Philips Acoustic Edge Soundcard

Until recently Philips had limited its activity in the PC sound peripheral market to speaker systems, latterly of USB audio variety, removing the need for a dedicated sound card inside the PC. However, it has recently bitten the bullet and released three PCI sound cards.

The high-end Acoustic Edge (reviewed here) offers full 5.1 audio support and is aimed at the PC DVD market, while the middling Seismic Edge and low-end Rhythmic Edge are more suitable for gamers.

For those unfamiliar with sound card terminology, '5.1' refers to the channels the sound card is capable of outputting, in this case the five main channels (front left and right, surround left and right and centre) plus a sub-woofer.

As you'd imagine, this is a card with a complex physical configuration. A breakout cable handles analog output duties - its green Din plug mates with a green Din socket on the PCI card spine. The other end of the cable splits out to three mini-jack sockets, each carrying a stereo signal for connection to the analog inputs on your amplifier.

A second black Din socket houses Sony/Philips Digital Interchange Format (S/PDIF) I/O via a second breakout cable. This allows connection to external digital devices, for example to a coaxial S/PDIF input on a Dolby Digital amplifier or the digital output of another sound card.

The spine also carries mini-jacks for analog line in and microphone in, while internally there are line level analog inputs for Aux, TAD and CD and an S/PDIF digital input for connection to an internal CDRom. Installing the card is simple, and we tested it using Windows 98 SE with no problems.

There is a fine collection of bundled apps, including Siren Jukebox, audio sequencer Acid Xpress, MP3 slideshow generator AudioPix, full copies of Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear and Star Wars Episode 1 Racer, plus the DVD Eagles: Hell Freezes Over.

Last but not least is a full copy of PowerDVD 3.0 with full multi-channel audio support, capable of decoding Dolby Digital soundtracks on DVD and outputting the six discrete channels to the three stereo mini-jacks. Alternatively, you can output to the S/PDIF phono for use with an external Dolby Digital decoder.

Setting up the card with different speaker set-ups is simple thanks to the comprehensive Control Panel. Settings can be optimised for headphone, 2, 4, 5 and 5.1 speaker set-ups, the latter of which has a special DVD Small Speaker Mode. This improves the bass response when playing back DVDs on speaker systems with tiny satellites coupled to a big sub-woofer - lower frequencies are removed from the satellites and added to the sub channel.

Also worthy of note are the special Q-Sound two speaker modes: Qxpander, which widens the stereo image; and DVD Qsurround, which fakes 5.1 audio using two speakers.

A technology that makes a big difference, but sits in the background without you necessarily being aware of it, is the QSound Multi-Speaker System. This transforms stereo sound into 4, 5.0 or 5.1 channel audio and can produce stunning results in movies, music and games that don't specifically include multi-channel audio sound.

For budding musicians, the card has a built-in wave table synthesis engine with a 6Mb sound set. Philips even includes Yamaha's ubiquitous S-YXG50 softsynth as an alternative.

In the gaming stakes, Philips has taken great pains to support as wide a variety of 3D audio standards as possible. Unlike many of its contemporaries, it supports Creative's Environmental Audio Extensions (EAX) in both version 1 and 2 guises. These add environment-sensitive reverb and reflection effects to games that support the feature set.

It works extremely well although, to our ears, the best EAX 2 effects are still heard on a SoundBlaster Live! In addition, the card supports original A3D 1.0 games and the full gamut of DirectSound 3D audio features. Gaming performance is good: the card can handle up to 96 streams of 3D audio in hardware, which is perfect for complex games.

Acoustic Edge is an excellent all-round product. For DVD enthusiasts it's clearly one of the best, if not the best, audio solution in conjunction with PowerDVD. It's also a decent gamer's card and comes with an excellent bundle. However, the 'guide price' of £109 including VAT looks too high alongside the competition.

With 5.1 solutions at street prices of between £39 (Abit AU10) through to £65 (Creative SB Live! 5.1) to £75 (VideoLogic Sonic Fury), you'd be hard pushed to justify buying this product, which is a great shame, considering that its US price appears to be $99 (£66).

CONTACT: Philips
0800 169 8430
www.pcsound.philips.com