We reported on the release of the ASUS HDAV 1.3 audio card a couple of days ago and had an opportunity to sit down with part of the development team today to discuss this unique card. Our visit with Sean Lai, Ives Chiu, and Viki Chen was extremely interesting to say the least. This small project team along with a group of dedicated hardware engineers and software developers are responsible for the audio products coming out of ASUS today.
As reported earlier, this card will be the first and only audio hardware released for the personal computer that has the ability to fully output uncompressed 7.1 channel, 24-bit/192kHz LPCM or bitstream DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD. ASUS, with assistance from C-Media and ArcSoft, has been able to adhere to the PAPS and AACS content schemes without having to downmix the audio sources (resulting in 16-bit/48kHz DVD quality audio) or even dropping support for DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD altogether.
The output of these particular audio formats requires the use of the bundled ArcSoft media player from ASUS. Any fans of PowerDVD Ultra or WinDVD Plus will be out of luck if they expect uncompressed output of DTS-HD or TrueHD. Our impressions today after spending more time with the card have only increased our desire for it.
We were able to fully test DTS-HD and DTS-HD MA output today and it worked flawlessly in several titles in two-channel to eight-channel mode. ASUS is still fine tuning Dolby TrueHD and we were not able to fully test it. However, ASUS expects to have Dolby TrueHD fully tuned within the next 60 days or so. The other interesting detail about this card is fully support for Windows XP and Vista currently for all playback capabilities. Our test system today was running Windows XP SP2. Also, unprotected BD content is fully supported at this time for playback from the hard drive or streaming over the network. Hopefully this does not change as we imagine fans of AnyDVDHD will be rejoicing over this capability. We will have additional details over the coming weeks along with a preview of the card as Sean prepares this product for final release. ASUS also confirmed the pricing for the HDAV 1.3 will be near the current Xonar D2 with the Deluxe kit obviously carrying a higher premium with the inclusion of the daughter card.
In the meantime here are a few pictures from today and additional images can be found in the updated gallery.
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gwolfman - Monday, June 9, 2008 - link
As soon as ASUS throws this baby onboard one of their ATX/uATX motherboards, I'm buying it!gevorg - Saturday, June 7, 2008 - link
So does it have a HDMI output only, or there is an input too?gwolfman - Monday, June 9, 2008 - link
there's an input toopaulpod - Friday, June 6, 2008 - link
I ran their trial on a Vista test system after reading this. As usual, it is the typical mixed bag story for media software.The website says they do not support ATI cards under XP.
Player controls are WAY better than WinDVD (similar to older versions of WinDVD) but there is too little control/information about whether GFX card acceleration is being properly used.
For yucks, I tried their Bluray authoring to create a BD disc with clips of broadcast 1080i transport stream. The program seems better than Corel or Cyberlink but... Everything worked fine up to the write operation (to folder or BD-RE) when the program crashed. How can they possibly think a trial that crashes will lead to a sale?!?!
As people mentioned, let's hope the card's video pass though properly handles HDCP and monitor detect, can be set to bypass any modifications, and can use any advanced video/audio sync features in the HDMI spec.
cweinheimer - Friday, June 6, 2008 - link
I have a pre hdmi Harman Kardon 7.1 reciever with 8 channel analog input..hmm...would connect my HTPC and this card for blue-ray audio at full 7.1 best audio possible to date. I want one!chizow - Friday, June 6, 2008 - link
You don't need this card to get lossless 8ch sound over analog, just get PowerDVD Ultra. If the DAC and opamps were better than whatever you're using now it might be worth it, otherwise the $200+ for the Deluxe version is probably more than you need (especially if you're planning to use analog anyways).cmdrdredd - Saturday, June 7, 2008 - link
PowerDVD can't give you the full resolution of the audio. You're limited to 16bit audio no matter what, and it won't do DTS HD MA.Desides - Friday, June 6, 2008 - link
I think you're confused. No one's getting excited about its ability to handle lossless audio, but rather uncompressed audio.Lossless: FLAC.
Uncompressed: WAV.
The disappointing thing here is that you have to use Asus' playback software. I doubt very much their program is as versatile as, say, KMPlayer.
gwolfman - Friday, June 6, 2008 - link
So, does the video path works like this: PCIexpress video card->DVI/HDMI-to-HDMI cable->ASUS HDAV->HDMI->TV/AV Receiver? From my understanding, all current DVI and HDMI capable video cards are limited to 24-bit color on the output, or that HDMI 1.3x deepColor/x.v.Color is not supported. So with the ASUS HDAV we can benefit from HDMI 1.3x audio but are still limited to 1.2x color space?