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ASUS Previews HDMI Sound Card With Hidden Video Talents
Posted by Gizmodo US Edition at 11:25 AM on June 5, 2008
The Xonar HDAV 1.3 might the first sound card to claim to full HDMI 1.3a support, but ASUS has a few more tricks up their sleeves that could make it interesting to non-audiophiles. The Xonar is capable of performing some corrective post-processing effects on HD video with its "Splendid HD" chip, saving precious CPU cycles.
The guys over at AnandTech got a brief hands-on at Computex and tested the noise reduction and contrast filters, which performed as advertised. The card also fully supports DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD for Blu-ray, which makes the Xonar an attractive solution for home theatre DIYers. ASUS plans to ship the card in July, but there's no word on pricing yet.
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
MagnoliaBoy
Posted 12:55 PM 5/6/08
It's not exactly a PCI card either, but yes, is cool. Haven't seen a new sound card in a while...
MagnoliaBoy
MagnoliaBoy
Posted 12:54 PM 5/6/08
Asus makes sound cards?
MagnoliaBoy
Evangelion
Posted 12:52 PM 5/6/08
Cool.
Evangelion
junkmail
Posted 1:24 PM 5/6/08
Figures. Just bought the D2X because it was the only decent PCIE offering available.
junkmail
nyaz
Posted 1:59 PM 5/6/08
@MagnoliaBoy: sure it is, PCI-E dur.
nyaz
jamesuschrist
Posted 2:36 PM 5/6/08
Mmm, this would be nice in my HTPC. I wonder how compatible it is with different types of video cards, or should that even be an issue?
jamesuschrist
strider_mt2k
Posted 10:29 PM 5/6/08
VERY nice.
I'll keep an eye on this.
strider_mt2k
Dook_In_The_Urinal
Posted 10:29 PM 5/6/08
@MagnoliaBoy:
no.
Dook_In_The_Urinal
sandro
Posted 1:08 AM 6/6/08
@strider_mt2k: I would say: I'll keep ears on this ;)
sandro
Worf
Posted 2:33 AM 6/6/08
Given it's got two HDMI ports, I guess one is a video in port and the other is video out, so it just takes video from your DVI video card, goes through the card where the audio is added...
What I want to know is - can it encode the audio? So it acts like a regular 5.1/6.1/7.1 sound card, but encode it into dolby digital/dts/dts-master/dolby TrueHD/etc? (The previous Xonar cards can - quite nice if you use an A/V receiver to do your multichannel decoding, rather than discrete speakers).
Worf