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Diamond XtremeSound 7.1/24 bit Sound Card ( XS71 ) |
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Our Price - $29.94
2 Used - from $18.99
27 New - from $23.99
Availability - Usually ships in 24 hours
 
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Diamond XtremeSound 7.1/24 bit Sound Card ( XS71 )
1.Diamond Xtreme Sound allows the user to experience high level, theater quality sound while watching videos, listening to music, and playing games all in true 7.1 channel surround sound. This is an essential upgrade for anyone interested in increasing their computer audio experience while freeing up valuable computer system resources.2.Features - 24bit/96KHz Playback.8 Channel Audio Output.Karaoke Support.10 Band Equalizer with Presets.Easy Connection to Home Audio Equipment.Special Effects Including Concert Hall and More.Total DVD Theater Surround Sound Experience.
Diamond XtremeSound 7.1/24 bit Sound Card ( XS71 ) Accessories
Diamond XtremeSound 7.1/24 bit Sound Card ( XS71 ) Reviews
Easy driver install. While I only use it in stereo mode with inexpensive speakers there is no background noise or hum.
First a very big Thank You to R.L. Frank for his/her insightful and extremely helpful review. Without his/her information regarding the necessary driver for Windows 7, I would have passed on this board...
Board arrived quickly (as usual with Amazon) and was physically easy to install. The enclosed information from Diamond is almost useless but if you're installing your own system cards and tweaking your BIOS settings, I have to believe you really don't need much hand holding. As stated by others, there are no drivers listed on the Diamond site for Windows 7 but you can simply follow R.L. Franks directions OR let Windows 7 direct you. I downloaded the RC driver from the C Media site prior to receiving the board and installed from that download however, when first booting up the computer after physically installing the board, Windows 7 tried to install drivers from its on board library and finding none for this card, promptly found the C Media site driver and posted directions on how to obtain the proper driver - including a site to obtain the necessary decompression program. Now that was impressive!
Board itself works very nicely and has excellent sound. Nice board for the price. I only gave it 4 stars because Diamond is so far behind the driver curve forcing customers to jump through additional hoops. Poor customer support...
Everyone else has talked about how great the sound is (It really is), Diamond's crummy tech support, etc. Now, lets talk about whether it can be used with Windows 7. The drivers on the CD in the box will not. The Diamond site does not list Windows 7 driver, either 32 bit or 64 bit. However, the board's chipset is CMEDIA 8768 and drivers can be found at [...], as well as the usual driver web sites. They are shown as eithe RC or beta, but they have worked here just fine.
It is a shame that such a great card forces you to resort to driver hunting because the firm that markets it doesn't appear to give a damn, but it is worth the effort.
EDIT: Wonderful! :-( Amazon edited out the web site for the drivers. I guess they don't want to sell these cards. Just google CMEDIA.
I've been using this sound card for about a month now, and it has been solid and reliable. The installation process was very straightforward, and I had no problems from start to finish. The instructions provided are reliable and easy to understand.
Even if you don't have a full surround setup, the Xtreme Sound configuration program will let you use different configurations, depending on what your situation is. Just a tip for non-technical Windows computer users: if you ever close your Xtreme Sound config program that usually sits in the system tray, you can get to it from the control panel (Start > Control Panel). As far as I can tell, however, the software itself doesn't provide an option to prevent it from loading at start-up, so if you really don't want it to sit in the system tray, you'd probably have to disable it using `msconfig'.
The only problem I've encountered was with the Xtreme Sound config program. When trying to change the configuration for one of the options, my computer immediately shut down and restarted. I don't believe the issue was with the card; it was most likely a bug in the setup program (perhaps a buffer overrun problem). In any case, this only happened once so far.
It's really good for the price. I'm just writing this review to tell people some stuff not included here.
First: It has no power needs other than the power provided though the PCI slot.
Second: The actual card is smaller than the box, even though the "Package Size" and "Product Size" are different. The card itself is the usual size for a PCI card (as far as width goes). It is just a little longer than the slot itself.
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