new audio cards from asus: the DX and the AV1

[james.miller]

First up, the dx. we've already seen a few mentions of the dx in previous threads - its basically a pci-e d2 (like the d2x) but in a small form factor. presumably perfect for slim line htpc cases, which is where the xonar family shine best.

The asus xonar dx

the recent announcement of eax5.0 support being added to the xonar family made things a lot more interesting. but anyway....

Secondly, and this is the interesting one, the newly announced xonar av1. this one i expect wont be out for quite a while, but it could totally shake up the whole htpc and audio/video sector.

The av1 will be whats thought to be the first sound card with a native hdmi output. But not one output, two of them. If that wasnt enough, it also has a hdmi intput....

Sound enthusiasts may be more interested in a product that is currently in development – the Xonar AV1. This sound card is developed as a foundation for future Xonar products. The capabilities of the Xonar AV1 are ahead of consumer, prosumer and even a large number of professional solutions on the market.

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The Xonar AV1 main card, and HDAV-DB1 daughterboard, will have more than 10 different interfaces, with the most interesting ones being the three HDMI ports (two external). HDMI-in is going to be a game changer for all high-class computers, since video enthusiasts will be able to capture their home videos using a clean digital input.

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In order to get the HDMI capability, Asus put some serious silicon on the board itself: "Splendid HD" no longer is a software feature, but rather supported through a real video processing chip that will mix the sound and audio in order to produce best possible A/V mix.

The only downside of the new card – as far as we can see now – is that it uses a proprietary interface to connect the HDAV-DB1 daughterboard with the main card. While it may not pose an issue today, users may be stuck useless cards simple because they cannot replace a bad cable. However, we were told that Asus is still polishing this product.

We were not able to get any information on the price, but it appears that there will be different versions. If Asus comes up with two products (just the AV1 and the AV1+HDAV-DB1), the card could hit some interesting price points, which means that the pro-sumer and entry-level professional markets will be wide open.

With Asus expanding its sound card line-up from two sound cards to five (excluding USB sound chips that we did not show in this preview article), we can only imagine that Creative Labs is watching this one very closely. We're still without hardware to verify claims coming from Asus office, but as it stands right now, there is a good chance that the sound card market will get much more interesting.

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/36243/118/

if this card will do what asus claims, it will change everything.