转贴：美国 HT Omega Claro声卡国外评测

小黑MM · 发表于 2007-8-5 17:34

The discrete soundcard market is largely dominated by Creative with its line of X-Fi sound solutions, and the company has said many times over that it's biggest competitor in the market is arguably on-board audio. However, a few months ago, we had a look at one of the first viable alternatives to an X-Fi, Sondigo's Inferno 7.1, which is based on CMedia's Oxygen HD audio chip.

Today, we have had a look at another soundcard based on the same CMedia Oxygen HD chip, but this time the card comes from HT Omega and is packed with more features, gold plated audio connectors and solid state capacitors. Since we reviewed the Sondigo Inferno, the card has had a price drop down to under just $100 USD, while the HT Omega Claro retails at $140 USD.

HT Omega is a small Californian company that specialises in PC enthusiast sound cards, and despite the fact it is yet to break into the UK market, the company's products are available on the continent for our Danish compatriots.

The question is though, will the better feature set make the HT Omega Claro a more attractive alternative to Creative's X-Fi than the Inferno 7.1?

Package

The bundle comes complete with an installation CD, a detailed manual, a three metre digital optical cable and coaxial S/PDIF to two-pin cable for the sound card. While sound card bundles aren’t at the same level as what you'd get from a motherboard or even a graphics card, we would have liked to see a coaxial S/PDIF cable that matched the high quality optical cable that HT Omega has included. We say this because the card has support for both types of S/PDIF connection. In terms of quality, the Sondigo came what can only be compared to as something quite inferior to what we have here.

Click for large images

In addition there’s a coaxial S/PDIF to two-pin adapter cable that had to be included as an extra, because of the lack of space on the PCI bracket. However, this cable looks far cheaper and the coaxial contact on the cable is a generic yellow plastic type with a steel end. This doesn't mirror the gold connectors used on the PCI bracket, disappointingly.

HardwareEssentially, the Claro's hardware is the same as the Inferno's. Both cards feature the following common components: the CMedia Oxygen HD processor, the Wolfson ADC, the CMedia CMI970 AC’97 codec and the AKM DAC’s. The only difference is that the Claro uses slightly different Op-Amps and is decked out completely with solid state capacitors.

The contacts are all gold plated to provide maximum fidelity, and although they lose their identifiable colouring, they are still clearly labelled on the PCI bracket. The card uses a PCI interface, with the PCB coloured black. There's no indication as to whether a PCI-Express version is due in the future; it'll probably only happen when CMedia releases a chipset supporting the now two and a half year old interface.

The number of Internal connectors are also increased over what the Inferno offered. The Claro sports two CD inputs, a front panel audio connector and CD/coaxial S/PDIF input. Even though the digital CD input is quite unique, the coaxial S/PDIF in will arguably be used more.

There's a problem though: there's no way to route the supplied cable to the outside of your case for access, the card should provide a notch in the PCI backplate in order to allow the cable to pass through. In addition, having a cable dangling out the back of your case isn’t exactly the neatest option either.

C-Media Oxygen HD CMI8788 Audio Processor;
Four 24-bit / 192kHz AK4396VF (120dB SNR) DACs for 7.1 channel output;
One 24-bit /192kHz WM8785G (110dB SNR) ADC input;
One CMI9780 AC'97 2.3 CODEC for AUX input, CD input, MIC input (16-bit / 48kHz playback/recording)
Integrated S/PDIF Optical and Coaxial connectors (both work simultaneously) for 44.1kHz,48kHz, 96kHz, 192kHz SPDIF input and output;
Standard 10-pin Front Panel Audio connector supports stereo audio output and a microphone input;
C-Media FlexBass™ - configurable LFE (low frequency effects) channel crossover frequency (from 50 to 250Hz);
C-Media Magic Voice™, a feature for disguising your voice in online chatting;
C-Media Xear3D™, 7.1 Virtual Speaker Shifter technology;
C-Media Karaoke functions: Microphone Echo, Key-shifting;
10-band EQ for each channel;
27 global reverberation environments;
3D demos;
Supports most industrial standards of 3D sound for PC gaming, including EAX™ 1.0 & 2.0, A3D™ 1.0 and DirectSound™;
Supported operating systems: Microsoft Windows Vista (32-bit), Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3), XP Service Pack 1 (SP1), Server 2003 SP1, XP Media Center Edition 2005 (MCE), Windows XP Pro x64 Edition.

Click for large images

The reason for the extra cable is that the PCI bracket is packed to the rims with connectors. Not only do you get six 3.5mm audio jacks for analogue audio, you also get optical S/PDIF in and out and coaxial S/PDIF out as well. The 3.5mm analogue ports include a separate line in and microphone socket so you don’t have to unplug your speakers to use a 3.5mm input.

With the Claro sporting the same hardware as the Inferno, but coupled in the solid state capacitors for better power delivery and life, the SNR is at least equal to that of the Inferno at 110-117dB DAC and 111dB ADC. The card also supports ASIO (under XP at least, Vista is another kettle of fish with the extra “security” layers in place) with a 2ms delay. This is compared to ~30ms delay you'll have if you use the DirectSound drivers.

SoftwareDriver installation is straight forward with clear and simple instructions. There were no conflicts afterwards, and the media console is exactly the same as the one that comes with the Sondigo Inferno. With that in mind, you'll get the same options too. In fact, the drivers are only a fraction different: 5.12.01.0008.17.8 versus 5.12.01.0008.17.1 and the audio configuration utility was 1.0.48.27 versus 1.0.48.5.

The single tray icon is very unimposing and can be disabled if need be. However, we feel that it’s actually a very useful tool to have at your disposal, as it allows you to quickly change settings on the fly.

The audio configuration utility allows you to adjust the speaker setup, which is selectable between headphone, stereo, four channel, six channel (5.1) and eight channel (7.1) audio modes. There are plenty of DSP (digital sound processing) modes to play with too.

These change the sound effects by providing a different simulated audio experience that can be better or worse than the default mode, depending on what you’re listening to and how many speakers it’s being passed through. For example, expanding a pair of stereo speakers or headphones into simulated surround can sound pretty good, but up-scaling 5.1 to 7.1 doesn’t have anywhere near the same positive effect on sound quality.

小黑MM · 发表于 2007-8-5 17:35

The DSP modes are still the same and haven’t been updated in the small driver change, they include:

7.1 Virtual Speaker Shifter enables a circular rotation of virtual speakers around the listener as well expansion and contraction of the speaker circle to emulate the audio sounding closer or further away.
Dolby Digital Virtual Speaker expands a set of stereo speakers to simulate a 5.1 surround sound speaker system.
Dolby Digital Pro Logic IIx can process stereo or 5.1 audio signals (DVD AC3 for example) and use matrix up scaling to provide discrete outputs of 5.1, 6.1 or 7.1 channels.
Dolby Digital Live is enabled over S/PDIF to provide an upscaled conversion into 5.1 AC3 audio for an external Dolby Digital receiver unit.
DTS Interactive is similar to Dolby Digital Live, but enables a DTS surround audio output over S/PDIF to an external DTS decoder unit.
DTS NEO:PC is the DTS equivalent to Dolby Digital Live IIx, which converts stereo or multichannel audio sources into a 5.1, 6.1 or 7.1 multichannel audio experience.
Dolby Headphones is the stereo headphone specific feature used to expand stereo audio into a simulated surround sound experience providing greater depth and separation to the original audio.

Other features include a mixer, an equaliser and environmental effects if you use them. There's also an LFE Crossover (low frequency effects) that provides a changeable cut off point for where low frequency audio is sent to the sub or satellite speakers.

How does it sound?First of all, we're by no means audiophiles but we are technology enthusiasts, that’s for sure. At the end of the day we're no different from you, our readers, and have abused our precious ear drums with loud headphones and live music.

Undoubtedly, there’s a large difference between spending tens of pounds on a sound card, versus tens of hundreds on some high end kit. However, we’ve evaluated the cards subjectively using equipment that falls in the price range of the cards to try to determine if the whole package provides a different experience.

To test, we took the cards away from our noisy offices to somewhere much quieter and played a range of music, games and movies, compressed and uncompressed through both a set Logitech x620 6.1 speakers and a pair of Sennheiser HD215 headphones. This should cover what a typical end user would put this card through.

We compared the HT Omega Claro to the Sondigo Inferno and Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty Edition. We upgraded the Sondigo Inferno and HT Omega Claro to use the latest drivers: 5.12.01.0008.17.8 and Audio Configuration Utility 1.0.48.27. The X-Fi Fatal1ty Edition used driver version 2.09.0007 dated 30th Oct 2006.

Subjective Listening - Music

A Perfect Circle, 13th Step: 400kbps stereo OGG VBR;
Tweaker, The Attraction to all things uncertain: flac, compression level 7 44.1KHz stereo;
Lo Compilation – Mix by Sasumu Yokota: flac compression level 7 44.1KHz stereo;
Foo Fighters, Foo Fighters: 192kbps stereo mp3;
Yoko Kanno, Get 9 – 96KHz interloped and remastered CD quality stereo audio.

Claro vs. InfernoThe Claro sounds essentially the same as Sondigo's Inferno and, despite having solid state capacitors, the hardware and software mix leaves the audio quality largely undistinguishable across the range of music listened to.

Headphones and Stereo speakersUsing the 7.1 Virtual shifter DSP mode on its own results in a rather tinny and poor experience with our headphones, because it cuts out the depth of audio. However, including Dolby Headphone on its own or in combination with the 7.1 DSP mode does the exact opposite to some tracks.

With basic stereo speakers emulating 5.1 from Dolby Virtual Speaker Shifter or Dolby Pro Logic IIx, Pro Logic IIx provides a greater perceived depth and instrument separation, but makes it also occasionally sound like you’re listening to it through a wall. On the other hand, DTS NEO:PC just simply butchers the audio fidelity entirely. Our advice is to forget using a set of stereo speakers and combine a pair of headphones with the far superior Dolby Headphone technology. With this combination, you'll get a far more immersive audio experience.

5.1 SurroundGenerally, 5.1 channel surround runs better without any DSP effects enabled. The Claro provides a full solid bass and awesome audio clarity, equivalent to what we experienced with the Inferno. Some tracks don’t need the extra depth provided by the DSP modes and, unfortunately, the software isn’t intelligent enough to recognise it. In that respect, because audio fidelity is a high subjective topic, deciding what music style needs DSP and what doesn’t can vary greatly from person to person. Thus, having the option to use them if and when is a good thing.

The Dolby 7.1 Virtual Shifter works quite well with a 5.1 speaker setup. You can actually tell that the audio is splitting and increasing the spatial surround sound. For example, the Lo Compilation album - which has lots of instrumentals, voice and a mix of the two - sounds great. However, other Dolby and DTS features generally make the audio sound worse with a 5.1 setup.

Interestingly, enabling the S/PDIF output and then fiddling with the output modes (even if you’re only outputting through the analogue 3.5mm jacks) still affects the overall audio quality. By selecting 96KHz audio in the S/PDIF output drop down box when 96KHz audio is playing, it switches a multichannel output into stereo sound.

By dropping the sample rate down to 44.1/48KHz and / or turning off the S/PDIF out, you'll regain multichannel audio again, even if it's 96KHz HD audio playing. The audio software still reads it as playing 96KHz and not down-sampling. We're not sure whether that is what is actually being sent to the speakers though, as it's extremely difficult to tell because there is no perceivable difference in audio fidelity.

Head to HeadMP3s naturally sound flatter because of the compression method, but even the additional DSP modes are unable to add fidelity where it is fundamentally missing. The music is more clearly mirrored into the additional speakers in a 5.1 setup and the difference is obviously a poorer sound in both 5.1 and stereo sound modes.

Without changing any of the settings or volume on my speakers while swapping the Inferno and Claro cards right over, the bass on the Inferno is a little stronger. With the Inferno using the Claro’s updated drivers (since they are essentially the same underlying hardware), it still sounds slightly fuller too. It’s hard to justify since the processing hardware and software is fundamentally identical. However, listening to the same tracks almost side by side shows some clear differences through headphones.

Creative's X-Fi Fatal1tyWith the X-Fi, SVM mode works great in a 5.1 speaker arrangement, providing clear audio definition and ample bass. However, surround is quite underwhelming in comparison to the two CMedia-based cards, even with Stereo Xpand enabled. The X-Fi only enhances the vocals to the front speakers, even when 5.1 surround, Stereo Xpand and / or the CMSS-3D settings are enabled. With the X-Fi's Crystalliser, it does more for compressed lossy music like MP3s than the Claro and Inferno. With uncompressed CD quality music, the X-Fi simply makes the audio sound louder than it did before - there's no improvement in quality.

The X-Fi control panel is more complicated to use with many tabs containing a few options, with the sheer number of tabs making it hard to find what you’re exactly after. Those options are all labelled to do different things, but they're more like using a different method to do something similar. The Claro and Inferno are worse in this respect though, as many of the Dolby and DTS features overlap. It’s easy to layer effects and not really understand what they appear to do. It's also very easy to get confused where one effect stops and another starts.

[ 本帖最后由小黑MM 于 2007-8-5 17:36 编辑 ]

小黑MM · 发表于 2007-8-5 17:37

Movies

Silent Hill, Lost Memories DVD: 2.0 Channel 384KHz AC3 audio;
V for Vendetta: 5.1 Channel AC3 audio 448KHz Dolby Digital Surround;
Saving Private Ryan: 5.1 Channel AC3 audio 448KHz Dolby Digital Surround;

The Claro has excellent bass and positional audio with our surround speakers and headphones as long as DSP isn't enabled. Enabling Dolby Headphone with headphones plugged in results in an unnecessary echo to V for Vendetta. Having said that, the effect works well in Saving Private Ryan because of the large quantity of sounds in many of the scenes.

Overall, there are very specific and crisply defined sounds with good mixtures of clearly audible quiet speech as well as penetrating bass and gunshots. The Inferno fairs as well as the Claro and the two are almost indistinguishable.

Using the X-Fi, movies are less imposing regardless of what settings are selected, but the audio is still clear and precise. If you force the X-Fi to use stereo surround, it appears unnaturally out of place in comparison because the sound is already multichannel.

Games

Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars (demo);
ArmA Armed Assault.
Quake 4 (X-RAM and EAX 5 Advanced HD)

The Claro and Inferno provide clear deep sound but it's not particularly spatial in C&C3. Enabling hardware support in Armed Assault causes the sound to corrupt and blip but the game still runs.

As expected, the X-Fi performs better with the tailored game mode and more advanced EAX enabled. Many gamers are sold into the fact that without EAX games will sound poor and it's generally not the case. The Claro won't sound as good as buying an X-Fi and getting into the world of more advanced EAX technologies.

If you're a hardcore gamer and play games that make use of EAX, there's no doubt that this will benefit you, because the support is coded into the game's engine. The native support is obviously going to sound better than the post processing / estimation method used by cards based on the Oxygen HD chip. For games that are outside of the advanced EAX features, there’s very little in it since these boards already support OpenAL and EAX 2.0.

ConclusionsThe Claro has more in built features than the Inferno, including front panel audio support, gold plated connectors and an entire complement of S/PDIF connectors. Although the coaxial input is hardly an ideal solution, you can hardly blame HT Omega, especially given the limited space on a PCI bracket. However, HT Omega could have just used a breakout cable, or simply made a notch to pass the cable through so you can access it from the outside.

It also has solid state capacitors that offer better power delivery and a longer life, which considering many people keep sound cards for years is arguably a good thing. However, does all this really justify a $40 greater price tag for essentially the exact same core hardware and software? I don't honestly think so, because the Sondigo Inferno still sounds ever so slightly better to me: it has a bass output that hits just the right spot, while the mid and high frequency sounds still sound great.

As a far as a pure multimedia solution goes the Claro is superior to Creative's X-Fi. Not only is it better in terms of the actual quality of headphone and surround sound, it's also better from a software point of view, too. If you spend more time gaming than watching TV on your PC, the X-Fi is the undisputed choice. The X-Fi does EAX 3.0-5.0 and offers far more package variations that include extras like break out boxes and 5.25" bay adapters for extra port varieties and inputs.

Obviously, better speakers or headphones will do probably just as much for your audio experience, but you have to balance the cost of both. It should be an obvious complement considering the money often shelled out on graphics cards, CPUs, memory and monitors these days. If you're just after a plain soundcard to listen to music and video, the Claro will do far more for your audio experience than an X-Fi. Heavy gamers need not apply though.

qinliang76 · 发表于 2007-8-5 19:46

挺漂亮的卡！:loveliness:

小二马 · 发表于 2007-8-5 20:57

完全看不懂:wacko: :wacko: :wacko: :wacko:

bf18888 · 发表于 2007-8-5 22:18

你整天发广告好烦

大眼仔 · 发表于 2007-8-6 00:05

:loveliness: 庄稼卡鉴定完毕。

陷害被删 · 发表于 2007-8-6 09:21

8788继续神化中。。。。

历史的潮流，历史的经期

igameboy · 发表于 2007-8-10 22:15

一看就头晕。只看到很多固态电容，够YY

帐号		自动登录	找回密码
密码			注册

转贴：美国 HT Omega Claro声卡 国外评测

转贴：美国 HT Omega Claro声卡国外评测