Auzentech HDA X-Plosion 7.1 DTS Connect Sound Card

Sound Card Capabilities:

The Auzentech HDA X-Plosion supports A3D 1.0, EAX 1.0 & 2.0 (via Sensaura software emulation), C3DX, DirectSound 3D, OpenAL, and others. EAX (currently up to version 5.0) is simply audio enhancements that add more "punch" to games via a standardized API (developed of course by Creative). There is a movement to support a more open-source API called OpenAL, which hopefully over time we will see more games and hardware support rather than the proprietary EAX standards. Most games that support even the latest versions of EAX usually support the older versions too, so that's not really a huge issue. Some games just don't handle EAX sound well and often (at least to me) EAX is more of an annoyance than an actual "feature". I remember on my old SB-Live when playing Counterstrike some EAX effects (like a long delay echo) would stick on and would not reset until a map change.

With DDL or DTS Connect enabled, 2ch sources get up-mixed, so it's important to double-check in games to select the actual amount of speakers you have (in my case I have a standard 5.1 system) to get the full sound experience from the game's engine.

CPU usage between the X-Plosion, onboard audio, and other sound cards is negligible in the several tests and games I ran. If you think your game play is suffering because your sound card is eating up too many CPU cycles, then it's time to upgrade that old P-II to something a bit more modern. It is really hard to quantify numbers for a sound card when the usage is so low and every game supports different audio settings and the limitation is usually more on the GPU than the CPU.

Dolby Digital Live vs. DTS Connect:

Dolby Digital vs. DTS is a debate that has gone on since the inception of the two companies and competing sound standards. My personal preference for movies has to be given to DTS, and it's not because the bitrate is higher (when comparing 5.1 bitstreams). To me DTS sound is richer, the highs, the lows, the channel separation, it all just sounds better (to me).

I did mess around with movies some, altering the settings in my DVD player software to decode the audio instead of simple pass-thru. Then I proceeded to tinker with the various audio settings to see how they compared. While none of the software tweaking sounded quite as good as simply having the audio pass-thru unaltered and using the receiver's built-in option to fine tune each channel, low-end receivers that do not have many (or any) configuration options now have a little more capability.

When playing games, I honestly could not tell a great deal of a quality difference between the two formats. Most game audio gets compressed quite a bit, so the sounds themselves are nothing to write home about. However the 3D feeling and dynamic sound levels seemed to be a little more crisp & defined using DTS Connect. In all fairness however, there is a certain level of focusing more on the visual game play than concentrating on the short bursts of random sounds (gunfire, footsteps, explosions). On a more positive note, older games that only had 2-channel audio now give a more immersed feeling and are brought back to life with 5.1 audio.

Music on the other hand, is taken to a whole new level when going from 2ch stereo to a full 5.1 channels. Sound quality can really vary based on the source, the more compressed the music the worse it will sound, and that is only amplified by the multiple speakers. I know this is kind of unnecessary to say, but good music will sound better, and bad music will sound worse. Creative does have one advantage in this area with its X-Fi 24-bit Crystalizer, it does make lower quality MP3s sound a little better. However the X-Fi still can not do DDL or DTS Connect so a user like me would only be able to get 2ch stereo sound, and I would rather get the full 5.1 richness thank you very much.

The difference in CPU usage between DDL & DTS Connect is really immeasurable, the distinguishing factor is in the very subtle difference in sound produced (and the number of channels capable).