Auzentech's HDMI 1.3 X-Fi HomeTheater still coming soon, for $249.99
By Richard Lawler 
posted Aug 11th 2009 12:38PM
posted Aug 11th 2009 12:38PM
Still waiting for an alternative to the ASUS Xonar HDMI 1.3 audio card? Auzentech knows your pain and promises its Creative-powered X-Fi HomeTheater 7.1 sound card is on the way in "mid-August." Rather than waiting for actual shipping hardware to lay down your cash, you can, of course, pre-order right now and know that someday bitstreamed or PCM lossless audio from your HTPC will be a reality, though an all-in-one video and audio card is still our most fervent wish. The cost? $249.99, but owners of X-Fi Prelude and X-Meridian sound cards can slash $50 from that price, hit Auzentech's site for the dirty details.
Well $50 before the cost of shipping the old one to them.
I'd wait until newegg shows what they're willing to sell it for.
I thought that most HDMI-equipped video cards HAD integrated audio chips (ATI's 48XX series for example).
Is this not the case???
Actually, I'm wondering the same thing. I have a Radeon 4850 that decodes DTS-MA and TrueHD to LPCM and sends it to my receiver just fine. I don't quite see the need for these overpriced devices other than to get bitstreamed audio to the receiver.
Hmmm. $70 LPCM vs. $250 Bitstream. No brainer to me.
So it cost $250 for this Audio card to get PCM lossless(That will probably not work right for 6 months), but I can get a Bluray player with PCM lossless for $200?
Richard are you sure this is legal? This must be braking some type of law some where right? This is worse than people selling a gallon of water for $20 after a hurricane...
I'm lost. Your comparing a top 'o the line audio card to water.
what a rip. who in their right mind would pay $250 for a sound card at home.
you could by a good BD player and get a better experience. Esp since BD is the only src of these new fangled codecs.
@Matt - the HDMI equip ones only send Dobly Digital or DTS. They do not have the secured path to send TrueHD or DTS-MA.
Yes, you could buy a Blu-ray player that does HD Audio decoding and/or bitstream out for less money, but that player cannot act as a jukebox/server.
The reason people would pony up for this sound card is because they are ripping Blu-ray movies to their hard drive, building a huge collection and now they want to be able to hear all of those Blu-ray rips in full HD Audio quality.
They save money by rent/rip/return so maybe the high cost of the audio card is offset in that way.
Uhh, my card has HDCP.. this is the "secure path" you speak of, yes? Nick G also says that his 4850 is sending LPCM over HDMI...
I don't understand what the draw of a soundcard like this is
I'm curious, to what format are people ripping their Blu-rays that retains the full HD Audio? Are they just ripping ISO files? Or is it something else?
You can convert the movie to mkv and preserve full quality of both audio (transcode to flac) or video (remuxing). Depending on your hardware it doesn't take that long. You can also just preserve TrueHD in mkv and decode without downsampling with ffdshow, but there's no mlv splitter that I know of that works with TrueHD.
You can still remux m2ts files with TrueHD and play them, but then you need to jump through a few hoops for playback as well (I think I was having trouble with subs). DTS-HD is another matter.
This card is a ripoff. What they don't say is that they don't include the software that will enable its most sought-after feature: HD audio bitstreaming. PowerDVD 9 Ultra is another $90 or so, maybe $100 (not going to the CL page to check).
My $40 Radeon HD 4550 does HD video and 7.1 PCM audio just fine. I could really care less if my computer or receiver decodes the audio. Same end result.
Judging from the article, I would reckon the author has NO IDEA all the current gen video cards do this.
AMD's 48x0 cannot bitstream DTS-HD/Dobly Digital TruHD over HDMI; this card can.
So two hdmi cords thats stupid...at this point you just need to buy a ps3 and get out of your fucking computer chair (ya I'm talking to you pal).
The main problem that this card addresses
You can't bitstream the HD sound from your PC to your receiver. PCM is limited to 48kHz/16 bit for copy protection reasons and it can't bitstream DTS HD, Dolby Digital Plus or Dolby TrueHD
Also when you decode in your PC to PCM it outputs to whatever speaker layout is defined in Windows. If you want to apply EX decoding or whatever to it you can't. If you were bitstreaming it then you don't have this problem
The card is PCI Express unlike the Xonar Slim which is PCI. TMT/Xonar still has some issues e.g it still downsamples PCM audio even though it is a protected path, it doesn't bitstream DD+ (very rare anyway) but at least it is some competition
The speaker layout can be fixed with WASAPI exclusive mode. And LPCM is not downsampled to 48/16 by the HDMI device (not that anyone could tell the difference), but by the bluray players like PowerDVD and TotalMedia Theatre. If done right, LPCM over HDMI is just as good as bitstreaming. Just need the player/decoder to not mess up things.
The actual real-world thing this card has over the other HDMI solutions is EAX 5.0 support, but that's not very relevant to most HTPCs.
Asus has a slim varsion now that is half the size and almost half the price. I have this card and it works perfectly for me on Windows 7 RC. I rip the movie only to a blu ray folder structure format and use TMT 3 set to HDMI passthrough. The card bitstreams HD audio perfect for me. Plus it fits in a slim case. 150 is pushing it, but 250 is redonkulous for a sound card.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829132012&Tpk=asus%20hdav%20slim
Be on the lookout for superb drivers...