Philips Acoustic Edge review

Posted by Thomas McGuire on April 4, 2001
Company: Philips     Product: Acoustic Edge

Philips are a widely known company to most, although Soundcards are probably the last thing you'd thing of if you were asked to name something that they sell. With the Acoustic Edge (& the other 2 soundcards in this range) Philips are clearly wanting to change all that. The Acoustic Edge is the high end soundcard in this range supporting 5.1 speaker output & a variety of QSound features to improve 3D Sound, particularly from Stereo sources for only $99. So is it any good? Read on.

Specifications

Listed below are the specifications of the Philips Acoustic Edge, 5.1 channel PCI Soundcard..

Music:

• Creates 5.1 distinct surround sound channels

• Revolutionizes the music listening experience

Movies:

• 5.1 channel surround from any A/V source

• Dolby Digital, QMSS & QSurround DVDplayback to 2, 4, or 5.1 speakers* (*Requires compatible soft-DVD player)

Games:

• 2, 4, & 5.1 speaker 3D for every game

• Transforms game play into a home theater experience!

Technical Specifications:

Audio Accelerator/Digital Signal Processor

• PHILIPS ThunderBird Avenger™ DSP for extreme hardware acceleration Codec

• AC97 CODEC

Bus Interface:

• PCI 2.1 bus master

Industry Specifications:

• Exceeds PC98 & PC99 audio requirements

• SNR > 92dB typical

Digital Acceleration:

• 96 streams of 3D audio acceleration including position reverb

• 256 streams of DirectSound accelerations & digital mixing

• Full-duplex, 48khz digital recording & playback

• 64 hardware sample rate conversion channels up to 48khz

• Wavetable & FM Synthesis

• DirectInput devices

Comprehensive Connectivity

• 5.1 (6 channel) channel analog output

• Digital S/PDIF output (stereo, AC3 or DTS signal)

• Digital S/PDIF input

• MIDI in/Midi out/dual game port

• Additional external inputs: Line in, Mic in

• Additional internal inputs: CD in, Aux in,TAD in, S/PDIF in)

• Special effects can be applied to any audio input including conversion of stereo to quadraphonic or 5.1 output, QXpander, 2D-to-3D remapping & reverb

Music Synthesis

• Up to 576 total wavetable synthesis voices

• Reverb & chorus

• 96 channel hardware CD quality (16 bit, 44.1khz) wavetable synthesizer with 5.9MB sample set

• Hardware FM Synthesizer (real mode DOS)

• 512 voice professional quality soft-synth with XG & GM compatibility

Digital Signal Processor Algorithms

• QSound3DInteractive™ positional 3D for 2 speakers, 4 speakers or 5.1 speakers

• QSound Multi Speaker System™ for quadraphonic or 5.1 channel output of stereo music,video & games

• QSound Environmental Modeling for EAX™ & DirectSound3D™ games

• QXpander™ & “2D to 3D remapping” for 3D enhancement of stereo playback

• QSurround™ virtual 5.1 playback of DVDs using 2 speakers* (* Requires compatible soft-DVD player)

System Requirements:

• 1 available PCI 2.1-compliant slot

• Genuine Intel‚ Pentium class 133Mhz or faster processor

• Intel or 100% compatible motherboard chip set

• 16MB system RAM

• CD-ROM for driver installation

Select Introduction & Specs Manual, Software & Installation Speaker setup Music / DVD Audio Quality Game Audio Quality Driver support and Conclusion

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