Terratec Aureon 7.1 PCI review

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Verdict:

Review Date: 27 Apr 2006

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: Simon Handby

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

Most modern PCs can produce a 5.1 channel surround-sound output, but only via three stereo analogue audio sockets.

Few computers can output a digital signal suitable for the Dolby Digital decoder in a home cinema setup, and until now no suitable upgrades have been available.

Terratec's Aureon 7.1 PCI is the first sound card we've seen with Dolby Digital Live encoding, which converts any audio created by the PC into an AC-3 bitstream output. This works regardless of the application generating sound, so your software doesn't need to be Dolby-compliant. Although the card has analogue outputs for 7.1 channel audio, Dolby Digital Live supports a maximum of 5.1 channels.

The Aureon comes with little in the way of bundled software, but this makes it easy to install and unobtrusive. Digital sound quality was fine, but the analogue output wasn't any clearer than our onboard Realtek chip. This card is great value if you need a Dolby Digital output from your PC. However, we wouldn't recommend it otherwise.

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