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So, with paper out of the way, it’s time to plug
in and listen…
Attaching the USB cable to my PC, the card was instantly
recognized as an audio source. A few settings in the
control panel to change to an external audio source
was all it took to have sound passing through the
ZM-RSSC. In fact, the Hercules Game Theater XP is
still in place as I write this and I am able to switch
between the two for comparison easily. Simply set
Windows audio profile to match your speaker configuration
and you’re all set.
Click
For Larger Image
The CD that comes with the ZM-RSSC has Sonix Sound
Station on it; this contains basic software for
balancing the sound levels and recording sample rates.
It helps to fine tune the performance and quality.
It works particularly well with headphones where nuance
is more obvious. There are volume levels for each
of the five channels, but notably lacking is an equalizer
of any type.
I tested the ZM-RSSC on my desktop with a set of
70Watt Altec~Lansing 4 channel speakers, as well as
a set of Zalman 5.1 Channel surround sound headphones.
I also attached the sound card to my laptop and used
the headphones as well as my home stereo (2 channels
only)
For gaming evaluation, I played UT2K4 demo, Unreal2
and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for a few hours switching
audio sources periodically to evaluate the differences.
For DVD playback I chose The Perfect Storm as it
has BIG 5.1 channel surround sound effects
For music, I chose a range of rap, metal, reggae,
blues and jazz from my collection. A mixture of CD
and MP3 was used to assess the difference in playback
quality of both formats.
On the desktop with the main speakers, the dynamic
range is great. Comparable to the Hercules card that
was the base of comparison, which is impressive… bass
was plenty low and highs were crisp. A range of metal,
rap, reggae, blues and jazz were listened to and all
sounded great. Gaming in 4 channel was plenty immersive.
True surround sound with a full dynamic range. Being
able to adjust each channel from the volume knobs
on the unit was definitely a plus. DVD playback was
of equal quality with the soundtrack and effects having
enough power to do justice to the movie. The surround
effect was very noticable and sound placement was
accurate among the 4 channels.
For playback through my home stereo I used a 1/8”
stereo to RCA adapter that can be found at any stereo
or electronics store. Playback had the same effect
as in the previous test as far as dynamic range, however,
I could not test the surround features as I only have
two speakers on the system. The sound quality is high
enough to consider listening to my laptop as a source
for my home stereo. CD playback was equal to the quality
form my main player, MP3 showed the degredation that
it has with the lesser sampling quality, which shows
to me that the sound card is doing it's job and reproducing
sound well.
As a card designed with the Zalman 5.1 surround headphones,
it performed fantastically! I will not go too far
into depth as I have review of the headphones coming
up next week and don’t want to spoil the surprise.
But all three of these aspects were superb with 5.1
surround in games and movies and good sound in music
playback, but with a slight loss to dynamic range.
However, that is an aspect of the headphones, not
the card so I can’t fault the card for that as it
performs very well on my desktop speakers as well
as my home stereo.
The next page is my conclusion... but you probably
have an idea where I am going with that... in fact,
try to guess what I think about this card before you
continue.
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