Auzentech X-fi Forte 7.1 Soundcard review | test - Listening Tests - Movies and Games

Listening to Movies

Star War EP II: Attack of the Clones
The Lucas arts films offer exceptional surround sound for soundcard testing. The main battle sequences when the Droid armies are being deployed sounded exceptional and the battle scenes as a whole sound very good with effects and cues coming from every direction. The fight sequence with Jango fett and Obi Wan offered some exceptional sound on the Forte and hade me rewinding and playing it again listening for details.

Star Wars EPIII: Revenge of the Sith
This has become one of my main got DVD's for surround sound audio testing as the intro space battles and other actions scenes offer text book surround effects. The intro scenes have ships coming from behind you to the front and off to the side again. Large explosions and audio tracks depicting sources from many directions make for a great audio experience; you seriously have no idea where to focus your attention. The "historic" battle before Anakin becomes the dark lord also offers exceptional surround sound effects and audio cues. The Forte 7.1 produced all the surround audio perfectly and with exceptional clarity and detail.

Pearl Harbor
The flying scenes in this movie offer some exceptional multi directional speaker testing.
Planes flying into and away from the screen, across the field of view, all sounded excellent.
The Main Pearl Harbor attack sequence was watched about three times to enjoy. The great bass offered by the explosions of the ships and the dizzying multi-channel fly-by's. The X-fi Forte 7.1 produced all the cinematic audio effects easily and accurately.

Listening to Games

In order to keep the page count down on this review, we will be forgoing the usual screen shots.
We love to play games so the Forte was auditioned quite heavily for gaming usage and we were very impressed with what this new card had to offer.

Call of Duty 2
First Person Shooter games are great when using EAX equipped cards, bullets whizzing by your head, action coming from every direction, they can make you dizzy after awhile. The Forte had no issues keeping up with the fast paced action and multi voiced effects of many of the boards.
Occlusion and distance effects added to the realism and this game sounded spectacular through the Forte. There were a few different sound packs loaded in this game for further testing and they all sounded very realistic.

Thief
I still love this game and play it quite regularly always trying to perfect my stealth and thief abilities. The Cradle board is arguably one of the creepiest boards in 3D gaming.

The audio effects on this board are designed to make you jump and questions what you are hearing and the EAX effects in this game added to the creepiness factor. Sounds produced from behind the user position, creepy sounds that make it seem like the insane ghost is right beside your face. Several breaks were needed as this board is creepy and makes me sit on the edge of my sit. The sound offered a few instances when I would jump out of the chair.
Simply stunning audio produced by this game and the Forte 7.1.

Bioshock
Again we have a game which offers creepy levels and audio effects designed to draw you into the environments. The large open spaces offered nice game immersion, all the effects sounded quite well on the Forte 7.1. The occlusion effect were noticeable on many boards where you need to be sneaky and hide from the "slicers" Dripping water off in the distance, screams an mumbles from the characters. Multi-environment sounds all came through to make the experience that much more enjoyable.