Zardon

terratec has been at the forefront of the professional PC audio market for some years now, with its incredibly powerful yet wallet-friendly soundcards finding favour with musicians the world over. The DMX 6fire continues in this high quality tradition but also adds home audiophile and gamer-friendly features such as Dolby digital 5.1 decoding, A3d, EAX and Sensaura 3d sound formats, phono preamps and audio restoration software. In other words, this is Terratecs answer to Creative Audigy, but with the major advantage to musicians that it records at true 24 bit/96khz quality.
Like the audigy the DMX 6fire comes with a drive bay-mountable breakout box containing a wealth of I/O options as well as various sockets on the back of the card itself. These comprise, stereo line in and out, stereo front and rear outputs, centre out, phono in, Mic in, headphone out, optical in/out, S/PDIF in/out, and midi in/out. These are also two knobs on the box, for mic gain and headphone output volume. The software package includes the drivers, a comprehensive mixer/control panel, wavelab Lite 2.0 (an audio editor) Terratecs soundlaundry (an audio cleaning and restoration utility), MusicMatch Jukebox (for ripping and playback of audio), Feurio (for CD burning) Cyberlink PowerDVD 3.0 and Emagics Logic Fun (a basic sequence).

In terms of performance, the DMX 6fire is a truly professional tool, as one look at the mixer immediately indicates. Hell, it even has a waveblaster socket for receiving synth daughterboards from the halycon days of computer based music, such as the classic Yamaha DB50XG. The audio quality is quite astonishing for a card at this price point, with incredibly low noise levels (-100 SNR is quoted). and superb clarity and transparency with any material. The ASIO drivers give exceptionally low latency values - 4ms at the lowest buffer setting, and everything runs very solidily with no pop ups or clicks at any juncture.
The fact that this is such a high quality card arguably makes it an overall solution for the games player or casual MP3 fan, but anyone looking to create or just listen to music at utral-high fidelity the DMX 6fire trounces the audigy in terms of audio performance. Unlike the audigy with its soundfonts and full EAX advanced HD, though it has no built in sound generation capabilities or effects. But if that doesnt bother you, at this price the DMX 6fire is an absolute steal.

http://www.euro-tech.co.uk
http://www.secure-server-centre.com/...p?partno=E3306

Phone 0870 458 0011

£180

Trunks0

I beleave this sound card use's the same chipset as the SantaCruz and GameTheaterXP. Iam willing to bet the 5.1 is only threw PowerDVD 3.0 or other programs that decode the 5.1 in software

To me tho it looks like a GameTheaterXP only geared more towards the musician with the true 24 bit/96khz and more musical software package

And as you said for the quallity it's a sweet deal . But $260 somthing US isn't cheap for most gamers that and considering most games bearly take advantage of 44Khz sound files yet. But if your into making music and don't have alot of cash I couldn't think of a better card really

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Necrosis

1. Your right about the first part. As far as I know it can only do like the Santra cruz 4.1 with games. Still to me I've played Jedi Knight II with my setup, and I didn't really find the use of the center channel that appealing. It seemed to steal sound from my other two main's.

2. Muscian's Friend has the card for $250 and you can even make monthly installments on it.

3. I used to have a SB Platinum 5.1, and a friend of mine also has the Terratec. I'm very much in love with his sound card, and am thinking about ditching my Audigy for one. I would highly recommend the card to anyone that wants the whole setup, without the bitter copper taste of Creative in their mouth.