SOUND CARDS

Add a decent sound card to your PC and your ears will thank you for it. We look at eight cards that will send you straight to audio heaven

Terratec Aureon 7.1 Space

Manufacturer:	Price:
Terratec	£70.44 inc VAT
Reviewer:	Review Date:
	May 2004

	OVERALL RATING

SCORE

4/6

Verdict: Excellent sound quality, but not so good for games

The Terratec and the M-Audio cards have a lot in common. Both are from companies with a strong reputation for high-quality sound cards, and both are based on the VIA Envy 24HT chipset. This means that the Aureon supports 24-bit/96KHz playback on all eight channels - Terratec refers to this as '4G sound'. Meanwhile, 192KHz sampling is available over two channels, though there's no DVD-Audio support currently available.

The Aureon differs externally from the M-Audio card by sporting two optical connections, one in and one out, instead of a single coaxial. If you require more than this you could try the Aureon 7.1 Universe. It offers a remote control and breakout box that fits in a 5.25in drive bay, which sports more connections. An oddity on the Aureon is that the four rear outputs aren't colour coded but instead are all green. There are labels on the rear of the card itself but these are just labelled line-out 1-4, rather than stating which speakers they are actually for.

While the driver is well featured, it isn't as comprehensive or as well laid out as the one included with the M-Audio card. Sensaura 3D audio is present but requires a reboot to enable it. Once this is done you can use EAX 1 and 2 in games, DirectSound3D and A3D 1. Budding musicians will also benefit from being able to sample at a number of frequencies, not just at 48KHz. The card supports ASIO so it will be suitable for creating effects in real time for music applications.

The software bundle is appealing, with Steinberg WaveLab 2 for audio editing and eMagic Logic Fun MIDI sequencer. MusicMatch Jukebox is the media player included, while the bundled version of Cyberlink PowerDVD includes Dolby Digital EX support, although you'll need to buy an upgrade if you want it to decode DTS movies.

During testing the Aureon impressed us with its sound quality, which was nearly on par with the M-Audio card. However, unlike the M-Audio, the driver can't optimise for different speaker sizes and there aren't any techniques for generating multichannel sound from a stereo mix. In our Call of Duty benchmark it achieved an identical score to the M-Audio with EAX 2 enabled, reflecting the fact that both cards are based on the same VIA chip.

The Aureon's lacklustre 3D benchmark performance means that the Audigy 2 is far better for gaming, and while audio quality and gaming performance is similar to the M-Audio card, the latter's superior drivers knock the Aureon out of the running.

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