We first broke the news about ASUSmaking sound cards over at CeBIT andDigiTimes followed up with an article yesterday stating Xonar D2X is usingCMedia sound chips instead of ADI we initially heard. If that the case, XonarD2/X is most probably based off C-MediaOxygen HDCMI8788 sound chip according to the specs we seen.
ASUS Xonar sound cards are primarily targeted at Gamers as well as Music andDigital Home users. There are two versions of cards but with the same specs;Xonar D2 is PCI based while D2X is PCI Express based. Xonar D2/X supports192K/24-bit with 118dB SNR for playback and 115dB SNR for recording. It supportsHW accelerated EAX 2.0 and OpenAL under Windows XP but not Windows Vista sinceHardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) is removed. Without that, games usingDirectSound3D will be rendered in software mode without EAX. It doesn't affectnew game titles since most of them run on OpenAL. Creative faced the sameproblem with their X-Fi sound cards therefore they have a ongoingALchemyproject to convert EAX into OpenAL so perhaps CMedia or ASUS can follow suit.
Other features include supports for Dolby Digital Live and DTS Connect toconvert gaming audio into Dolby Digital & DTS 5.1 channels surround signal forHome Theater systems. It also supports Dolby Headphone and Dolby Virtual Speakerto provide 3D sound positioning over headphones and speakers. ASUS promises theywill provide constantly updated drivers on both XP and Vista to the consumers.ASUS plans to ship 500K Xonar D2X sound cards in 2007.
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