Hercules Maxi Sound Game Theatre XP
A powerful, easy-to-use audio station, the Guillemot Maxi Sound Game Theater XP transforms your PC into a high-performance entertainment system. Composed of a sound card and a convenient external rack, it includes a powerful digital signal processor (DSP) producing 3-D sound that may be heard through headphones or two or four speakers. The rack features numerous high-quality connectors and a high-speed four-port USB hub, as well as a game port on the front panel that lets players plug in several game peripherals simultaneously. Connect gamepads, joysticks, and wheels easily for multiplayer gaming. Bundled Sensaura Virtual Ear software further extends audio realism. For PCs equipped with a DVD drive, the Game Theater XP delivers full, six-speaker (5.1-channel) Dolby Digital decoding and superior quality surround sound. PowerDVD enhances high-performance video playback. For music fans using the Internet to satisfy their musical tastes, Game Theater XP features Cirrus Logic's SoundFusion DSP MP3-decoding acceleration in hardware, leaving the computer's central processor free to perform other tasks. Its USB port allows for high-speed downloads to a USB MP3 player, and its optical and coaxial digital-in/out connector lets users load digital audio files onto digital tape or minidiscs. It also boasts a complete MIDI interface (MIDI-in/MIDI-out DIN connectors) for connecting digital audio players, microphones, and keyboards. On the software side, MusicMatch Jukebox downloads, records, and plays digital MP3 music; Siren Jukebox Xpress is a digital music management system and playback software tool for MP3, WMA, and WAV files; and Yamaha XGstudio provides a digital interface to play MIDI files. The Maxi Sound Game Theatre XP comes with a two-year warranty.
Hercules Maxi Sound Game Theatre XP Accessories
Hercules Maxi Sound Game Theatre XP Reviews
The new drivers are very stable and not bulky like its creative counterparts. That being said, it has great connectivity through the breakout box, and and with the newest drivers you get 7.1 channel annalog and digital out support. It's not the latest and greatest card anymore and it's not 24bit like the newer high end cards. I recommend this to anyone that wants versatility on a budget. I've owned this card for 4 years now and it has served me well.
Techs are NOT Knowledgeable about the product. Your USB, Headphone amd Microphone jacks sit right there on Your desktop readilly available. Return Service is attrocious. Drawback is Extigy has no built in usb hub :((( A viable alternative is Creative's Extigy USB card.
And then there is absolutely NO guarantee it will be fixed. Gone are the days of stretching around to the rear of a computer to plug something in or remove it. If You are a serious gamer who uses voice comm during multiplayer internet gaming, This is the system for You.
No 800 toll free number. I gave 1 star because Hercules Tech support is HORRIBLE. As Far as the Actual Hardware Itself, I would rate it at 5 stars easily.
My unit, IN WARRANTY developed USB and Mike jack problems.After sending it in 2 times, The Microphone jack/input is still unrepaired. The Hardware is Fantastic just Hope and Pray nothing goes wrong with it. You have to submit to an archaic RMA service thru a 3rd party shipper that means 2 weeks before they actually get it and You might see a return 5 weeks down the line.
They will drive You nuts trying to get satisfaction.
its dolboly digital and dts suround sound will amaze you. i recently purchased this sound card and loved it. i use a amd athlon 1700+ box with 384 megs of ram. this is the best bang for your buck. it works very nice and has some of the best sound ive heard.
Go to the web site and check out the forums. The drivers for this thing were terrible to put it mildly. Any one not experiencing problems with this card soon will be, it takes a while but the bugs catch up to you. A word of caution for everyone looking to buy this (.).oops, I mean card.
4-speaker sound works good in games under Windows 2000. Cranking the volume level on my Cambridge Soundworks 4spkr setup all the way up yields a barely audible background hiss. I am using the latest 2000 drivers for it. Someone said that it was detected as a CrystalFusion or something. Another person said that for some reason his speaker setup was changed from 5.1 to 2-speaker stereo each time he played a game. Read the instructions that are included in the box. I had no problems installing the drivers under Windows 2000. I have installed it twice under Windows 2000, once after removing my old sound card (sblive) and once with a clean system.
This sound card is far superior to even the SB Live for sound quality. Overall it's a good card but I am looking for something new that has better Windows 2000 compatibility. That only seems to happen in some games. When EAX is enabled (like in Diablo2) the sound seems distant and soft and I have to turn the volume up generally. I play a LOT of games, new and old, and I have not seen it crash under Windows 2000.
Most games the sound volume is fine even with EAX enabled. Most times you are supposed to hit CANCEL and not let windows install any drivers for new hardware that you buy. I use the 4-speaker setup, and I have never seen it change on its own. If you clicked OK and let it install conflicting drivers then you didn't read the simple installation instructions. I have Windows 2000 and I was reading some of the bad experiences of people using the GameTheaterXP under Win2000.
EAX is not as good as the SB Live, but I doubt any sound card can do that perfectly. Most sound cards have pretty bad background hiss as you turn up the volume, and I found this sound card to be the best.
|
