Review by: Brann Mitchell

Manufacturer: TerraTec ProAudio, Inc.

Date: March 2003

Price: $250 USD

The TerraTec DMX 6-fire is a high-end 24-bit/96kHz audio card geared towards sound production, mastering, editing, and well, anything to do with music creation.  Oh, yeah, it can game too, and spit out the odd 5.1 channel DVD movie while it’s at it. 

The Audigy2, which doesn’t need much introduction, is also a 24-bit/96kHz sound card geared toward the gamer with chunks of music creation and editing features.  Oh, yeah, the Audigy2 can play DVD-Audio, and spit out the 6.1 channel DVD movie while it’s at it.  Both have incredibly long names.  Both have remarkably similar hardware configurations coming with a break-out box that take up a 5 ¼” drive bay.  Both come loaded with more software than you can reliably count on your fingers and toes.  So, the evil geniuses here at Guru3d.com pack a PC with $500 worth of sound cards to duke it out, IC to IC, DAC to DAC.

Let's first take a look at a brief hardware feature comparison:

As you can see they are pretty even, in terms of DAC quality.  The DirectSound is a major difference with the Audigy2 having at least doubled the number of channels available for sounds over the TerraTec.  Fear my 'leet HTML table skills.

We won’t go into much depth over the Audigy2, as it has had a lot of coverage already.  You can read our own homegrown review of the Audigy2 here.