Listening Tests Music and Movies

Listening Tests

We offer a subjective set of listening tests using the Bravura 7.1 for some stock audio task performed on many modern PCs.  As your ears and playback gear will undoubtedly vary so will your impressions of this cards playback.  This is simple our impressions after spending some time testing and playing with the Bravura 7.1.  Music and sound effects are very hard to describe with words so please consider the tests as opinions.

Music

We tested many different genres of music to gauge the cards sonic prowess, feature set and options.

Music was tested with headphones, stereo output and multi-channel up mixing.  All music was tested with no DSP using Winamp 5 and Foobar.  We tested lossless Flac files and found this card to be very balanced and musical, making the playback quite enjoyable.  We also performed more in depth testing. And figured we would try something a bit different in our testing and tried some live music using concert video.  A quick note, the Bravura offers no native ASIO drivers but according to Auzentech, the WASAPI driver for Vista offers bit perfect audio output.

Metallica: Live at Blindmans Ball 97
A great video if youre into heavy music and it makes a great testing DVD.  All the tested songs on the DVD came through fairly well.  We did note some mid range anomalies more of the mids being a bit harsh in certain places.  Bass was light on a few tracks but some EQ helped.  We prefer to test cards with no added DSP effects or EQ to gauge the cards natural sound without coloration.  The Bravura 7.1 offered great sound and has that something that gets your foot moving.  The guitars cranked out great on many tracks, offering characteristic tube distortion sound, instead of boring 1 dimensional metal distortion.  The Bravura produces a very layered sound with many of these tracks offering a large soundstage and great insturment seperation.

Van Halen: Live Without a Net
This is a great video from 1986 that has excellent testing tracks.  The Bravura 7.1 performed great, offering a musical quality to get your foot tapping.  Everything sounded balanced but still offering character to the different instruments.  The headphone output could be a bit light in the lower bass for certain tracks although live music is often light in the bass end.  The bass guitar comes through with good character and presence.  The lead guitar sounded quite good during the entire video, again, offering up a great tube sound instead of just loud boring distortion.  The drums kept the songs pounding and weren't washed out or pushed to the back of the image by the cards signature.  We look to the "solos" for bass, guitar, and drums to gauge how the card deals with each insturment.  The Bravura 7.1 handled all aspects exceptionally well and we turned it up probably more then we should have. 

Movies

We watched a few movies using both the headphones output and the cards multi channel outputs. One of the most notable aspects of this soundcard when using the surround outputs is the blending of the front soundstage, meaning the fronts, center and subwoofer, there is just a wall of sound with no separation noticeable between channels or from satellite to subwoofers.

Saving Private Ryan
Battle scenes are great for testing surround sound sources.  Bullets whizzing through the channels and from point to point offer excellent testing.  There are many fight scenes in this movie and they were made all the more exciting by the Bravura 7.1.  Clear dialog, decent bass and impressive surround imaging was all heard during our testing. The first battle scene offers many aspects and busy sonic details, the card holds its own without washing out the details.  Large guns rocked the testing bench; the bass offered was neither boomy nor tubby.

2012
We watched this new movie using this card and cranked the volume on the system.  The audio effects were produced perfectly.  The building crumbling and ground falling away was all easily heard with no wash out or mashing of the detail.  There is many sonic aspects happening at one time in various parts but the Bravura produced the easily.  Thumping bass lines for explosions and earth quakes came through and was melded within the action.  The ending segments were also very impressive with the water crashing and rumbling.  Audio aspects could be heard coming from every channel in many scenes but still seemed blended and together.  Great surround audio tracks came through perfectly on the Bravura 7.1