Auzen X-Meridian 7.1 2g soundcard review - Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

Overall we are quite impressed with this offering from Auzentech.  The card offers a very balanced musical sound quality that keeps you interested and involved in your music.  The 2G card has a similar synergy and sonic magic that was present in the original XM, meaning that card just has that elusive “IT” factor that some sources are lacking.

We have some negatives in this review; we would have liked to see this card with custom drivers over the stock CM vanilla driver version.  This card is also PCI as the 8788 chipset has a PCI interface other cards using this chip and PCI-E do so with a bridging chip and although not the ideal solution, it still allows the card a degree of future proofing.

We found this card excellent for all the audio tasks we performed as the card has an excellent stock sound and the fact the card can be further improved with some opamps upgrades is a major plus for the end users.  We found excellent upgrades using our higher end opamps but there were also great sonic gains using lower priced commonly available units such as the LM4562NA.

We had a few people stop into the audio lab during listening testing and each time we received commments on the cards sonic prowess.  We noticed our visitors tapping their foot during their visit to our audio lab and that is what we are all after in an audio source.

This card may not measure quite as high as some of the heavy weight offerings as you have to keep in mind this card is not aimed at the extreme high end of the market, more aimed at people that want great sound quality at a more modest price point.

The fact that this card has an expansion slot should be of interest to the home recording enthusiasts offering a great deal of I/O upgrades for a cheap price.  The digital I/O could also be used to integrate the PC into yor current HT, using a combination of S/pdif and analog I/O.

Given the price point, features and circuitry considerations, we give this card our recommended award.  If you are a bit light in your pockets but need some great sound quality for your PC we suggest you give this card some attention and have a listen.

• Leave/read comments on this product
• Sign up to receive an email when we publish new articles
• Or go back to Guru3D's front page.