windows 98 SE, Windows XP x64 (Beta)
Pictures
A good looking card. The Dolby seal looks very sweet and the text near the plugs makes it even more easy to use. Dont laugh at me but sometimes it could be pretty annoying when you switch audio cards on a weekly basis :)
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