Verdict: Pure class, but let down by poor gaming performance

M-Audio sound cards primarily cater to the professional audio market so the Revolution 7.1 is the company's only consumer internal sound card, offering eight-channel support for most gaming audio standards.

Hold the card in your hand and you get an immediate sense of quality. It's solidly made, and packed with filters and capacitors. The outputs on the back are colour coded and illustrated with diagrams so you can see how to hook it up correctly. The digital out is coaxial, a useful inclusion if you want to hook up your PC to a home cinema amplifier.

Based on the VIA Envy 24 HT chipset, the Revolution offers full 24-bit/96KHz playback on all channels and up to 192KHz on two channels. This is possible thanks to the presence of the AKM AK4355 DAC, designed specifically for DVD-Audio playback although you'll also need to go out and buy a suitable software player.

The quality of the driver impressed us, with its smart looks, ease of use and extensive features. A key feature is ASIO support, enabling musicians to gain the benefit of low latency response in compatible applications. The card also offers flexible recording sample rates, unlike the Audigy 2, which resamples everything to 48KHz.

The driver offers a number of presets for popular speaker sets, but you can set each channel to match each of your speakers. These settings alter the crossover frequency so that the bass and mid-range is optimally split between the subwoofer and satellites. The Revolution also supports SRS Circle Surround 2, a rival to Dolby Pro Logic II, creating a six-channel mix from two-channel stereo recordings. While it worked well with some material it introduced artefacts with others, so experimentation is recommended. The software bundle is decent and includes a Dolby Digital EX version of WinDVD.

The specs are impressive and sound quality was the best on test with a real clarity and bite to everything we played. Unfortunately, the lack of hardware support for 3D audio gaming means that the benchmark frame rates were poor. This makes it impossible to recommend the card for gamers, but for music or movies its the one to go for.

• Cases - 21st November 2008
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