Auzentech X-Fi Home Theatre HD
Korean company Auzentech (formerly Hitec Digital Audio-HDA) began manufacturing sound cards in 2005. Since the release of their X-Meridian card in 2006 which featured swappable op amps and was the first product launched under their new name, they’ve specialized in high quality sound cards aimed at gaming enthusiasts, audiophiles and home cinema applications. They are also the sole third party manufacturer licensed to produce peripheral sound cards incorporating X-Fi based chipsets besides Creative Labs themselves, the first of these was the X-Fi prelude, a PCI card which emerged in 2007 and is now discontinued.
This particular card, the X-Fi Home Theatre HD was intended for PCI-E motherboards, including those with integrated audio, whose owners were seeking a universal, high quality solution for audio/video playback and gaming with the broadest possible compatibility.
The card was HDMI 1.3 compliant and features swappable op amps. Prior to the era when video cards had the native ability to encode multi-channel sound, it was designed to receive a signal from a PCs video card via it’s HDMI input. This is then be married up with all audio data generated by the card itself, including Dolby Digital and DTS sound from games, DVDs and Blu-ray discs. The combined signal is then sent through the card’s HDMI output to a compatible a/v device. Sound can also be sent separately via a spdif/optical versajack
As with it’s flagship Sound Blaster siblings, it too was laden with 64mb of X-RAM and fully supported Creative’s own EAX format. The header on the front edge of the card permits its connection to the Titanium I/O drive supplied with Creative’s Fatal1ty Professional Series. It’s availability was perpetually scarce in the UK, though I did manage to source one which remains seated in my work system where its purpose is manipulate sound fonts, an older but still very useful sampling technique.
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