Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1e X-Fi Audio Card

Soundcards and Speakers 106 Page 2 of 9 Published by

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Page 2 -- Packaging and Features

Packaging and Features

The Prodigy 7.1e comes in a small bright red and white box, it's contents packed neatly.  I like that's a small box, I would say it is green packaging, but it's clearly red.

Ball 'n a Biscuit, Babe.

The Prodigy 7.1e is kind of basic, actually, but there are more than enough features to deck the box out real good with all kinds of pictures and text. 

Backside, multi-lingual style

Like most sound cards these days, the feature set is just about as long as your arm.  With the Prodigy, it's all the good stuff.

Lets take a quick look at the bullet list:

  • PCI-e 1x interface
  • 24-bit/ 96 KHz analog input, combined microphone and line input (FlexJack)
  • 24-bit/96 KHz analog output, 7.1-channel surround out
  • Dedicated 2-channel headphone output (16-300 Ohm)
  • 24-bit/96 KHz optical digital input
  • 24-bit/96 KHz optical digital output, with AC3 pass-through
  • Front panel audio terminal (Intel HD front panel audio standard)
  • AKM4358 (112dB) D/A converter for 7.1 channel output
  • AKM4388 (106dB) D/A converter for front panel output
  • AKM5358 (102dB) A/D converter for microphone input
  • Directsound, MME, WDM, and OpenAL driver support
  • EAX 1.0/2.0, EAX Advanced HD 3.0/4.0, OpenAL API for Vista/Win7
  • Changeable OPAMP, Texas Instruments OPA2134 installed

The first thing I notice is the relative lack of digital sampling options.  24-bit/96 KHz is the maximum here, but this is a limitation of the Creative chipset.  I think weve beaten Creative over the head with this already (Creative X-Audio review), but there are two X-Fi chipsets, one that you find in the original PCI version that worked internally at 192KHz, and this one, derived from the Audigy line which tops out at 96KHz.

A diagram.

Hookup Application Diagram

 

The second thing I notice is that while some X-Fi's (and most Auzentech products) have Dolby and DTS encoding on the digital S/PDIF output, this card does not.  It will pass Dolby and DTS of course, so you'll need an external decoder in any case to get the most out of it.  Or you could just hook it all up in analog, but that's a mighty mess of wires.

The Prodigy also supports, or at least clearly labels it on the card, the front panel connectors.  I'll get into more detail about it, but Audiotrak also put an AKM DAC on it.  Convenience and quality, that's pretty serious!

Another nice standout about Audiotraks design philosophy is the dedicated headphone output and the replaceable OPAMP.  While it may not be quite ASUS Essence ESX territory, for a card in this price range, this is a great feature.

There's a lot more to the Prodigy that we'll get into in the next few pages, but in a nutshell, it is a very well rounded card.  I wouldn't even think of changing the OPAMPS, really, because the list of features and quality parts selection is pretty high.

Socket change instructions

Let's take a look at the card itself and the driver install.  Next!

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