Mid-range audio features at super low cost.
Written: Jun 22 '06
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Excellent analog connectivity, supported under many OSs, above average performance.
Cons: Nothing else you could expect at this price!
The Bottom Line: With excellent driver support, a plethora of analog audio connections, and above average audio quality, this product remains a worthy upgrade over low-cost sound chips that only support 2-channel audio.
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| towwang's Full Review: AOpen Cobra AW850 Sound Card |
The AOpen Cobra AW850 is a PCI sound card based on C-Media's CMI8738LX chip. It features:
1) 5.1 channel analog audio output via stereo mini-jacks
2) Driver support under many variants of the Microsoft Windows operating system
3) Driver support under Linux. Driver source code is available under the Gnu public license. (This is not officially supported by AOpen.)
Important note: I noticed that on AOpen Taiwan's web site, they are now stating that the AW850 sound card uses an "AS9600D" chip. AOpen America has informed me that current inventory sold in the U.S. still uses the CMI8738LX chip, but that they may switch to the AS9600D at any time (presumably when inventory runs out). This review is therefore only applicable to current sound cards using the CMI8738LX chip.
The retail box of the AW850 contains:
1) AW850 sound card
2) CD containing drivers and applets
3) Instruction manual
[Installation]
Physical installation of the card was simple and uneventful: you open your computer case, find an empty PCI slot, and insert therein the AW850. If you have a CD or DVD drive, modem with speakerphone capability, video capture card, or any other peripheral with an internal output to the sound card, you should connect such an output to the AW850 at this point. The AW850 has 3 internal connectors (quite a generous amount I would add), labeled "CD in", "Modem in" and "Aux in". By using these internal connections, you avoid having to occupy the more-limited external input jacks on the bracket of the AW850, and can save them to connect to external equipment such as your home stereo.
Software installation was easy, but there is one key point to note: if you are installing drivers for a plug-and-play operating system such as Windows 4.1 ("98"), or Windows NT 5.x (W2K, XP), DO NOT INSTALL THE DRIVERS THAT CAME WITH YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM. Basically, after you physically installed the AW850, on the first time you boot up your plug-and-play OS thereafter, the OS will recognize the AW850 as a generic sound card based on the CMI8738 chip. While this driver provided by the OS will probably work, it may in some cases misdetect the number of jacks/outputs on your sound card, and only provide basic functionality (i.e. 2-channel audio when you really should be getting 5.1 channels). The trick is, when the "New hardware found" wizard appears, click "Cancel". Then, you have two ways to proceed:
A) Insert the software CD that came with the AW850, and launch the driver setup from there.
or
B) Go to AOpen's web site, download the latest drivers, and follow the instructions on the web site for installing the latest drivers.
I chose to download and install the latest drivers in order to use reliably all the capabilities of this product.
[Configuration]
Along with the drivers, the above installation procedure offers to install a "mixer" applet, and a "media rack". The mixer lets you control the volume of the input and output channels and connectors of the sound card, plus a few extra settings such as microphone boost. Turns out this mixer has a customized appearance (probably developed by C-Media) that is different from the default Windows "Volume control" applet. You can still use either the C-Media mixer or the "Volume control", even simultaneously.
The first time I launched the mixer, I noticed that several inputs were muted. I unmuted those inputs that had peripherals connected thereto, and closed the mixer. This ensured my settings would be saved across reboots.
The media rack is an application that lets you play audio CD's, MP3 files, MIDI files, and play/record PCM (uncompressed) digital audio. While the user interface looks quite nice (it looks like a virtual rack of audio equipment, with the familiar play/pause/stop/etc. buttons), it provides no additional functionality than what Windows "Media Player" already does. You may deselect the option to install this media rack if you want to reduce software complexity and save disk space.
[Performance]
The AW850 performs quite well despite being a low-cost product. Playback of WAV and MP3 files is pretty much noise-free, and so is recording from line-level inputs (Line in, CD in). The microphone input is the weak point, as it picks up noise from the rest of the computer in the microphone pre-amplifier stage. This is the case with every sound card I have used, so the AW850 is not in any way a poor performer compared to the competition. After running some informal tests with audio recording and telephony applications, I found that there is about a 50 dB difference between spoken voice and the noise floor, which is above average among sound cards in this price range.
Credit should be given to C-Media for designing the CMI8738xx family of chips, as I have found almost all sound cards based on these chips to be decent performers.
Also noteworthy is the fact that I successfully used the AW850 with an NVidia video capture card. While the video capture was busy grabbing video frames, the AW850 was recording audio at CD quality (44100 samples/sec., 16 bits/sample, 2 channel stereo). I found no synchronization problems between audio and video, attesting to the fact that the AW850's drivers have the requisite low-latency for this demanding application.
[Conclusion]
Features notably missing from the AW850 are:
1) SPDIF digital audio connections, which are available in the "AW850 Deluxe" sound card.
2) Decoder for "Dolby Digital" AC3 and other compressed audio formats. (You can use a software decoder such as the free AC3Filter to obtain 5.1 channels of audio output anyway.)
If you can live without the above features, the AW850 will serve you well.
As of this writing, the AOpen Cobra AW850 can be purchased for under US$15 by mail order. With excellent driver support, a plethora of analog audio connections, and above average audio quality, this product has withstood the onset of obsolescence and remains a worthy upgrade over low-cost sound chips that only support 2-channel audio.
[Revision history]
2006 06 22 Written by and copyright Tow Wang 2006.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 5
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Epinions.com ID:
towwang
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Member: Tow Wang
Location: California; U.S.A.
Reviews written: 45
Trusted by: 8 members
About Me:
Rabidly passionate about computers and electronics!
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