Auzen X-Fi HomeTheater 7.1 HDMI sound card does bitstream output from your HTPC

Earlier this month, ASUS introduced the "world's first HDMI 1.3a compliant audio / video enhancement combo card." Who knew numero dos was so close behind? Auzentech has just announced its very own HDMI 1.3-native PCIe audio combo card, which is built around Creative's X-Fi processor and enables PC users to easily output 7.1-channel audio with no downsampling. Essentially, the Auzen X-Fi HomeTheater 7.1 "accepts video from either an internal or external connection, mixes it with digital audio, and outputs the combined video and lossless multichannel audio via a single HDMI 1.3 port." Yep, that means Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio codecs are fully supported. The only digs? For one, pricing remains a mystery, but the real kicker is the September release -- talk about a long wait.

[Danakin @ Jun 20th 2008 11:37AM]

Whoa! That's excellent, but with high quality comes high cost...so I'm not likely to be able to afford one...even in 3 months.

[Shinigami @ Jun 20th 2008 11:39AM]

Its not like it is THAT expensive...

[Wwhat @ Jun 20th 2008 6:23PM]

A dolby license alone probably adds $400 to it.

[Shinigami @ Jun 20th 2008 11:38AM]

If you can't wait, Creative cards should be available now. You can also get ASUS, its said to be good.
Question:
Does the video slow down when you use it this way? From video card into sound card and from sound card via HDMI to TV?

[Christian Martin @ Jun 20th 2008 11:52AM]

This is ironic, since for years I have used Auzen as a REPLACEMENT for Creative.

[Jesse S @ Jun 20th 2008 3:03PM]

I don't get it. Their X-Fi cards are still much better than Creative's...

[bull3964 @ Jun 20th 2008 12:10PM]

No, I wouldn't think it would slow down the video at all.

It's more or less a passthrough. Video and audio data on HDMI should be using completely different pins on the connection since HDMI is pin compatable with DVI. So basically you would be feeding the video signal into the audio card and it would just be passing the video signal through the output while adding the audio to the pins that handle the audio portion of HDMI. There shouldn't be any processing involved at all.


Additionally, that means any HDCP compliant DVI video card should do just as well. Just get a DVI to HDMI cable to connect to the audio card's passthrough.

[AndyB @ Jun 20th 2008 1:10PM]

There are no dedicated audio pins on HDMI, the audio data is interleaved on the same pins as the video data, but only during the retrace periods (also known as the "data island").

[saq @ Jun 20th 2008 12:39PM]

Finally, lossless audio from PC to HT. I've only been waiting 3 years for this.
Sadly, most audio mastered for PC (games mainly) consumption gets shattered down to horrible bitrates and quality. At least the daring developers who do put up high quality audio will get some way to transport it!

[Curtis Joslin @ Jun 20th 2008 3:22PM]

Shattered is quite a word there.
i would dare you to try an abx test against a raw track and a VBR V0 mp3 wich is DRAMATICALLY lower in size.. even on a $10,000 system
and tell me if you can here a difference.

[Wwhat @ Jun 20th 2008 6:28PM]

Games use ogg often nowadays, not mp3

[andres @ Jun 20th 2008 4:30PM]

developers
developers
developers
developers

[Good_Bytes @ Jun 20th 2008 11:18PM]

Get a PC, or install Windows on your MAC. Even thus drivers were made on the MAC... Steve Job won't approve it. Face it, Creative drivers are not A grade, and could play on the MAC stability. Not that the Creative driver are that bad, but that MAC OS was not tested for such device. I mean isn't' that the idea of a MAC is that the OS has been deeply tested with the fix hardware configuration given by their current product to ensure the best possible stability?

[mhc @ Aug 7th 2008 9:51PM]

About time people started considering audio on their HTPCs. Anyone tried a specialized audio player for htpc? The only one I know of is QuuxPlayer (http://www.quuxplayer.com) which works pretty well if you have a wireless gamepad.