Acoustic Edge owners: How is EAX and A3D support?

[Noriaki]

I'm pretty sure the AE has EAX support and have heard it's quite good, do you guys agree?

Not sure if the AE supports A3D or not..does it? And if it does how is it?

I think I may have to buy one here shortly...

 

[StrangeRanger]

I'm not a huge gamer so i can't give you much feed back, but i have been playing a fair amount of Thief and Diablo II. And i'm enjoying my AE's performance VERY much. Excellent spacial projection. Almost to a point of being freaky now and then. You know, like you know you shouldn't but you still look over your shoulder type deal
j

 

[Noriaki]

Sounds nice.....hmmm I might have to buy one of thse.

While we are on the subject of AE, Have you ever used the AE to decode an AC-3/Dobly Digital input signal to 4 channels?

I want to get an AE and Boston Acoustics BA4800s and use that to play my DVDs sound from an RCA SPDIF input....how well do you think the surround sound will work out? And will I get full bass response through the 4 channels?

(I know it's designed to be a 5.1 channel card...but I don't have a good place to put a center channel, I haven't found any fairly cheap 5.1 sets that sound as good as the BA4800s, and most 5.1 sets don't have 4 inputs for gaming which I want....so it's 4.1 with 4.0 inputs for me)

 

[StrangeRanger]

no sorry. haven't done any ac3 stuff. i listen to mostly music and do a little gaming. i have no desire to watch movies on my pc or anything like that. that's why i blew my wad on the home theatre set up. honestly i'm not to familiar with that output from a sound card (yet) but here's the spec page on the card where they mention the ac3/dts output. hope it helps.
j

 

[Noriaki]

thanks strange.

I only have one room so I don't have the space for a full home theatre set up, I have a TV but to save space I put a DVDRom and Decoder card in my PC so I play it to my TV from the decoder card and I wanted smallish speakers cuz I don't have the space for big towers and stuff.

One day when I'm out on my own after I finish school I'm going to get a proper HT setup for my DVDs and what not, but for now I'm stuck in one room so I have to make the best of my space hehehe.

I heard you found an AE for $76, mind sharing the where? hehehe I'm pretty convinced I want to buy one now and that's a great price tag for it

 

[Insane3D]

Noriaki:

The AE officially supports EAX 1.0, EAX 2.0, A3D 1.0, however I have been using A3D 2.0 in Alice and it works great. It may not be true A3D 2.0, I'm not sure, but it sounds much better than EAX or A3D 1.0. As far as where to get the AE at $76, the bad news the price has gone up.......but only to $77 hehe. You need to go here , and enter promo code 936P to get the $77 price.

 

[Noriaki]

Damn a whole dollar...I guess I can live with that.

hehe thanks for the link

 

[LickEmSmack]

How does the sound quality of this card compare with the old Diamond MX-300 or any of the Live! stuff? I have the MX-300, but might want to upgrade to full Digital so I can output to my Dolby Digital receiver easily. Can the AE do this and does it sound good?

 

[GL]

Insane3D,

It probably supports A3D 2.0 minus A3D 2.0's occlusions (sp?). My old Diamond Monster Sound Original (yes..didn't even use an Aureal chip!) supported A3D 2.0 through this method. It didn't sound as good as real A3D 2.0 and took a performance hit since the CPU did some of the processing I believe. Just wanted to share this with everybody...it's no biggie though...Aureal's gone so A3D will start to die off unfortunately.

-GL

 

[StrangeRanger]

yes the AE can do full digital via a rca spdif. and IMO the card sounds better than my sb live. my music sounds much better than with the live card. i've been using the AE mostly for digital i/o to and from my DAT deck. what a bonus that is, $76 for full digital i/o and no pain in the arse daughter card. yup, i'm happy.
j

 

[Insane3D]

GL

I think you are right. In the review at gamersdepot I think they said something about the QMSS algorithms improvising when it does not have full support for an audio extension like A3D 2.0. I am not sure what I am missing never having owned a Aureal based card, but I think it does an excellent job...it sounds much better than EAX.