Page 12 - Tripping the light fantastic

DVD

There's little question that a good home theatre can be an incredible experience.  What we aim to test here is how good a sound card can handle the audio reproduction tasks of a typical home theatre setup.  I tested the Creative X-Fi and the X-Fi Prelude against Auzentech's X-Meridian, using both optical and 5.1 channel direct analog connection analog to a set of Logitech Z-680s.  VLC was used to play Star Wars: Episode III to test common aspects of sound production, including dialog clarity and surround sound accuracy.

Some notable deficiencies are that the X-Fi Prelude did not pass-through the Dolby Digital signal through to the optical cable.  It did decode on the card and give 2-channel output on the optical.  The X-Fi XtremeMusic doesnt really do digital output at all, unless you pony up for the Pro version, or make yourself a DIN cable.  The only mode that was common to all three cards was the analog output.

The short of it is that the X-Fi Prelude still cant beat the X-Meridian.  The X-Meridian was the champ in the DVD playback category last year, with its very strong analog output, and the DD Live and DTS encoding.  Auzentechs X-Fi Prelude has the associated connectors for home theatre duties, but it is again hobbled by the driver.

During the first scene, Battle of Coruscant, I believe I could actually count how many cigarettes Ewan McGregor had before the scenes.  Quite a lot it sounded.  The regular X-Fi is not quite this good with dialog clarity, and was quite a notch below the X-Fi Prelude and X-Meridian.  The X-Fi Prelude also conveyed the same sense of dryness in dialog, but not quite as raw.

In terms of surround sound accuracy, all the cards passed with flying colors.  However, it's the utility of the X-Fi XtremeMusic and the X-Meridian cards that win here.  With the X-Fi Preldue there's no THX console, which gives you very fine control of the speaker volumes, which is missing from the Prelude.  The X-Meridian also has a feature that also lets you control speaker volumes and time delays.