How's the Philips Acoustic Edge?

[dwb122]

This may be kind of a strange question, since I've already owned one for two and a half years. Thing is, after I got it I started having kinda strange audio problems here and there, and I didn't know if it was the sound card or what. I figured that it was. I later switched to XP and at some point....can't remember exactly why.....I decided to take that card out and put in my old Turtle Beach Montego.
Also, about a couple years ago I recommended the card to my father (before I started having troubles with it) and he later started having problems with it and ended up chucking it for some fancy-schmancy Soundblaster rig.

Thing is, at least on paper, the Acoustic Edge is a much better card than my current one. Now I'm putting together an entirely new PC (with XP Home) and decided to give the Acoustic Edge another try. How is the card in XP? When I install the drivers it says something like the card or drivers aren't tested with XP and aren't guaranteed to work, or something like that. Even though I downloaded the "Windows XP version" of the drivers off Philips' website.

Anybody else here have experience with the card in XP? And if you do/don't have problems with it, what are your specs?

Here's my new setup:

Abit IC7 - P4 2.4C
2x256mb Kingston HyperX PC3500 RAM
ATi Radeon 9800
Pioneer DVD 16x
Sony CD-RW 8x/4x/23x
WinXP Home

 

[Corporate Thug]

looks good

 

[boyRacer]

No problems with it... 😀

It's in my KD7-E rig

 

[joshg]

Well...

Let me put it this way: If you already have this card and really really really don't want to buy another one, and you were choosing between

Philips AE vs. non-nForce2 MCP-T Onboard sound
or
Philips AE vs. something older (I.E. TB Montego or SB PCI-128, etc...)

... AND you weren't planning on doing anything in Linux, then I'd say use the Philips AE!


Otherwise, get something else! 😉

I bought the Philips AE a few months after it came out, and things looked extremely promising for it. However, it's been a LONG time since Philips has released any drivers, and there have been huge conflicts between Philips developers and Linux sound driver developers as far as tech documents go, and basically the card will completely not work in any flavor of Linux at this time.

Also, I occasionally get pops and things, especially when playing video games that are extremely graphic and CPU intensive simultaneously. It is not a desirable effect. 🙁

However, for DVD and music playback, the card is has very good tone reproduction (in college I started as a Music Performance/Music Education major, so I'm at least "decent" at picking up on these things 😀 ). I'm running them with a set of Midiland S4 8200 5.1 speakers, and DVD playback is very close to that of my own Bose setup in the living room! 😀 (at least, when you are sitting next to the PC ... any bit further, and the Philips AE + 8200s can't match the power that the Bose system can, there is just no contest, and the Bose system is a little punchier and much more powerful in the bass, but that's just the difference between the Bose and the Midiland sub mostly).

Needless to say that my new fascination with Linux, coupled with Philips's poor driver support and occasional gaming problems have brought me to a point where, in my new "upgraded" system, I will no longer be using this card.

Just my $0.02 ! 🙂

 

[Brian48]

I loved my AE (despite the relatively high CPU overhead and occasional driver bug), until it died on me and I had to RMA it. Picked up an Audigy2 in the interim and haven't looked back. Driver support from Philips has been non-existent for the longest time now. I did think about keeping the replacement Philips sent me, but decided I didn't want to bother with it any more and sold it. I'm still upset that hardware voices under WinXP has been reduced from 96 to 32 with the latest drivers and they've never brought it back.

 

[dwb122]

Thanks guys. The lack fo driver updates makes it kind of iffy, but I've already spent enough money on computer hardware, and I suppose I'd rather have this over the old Montego.

I'm still upset that hardware voices under WinXP has been reduced from 96 to 32 with the latest drivers and they've never brought it back.

Really? Why would they do that?

 

[Brian48]

My "guess" is that they rushed the WinXP drivers out or made shortcuts to the implementation in order to get WHQL certification last year. Run 3dmark2003. You'll notice that it only passes the 24 sounds test, but fails the 60.