Hello again, I'm Rodney Reynolds and welcome to another video review. Today, I’m looking at the Auzen 7.1 Forte Low-Profile Sound Card. What’s included is the setup guide, installation CD, analog I/O cable, optical cable, 1 toss link to optical mini adaptor, a standard size expansion slot bracket, and the sound card.
This sound card uses the latest Creative Lab’s components and technologies. It includes a Creative X-Fi CK20K audio processor, and X-RAM 64 megabytes of DDR SD RAM for audio processing. The supported audio resolution and sampling rate is 16-bit or 24-bit and up to 192 kilohertz depending on playback or if recording. The dynamic range is 109 decibels A-weighted for analog outputs and 98 A-weighted for analog inputs. The signal to noise ratio is 115 decibels A-weighted for stereo analog outputs and 109 decibels A-weighted for multi-channel analog outputs. The frequency response varies from 10-94 kilohertz depending on the sampling rate and the headphone load impedance varies from 16-600 ohms. The line output impedance is 330 ohms and the line auxiliary input impedance is 10,000 ohms.
This sound card offers 7.1 channel Dolby digital and DTS audio playback. And the key technologies include Creative Lab’s EAX 5 advanced HT sound effects, X-Fi, CMSS 3D, X-RAM and X-Fi Crystalizer. This sound card also has a separate headphone output circuitry. This headphone amplifier does not use a normal amplifier chip or rather uses a proprietary Auzen Tech designed dedicated headphone amplifier. Based on the op amp, it has 8 high end discrete transistor buffer class AB type headphone driver stage.
Now, let’s have a closer look at the sound card. Here’s the digital output RCA toss link combo jack. And remember, you can use this mini adaptor if you want to use a fiber cable. Here’s the headphone jack and also this is the connector for the analog I/O multi-cable. The analog I/O cable has a number of connections: to the front speakers, rear speakers, side speakers, center channel speaker, and subwoofer, as well as the microphone in and line in.
The Low Profile expansion slot bracket comes installed which is great for low profile home theater PC cases or other low profile cases. But, this bracket can be very easily removed by taking off 3 screws and the standard expansion slot bracket can be installed instead which is perfect for standard ATX cases. This sound card has a PCI Express 1.1 X1 1 lane interface but also fits in 4 lane, 8 lane, and 16 lane PCI Express video card slots. This is very useful because if you had a video card with a large cooler occupying 2 slots or a multiple video card setup, sometimes the PCI Express X1 slot is covered. So if another PCI Express video card slot is available, you can put it in there.
The software that’s included offers total control over the connected devices. Even though the sound card is based on Creative Lab’s technology, the drivers are rock solid. And I had no problem installing the software and the drivers even on Vista 64-bit. Now remember to go to their website and download the latest drivers so everything does work properly. The software enables 3 different modes: entertainment, audio creation, and gaming. Within these modes, there are torrent of options to choose from allowing complete customization which means you can setup the sound card to perform to your personal preferences.
While in today’s motherboards do have some really on-board sound, it cannot be compared to a separate sound card like this one. This sound card performs exceptionally well. Overall, it’s a 100% kickass product.
Until the next time, take care.
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