“The X-Mystique’s primary claim to fame is that it is the first add-in soundcard that can encode a Dolby Digital 5.1 signal. Previously only the NVIDIA SoundStorm and some Intel High Definition audio products were able to do this, but the SoundStorm was killed off by licensing fees and low OEM demand, while the Intel solution requires CPU cycles to encode the stream and there are widespread reports of terrible latency in such a solution. So with the choices being an Athlon XP enabled nForce 2 board or a laggy Intel DD 5.1 solution, users who demanded DD 5.1 encoding were left in the cold until the release of the X-Mystique.”Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
Tech Talk
- Sennheiser’s New Headphone Range for Q1 2006 @ Hardware Zone
- Saitek Audio A-200 2.1 Portable Speaker System @ ThinkComputers.org
- Saitek A-200 Portable 2.1 Speaker System @ FutureLooks
- ButtKicker promises to Shake Your Money Maker @ OCModShop
- Sennheiser HD415 Headphones @ Bona Fide Reviews
- Altec Lansing inMotion iM716 Portable HD Audio System @ Bona Fide Reviews
X-Mystique is an upgradable audio card
PenStar Systems has posted a how and why on upgrading the OPAMPS on the new X-Mystique audio card. If you do go ahead and mod it, you may be very impressed by the quality of sound you can get from the analog outputs.