uATX System Buildup: Choosing Components

Audio

Remember a few pages back (don't worry, I barely remember myself) when I had to make a decision on which board to put in my system and it came down to the layout of the Biostar and Jetway board? The decision is because I wanted to upgrade from the Realtek onboard sound (HDMI audio out is not being used) to something better - mainly for listening to music, but movies and gaming would also get a boost. The Jetway board does include a PCI Express x1 slot but due to the GF8200 heatsink location, it is only good for half-length cards. That knocked what I consider one of the better "value" audio cards out of contention for me on that board.

The audio card I am enamored with is the ASUS Xonar DX 7.1 at a reasonable $89. This card offers every possible option I need in this particular system while offering exceptional sound quality for music and DVD playback. Gaming performance is very good and with the last driver updates, even the EAX 5.0 emulation is coming up to speed quickly in both quality and compatibility with the latest games.

The Xonar DX features ASUS' AV100 audio processor - really just a name change to a large degree from the AV200 used in the D2X card. The DX utilizes a combination of Cirrus Logic CD4398 and CD4362A DACS for analog out duties compared to the Burr Brown PCM1796 DACS in the D2X card. Analog-to-Digital duties on both cards are handled by Cirrus Logic with the DX utilizing the CD5361 and the D2X having the CD5381.

Besides slightly lower signal-to-noise ratings on the DX card, it drops support for DTS interactive encoding, although Dolby Digital Live encoding is still available as is Dolby Headphone and Virtual Speaker. Anyway, the DTS feature is not that important to me as I only have a 2-channel setup on this particular system. About the only problem I have run into is with the microphone settings; at various times I get static or dropout while on Skype that required turning on microphone boost and increasing microphone volume to 85% or more.

For my daughter's system, I chose the Auzentech X-Plosion 7.1 DTS Connect card based on previous experience. In addition, the latest driver release on 5/19 addressed several problems under Vista. Of course, it did not hurt that I picked up an open box return sample with new warranty for $54.99. While my daughter probably could have lived with the onboard audio, her movie, music, and game addiction called for something better. This card offers real-time DTS and Dolby Digital Live encoding via the C-Media CMI8770 chipset along with swappable OPAMPS. Although I prefer the recently canceled X-Meridian card, it was not available at this price point.