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Auzentech HomeTheater HD Preview: Bitstreaming True HD/DTS-HD MA

 by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 2, 2009 12:00 AM EST
76 Comments | Add A Comment
76 Comments

Let’s...Get...Busy

Pardon the early 90s reference, it’s the first thing that came to me and I didn’t want to use the word “unboxing” on this page; but that’s effectively what it is.

While the ASUS Xonar HDAV comes in a box you’d expect from a motherboard company, the Auzentech X-Fi HomeTheater HD is a bit more polished. You’d expect it would be for a sound card that costs $250.

Inside the slipcover you have two separate boxes; one holds the card and the other has all of the cables and driver disc.

The setup works like this. You run a cable from your video card (or video output on your motherboard) to the Auzentech card. It combines the digital signal with the audio output from the sound card and sends it down a single HDMI cable from the card itself. Auzen provides a DVI-to-HDMI as well as a regular HDMI cable to aid you in this process.

You also get an analog break out cable for ins and outs.

The X-Fi HomeTheater HD is a full height PCIe x1 card:

Despite its length there's no retention notch for well designed motherboards that include a compatible clip. There's a lot on the card, including an interesting set of jumpers:

The first jumper block lets you configure how the video signal gets sent to the X-Fi HTHD: either video HDMI input on the back of the card or over the PCIe bus. Apparently NVIDIA and Auzentech have been working on a way to pass video (or audio) over the PCIe bus instead of an external cable. This feature doesn't appear to work on any NVIDIA chipsets today, but it may at some point in the future (or with a future NVIDIA chipset).

The heart of the X-Fi HTHD is Creative Labs' X-Fi audio processor. It's most definitely overkill for what we're using the card for, but you've gotta justify that pricetag somehow.

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  • 123sex - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link

    Doesn´t look like a 24 bit disc
    http://www.blu-raystats.com/Search/displayTitles.p...">http://www.blu-raystats.com/Search/displayTitles.p...

    http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/Details.php?u=42...">http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/Details.php?u=42...
    vs 24 bit
    http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/Details.php?u=41...">http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/Details.php?u=41...

    Which makes perfect sense considering the age of the movie

    (sorry about the other post)

  • jay401 - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link

    Thanks for reviewing this! Auzentech has made some excellent cards and it's rare anymore to see a review of a peripheral soundcard since most folks aren't concerned enough with their sound quality or decoding to go beyond whatever onboard sound their motherboard provides.

  • andy o - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link

    See anything wrong? While the output frequency is correct, the output resolution is not. If I’m correct, we should be seeing 48kHz/24-bit audio, but instead we’re getting downsampled 48kHz/16-bit audio - the same we get over LPCM. It’s close, but not technically lossless.

    I hope you realize that you're still getting whatever is in the disc, right? That's the point of bitstreaming. The error is just on PowerDVD's display. Maybe that's what you meant, but the way it's worded seems to say that you're getting something else. And, it clearly says 192 kHz, not 48 kHz.

  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link

    I was under the impression that the discs I used contained 48kHz/24-bit tracks, I'm checking to see if I have anything else here confirmed to be a 24-bit disc.

    Either way I do not believe the output frequency should be 192kHz, very few BDs are mastered with a 192kHz audio track.

    Take care,
    anand

  • andy o - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link

    Sorry, one more and I'm done.

    If you notice, your receiver indeed is telling you it's receiving only 5.1 audio both in the THD and DTS MA example pictures. And again, there's no way PowerDVD could downsample the audio without decoding it first. Then it would have to encode again. It's not just very unlikely, but there's also no reason whatsoever that they would do it, and it would take extra effort to re-encode the TrueHD and DTS MA streams on-the-fly so your receiver gets them. I don't know if it's even possible to encode those formats on-the-fly.

  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link

    Wow, you're more than completely right (a night of rest and the whole downsampling without decoding thing hit me right in the face). I've updated the article, it looks like the most that's happening is PowerDVD is just providing screwy output but the card is working as intended.

    Thanks again :)

    Take care,
    Anand

  • andy o - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link

    BTW, 24.576 Mbps is exactly uncompressed PCM 16-bit 192 kHz 8-channel, which are the numbers that PowerDVD is reporting (which is what shows in your pictures). It is not reporting the bitrate of the TrueHD audio. Somehow it can't read the true specs of the THD and DTS MA streams. No big deal.

    Also, note that the movies you tested don't have 7.1 (8-channel) audio, so again, PowerDVD is clearly misreporting, and you can easily double check this with your receiver, which will tell you how many channels it's receiving/processing.

  • andy o - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link

    Of course, what I'm pointing out is that 192 kHz is ridiculous... the only one I know that does that (movie) is Akira. Also, the 24 Mbps audio should be a tip that PowerDVD is just misreporting.

    In any case, once your receiver tells you it's getting TrueHD or DTS MA, you're set. There is no way downsampling is being done, no matter what PowerDVD tells you. The only way would be that the card is getting the downsampled PCM output from PowerDVD and re-encoding it to THD or DTS MA, but you see how that's very extremely unlikely.

  • andy o - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link

    first paragraph is a quote from the 2nd page of the article, "quote" doesn't work in the comments typing field?

  • 123sex - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link

    Doesn´t look like a 24 bit disc
    http://www.blu-raystats.com/Search/displayTitles.p...">http://www.blu-raystats.com/Search/displayTitles.p...

    http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/Details.php?u=42...">http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/Details.php?u=42...
    vs 24 bit
    http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/Details.php?u=41...">http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/Details.php?u=41...

    Which makes perfect sense considering the age of the movie
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