Recently we took a look at Creative's Audigy 2 Notebook ZS which offered the functionality of Creative's desktop sound card in a PC Card form factor. By contrast the Terratec Aureon 7.1 FireWire is an external soundcard device aimed at both the home musician and laptop gamers. While not as convenient as the Creative PC Card, an external box still enables laptop users to use a full-featured high-quality sound card with their laptop and to easily switch it between machines. An external box also has the benefit of removing the influence of electromagnetic noise from inside a PC, which helps make better sounding recordings.

The box itself is quite substantial, at roughly 5cm in height and 16cm in length. It's most definitely not the most convenient of form factors if you move around a lot, but it does feel sturdy. Terratec earns itself brownie points trying to inject some personality into its design with each of the three volume knobs (or "potentiometers" as audio bods like to refer to them) illuminated by orange lights. The knobs have a jet turbine appearance, of the kind found in 1970s puppet adventure shows. It's a shame that the mark on the dial indicating the position couldn't have been made clearer. Obligatory blue LEDs indicate the input source.

While my Shuttle PC seemed happy to drive it without the power supply the manual states that this depends on the chipset used so to ensure stability it's always safer to use the power supply.

The Aureon 7.1 Firewire has eight discrete audio outputs and offers a single stereo input. On the front are two quarter-inch jack sockets for headphones and microphone, whilst on the back the analogue connections are all of the RCA (phono) kind. This is worth noting as whilst home audio amplifiers often use these connections, many computer speakers use the mini-jack connection, of the kind often found on consumer PCI soundcards.

Installation was mostly straightforward, although not quite as described, possibly as a result of running Service Pack 2 for Windows XP. The software bundle includes Power DVD 5, the remote control application and Algorithmix audio restoration tools. Sensuara is included as the virtual 3D audio technology. Recently purchased by Creative Labs this is an effective but now fairly dated technique. The device supports EAX2 and hardware 3D buffers, but only if the Sensuara option is selected in the mixer control panel. When selected, 48Khz is the only accessible sample rate, which will mean alternative sample rates will have to be re-sampled in real-time up to 48Khz, a limitation that Creative soundcard owners will be familiar with.

It is as a home theatre surround option that the Aureon succeeds best although with some small reservations. Out of the box Dolby Digital and Dolby EX can be decoded using the supplied version of WinDVD. Given its obvious home theatre appeal, it's a little disappointing that DTS isn't included as a standard option particularly that the box is sold on the quality of its audio output. To get DTS, you have to upgrade your copy of WinDVD. There's a remote control as well, which is a useful if you're intending the Terratec to form the hub of your home theatre system.

As far as musicians are concerned though, the Terratec is something of an odd beast, indicating a lack of focus as to whom exactly the sound card is aimed at. On the plus side there's a microphone preamp, ASIO driver support for up to eight discrete outputs and line and phono inputs with admirably low latency. I had no problems at the default 6ms. Yet there are some musician-centric features obviously missing, no doubt to differentiate it from Terratec's sound card line aimed specifically at musicians. There's only a single stereo input (the line, phono or optical connections cannot be used simultaneously) and there no phantom power for professional microphones that require a power supply.

Obviously, including these features would make it quite a different box, but as a musician, the feature set tantalises but doesn't seduce. The software mixer is also rather basic with no metering and I personally would have preferred more sensitive levels adjustments than 1dB.

Attaching a record player gives a very satisfying sound and whilst you'll find better options than the Algorithmix software for removing record noise, the software does work as stated and the audio converters are of a high quality. I was pleasantly surprised to note how low the noise floor was, a combination of the Wolfson WM8770 codec and the external housing. It is possible to use the device in a standalone mode, where the inputs can be used to convert an incoming analogue signal to a digital output.

I have a quick and dirty method of examining the relative noise level of sound cards by firing up Adobe Audition, turning all the microphone inputs down and looking at the noise floor when just the line input has been selected with 0dB of gain. This is by no means an accurate method but I have found it reliable in measuring the relative noise floor of cards and so far my results have always been confirmed by the more rigorous tests. Using this method gives a noise floor of -90dBFS (decibels below full scale). This is an excellent result and is comparable to my professional Emu 1212m audio card and quite a bit better than the Creative Audigy 2.

Taking a more analytical approach using RightMark Audio Analyzer, the results are again impressive, with an almost flat frequency response, a noise level of -98.8dBA and a dynamic range of 91.8dBA. The test sample rate was 48Khz at 16-bit and the external loopback approach was used where the outputs of the card were physically connected to the inputs. Unusually, this was the only approach available since it doesn't seem possible to route a signal internally. This is worth noting in case you're ever in the habit of capturing an internal audio signal that is playing live - for example recording a music performance being played using the ASIO drivers.

On the game front, there are 64 hardware 3D buffers, a similar amount to the Audigy 2. As I mentioned, EAX2 is available via Sensaura, but this is somewhat behind the times for gaming, with EAX4 the current standard. Sensaura is Head Related Transfer Function (HRTF) based, which means that its effectiveness will vary according to the individual (pseudo-3D sound which is HRTF based never works well on my pixie ears). There were a couple of occasions where I had to pull the Firewire cable out and plug it back in after the sound stopped playing. This may be due to idiosyncrasies of my system but does indicate that a FireWire or USB based external card is unlikely to give you the stability of an internal PCI card.

Verdict

The Aureon 7.1 Firewire seems to fall between stools. The sturdy construction indicates that Terratec is aiming at delivering quality and while it succeeds in part, the product as a whole suffers from a lack of focus. Whilst it performs well, it doesn't offer either enough features for the musician or enough for the gamer to make it a compelling purchase. It's a decent enough option if you want a portable audio solution, or want the convenience of not having to open your machine to add a PCI card, but it doesn't offer enough to excite. Terratec's own Phase 26 offers coaxial digital connections plus MIDI for less money (although with only 5.1 output) for the musician and there's no shortage of good game cards out there.

If you're interested in the specific features offered by the box, go ahead and buy with confidence, otherwise for the money you could buy a more focused device or plump for one of the cheaper Audigy cards.

Connections are via RCA sockets rather than balanced jack connections, used to reduce ground noise. There's no MIDI however, which is a shame given how cheap it would have been to add. There's no GigaStudio driver option (GSIF) and the restrictions placed on the device when the Sensuara option is selected mean constant switching when moving between games and music applications.

This post has been edited by kkhc: Apr 12 2008, 08:42 PM

Did this item support for macintosh?

wats ur source of the review?

nice stuff though....but firewire? who uses firewire anymore?

any way to get one in malaysia?

3 "jet engine" design..cool.

This is a very old card, dated back a few years already.

i'd want it if someone wana give it to me for free~

anybody knows where to buy terratec sound card in malaysia? i am looking for the new dmx 6Fire USB. please help