Diamond Multimedia XtremeSound 7.1
- Output Mode: 7.1 Channel Surround
- Bit Depth: 24-bit
- Compatible Audio Standards: Dolby Digital EX A3D EAX
- Form Factor: Plug-In Card
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Building a Home Theater on a budget? Go Xtreme!
Pros
Affordable PCI sound card with all the features necessary to build a great HTPC
Cons
The only documentation is the quickstart guide.
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
I didn't want to spend a lot for hi-fi surround sound on DVDs. Diamond met all my requirements for PC audio, the SPDIF out port allows for true digital pass-through
The Diamond Multimedia XtremeSound 7.1 Sound Card is a great alternative to the well known, high priced, excellent quality Creative Labs Sound Blaster products.
I recently decided to upgrade my HTPC (Home Theater PC) from an ATI Multi-Media PC setup to a Windows Media Center Edition PC. This required a few small changed in hardware getting everything up to MCE standards for drivers, but one thing I was not prepared for was how crappy even the latest and greatest on-board audio is.
On my first build I intended to use the on-board audio for my HTPC using Windows MCE (Media Center Edition). My computer had a SPDIF out connector for connecting directly to a high-end sound system. My ATI All-In-Wonder card had the same thing, but since it was a hardware DVD decoder the SPDIF was built into the ATI video card so I only used the onboard soundcard SPDIF for playing music on my stereo (in stereo). All the surround sound features for DVDs came from the ATI video card.
When I installed MCE I discovered that the on-board audio from most motherboards (especially the budget ones Asus K8V-MX in this case) don't really do a good job of passing through the digital signal on the SPDIF. For some reason they still rely on the Windows sound mixer for heavy processing and the multi-channel DVD signal gets down-mixed to stereo. It's not very thrilling to watch a Dolby Surround movie in stereo...
In comes the Diamond XtremeSound to save the day. Here's how it all started:
After a few minutes (read hours) of frustration trying to get Dolby to pass through the SPDIF on my motherboard I installed an old Sound Blaster Live X-Gamer 5.1 sound card and a Creative Labs "Live Drive!" 5-1/4" front panel connector. After installing all the drivers and reconfiguring MCE to see the new PCI sound card (I disabled the on-board sound in BIOS) things started working the way I expected. Hooray for surround sound!
The problem was I didn't want the ugly white "Live Drive!" sticking out the front of my clean, black HTPC case. In addition to that the SPDIF cable has to plug into the front of the PC (where the LiveDrive! is) and it occasional hung up the DVD Drive door and just looked downright silly. I needed a sound card that had a built in SPDIF pass-through port (on the back of the PC) and didn't cost an arm and a leg.
A few weeks earlier my August issue of Maximum PC arrived and I recalled seeing an article on a new sound card from Diamond that actually had reasonable gaming performance (what maximum PC is most concerned with), but more importantly had all the right parts to be a great HTPC sound card including a built in SPDIF out and in jacks!
I dug the magazine out from under my mail pile and thumbed through until I found the article. Everything looked great and the price they listed was $60. Well guess what? It can be had for half of that or less! I really wanted to get my new MCE HTPC finished so I ran out to a few stores and found one in town relatively quickly for only $30.
I carried my new prize home, yanked out the ugly live drive from the front of the PC and pulled the SoundBlaster card from it's PCI slot and replaced it with the Diamond without even being overly cautious about removing old drivers or cleaning up beforehand.
Eureka! It worked! As soon as Windows booted it found the new device. In their "quick install" directions they inform you to cancel the Windows Hardware Wizard and run the install program from the CD, glad I read that! I installed using the CD install program and skipped installing the extra stuff and just installed the driver package.
As soon as the computer rebooted and I logged in the system played the windows login tune, which meant things were working. I went into the control panel and set the Diamond card to use the SPDIF pass-through feature and turned off all "effects". It was like magic. I opened Media Center, selected Play DVD and instantly my surround sound receiver made a familiar clicking sound and switched into "Auto Format Decode" mode and showed [5.1 Surround] on the display.
Honestly, I was shocked it was that easy and I kicked myself for not spending the $30 the day before since I would not have had to play with the silly Sound Blaster and Live Drive!.
Now, you might ask why I didn't use a Sound Blaster because they are the best. Well, here's why... There are no Sound Blaster Cards out there for less than $70. The ones that are less than $90 usually don't even have the ability to do SPDIF pass-through. There isn't one, not one Sound Blaster card that comes with a built-in SPDIF port (Creative Labs are you hearing this!?!?!). You have to buy some sort of extra "digital expander" to get SPDIF connections and these expanders are not usually readily available at your local store.
The Diamond XtremeSound 7.1 card had it all, great sound processing ability, nearly on par with the Sound Blaster, and a built in SPDIF port to boot. In addition to that it was one of the easiest hardware installs I've done in a while.
I recently decided to upgrade my HTPC (Home Theater PC) from an ATI Multi-Media PC setup to a Windows Media Center Edition PC. This required a few small changed in hardware getting everything up to MCE standards for drivers, but one thing I was not prepared for was how crappy even the latest and greatest on-board audio is.
On my first build I intended to use the on-board audio for my HTPC using Windows MCE (Media Center Edition). My computer had a SPDIF out connector for connecting directly to a high-end sound system. My ATI All-In-Wonder card had the same thing, but since it was a hardware DVD decoder the SPDIF was built into the ATI video card so I only used the onboard soundcard SPDIF for playing music on my stereo (in stereo). All the surround sound features for DVDs came from the ATI video card.
When I installed MCE I discovered that the on-board audio from most motherboards (especially the budget ones Asus K8V-MX in this case) don't really do a good job of passing through the digital signal on the SPDIF. For some reason they still rely on the Windows sound mixer for heavy processing and the multi-channel DVD signal gets down-mixed to stereo. It's not very thrilling to watch a Dolby Surround movie in stereo...
In comes the Diamond XtremeSound to save the day. Here's how it all started:
After a few minutes (read hours) of frustration trying to get Dolby to pass through the SPDIF on my motherboard I installed an old Sound Blaster Live X-Gamer 5.1 sound card and a Creative Labs "Live Drive!" 5-1/4" front panel connector. After installing all the drivers and reconfiguring MCE to see the new PCI sound card (I disabled the on-board sound in BIOS) things started working the way I expected. Hooray for surround sound!
The problem was I didn't want the ugly white "Live Drive!" sticking out the front of my clean, black HTPC case. In addition to that the SPDIF cable has to plug into the front of the PC (where the LiveDrive! is) and it occasional hung up the DVD Drive door and just looked downright silly. I needed a sound card that had a built in SPDIF pass-through port (on the back of the PC) and didn't cost an arm and a leg.
A few weeks earlier my August issue of Maximum PC arrived and I recalled seeing an article on a new sound card from Diamond that actually had reasonable gaming performance (what maximum PC is most concerned with), but more importantly had all the right parts to be a great HTPC sound card including a built in SPDIF out and in jacks!
I dug the magazine out from under my mail pile and thumbed through until I found the article. Everything looked great and the price they listed was $60. Well guess what? It can be had for half of that or less! I really wanted to get my new MCE HTPC finished so I ran out to a few stores and found one in town relatively quickly for only $30.
I carried my new prize home, yanked out the ugly live drive from the front of the PC and pulled the SoundBlaster card from it's PCI slot and replaced it with the Diamond without even being overly cautious about removing old drivers or cleaning up beforehand.
Eureka! It worked! As soon as Windows booted it found the new device. In their "quick install" directions they inform you to cancel the Windows Hardware Wizard and run the install program from the CD, glad I read that! I installed using the CD install program and skipped installing the extra stuff and just installed the driver package.
As soon as the computer rebooted and I logged in the system played the windows login tune, which meant things were working. I went into the control panel and set the Diamond card to use the SPDIF pass-through feature and turned off all "effects". It was like magic. I opened Media Center, selected Play DVD and instantly my surround sound receiver made a familiar clicking sound and switched into "Auto Format Decode" mode and showed [5.1 Surround] on the display.
Honestly, I was shocked it was that easy and I kicked myself for not spending the $30 the day before since I would not have had to play with the silly Sound Blaster and Live Drive!.
Now, you might ask why I didn't use a Sound Blaster because they are the best. Well, here's why... There are no Sound Blaster Cards out there for less than $70. The ones that are less than $90 usually don't even have the ability to do SPDIF pass-through. There isn't one, not one Sound Blaster card that comes with a built-in SPDIF port (Creative Labs are you hearing this!?!?!). You have to buy some sort of extra "digital expander" to get SPDIF connections and these expanders are not usually readily available at your local store.
The Diamond XtremeSound 7.1 card had it all, great sound processing ability, nearly on par with the Sound Blaster, and a built in SPDIF port to boot. In addition to that it was one of the easiest hardware installs I've done in a while.
