As soon as we walked into PowerColor’s gross sales area at Computex 2015, the company immediately dismissed its lineup of graphics taking part in playing cards, whatever the GTX 980 Ti having merely launched. Instead, the advisor drew our consideration to a model new product, of a form that it had in no way made sooner than: a sound card. It is known as the PowerColor Devil HDX Sound Card and goes by the half amount SCM888-DHDX.
The sound card is pushed by a Cmedia CM8888 audio processor, which is linked to a Wolfson WM8741 Digital-to-Analog converter. This DAC is then wired to a headphone amplifier that is capable of driving headphones with impedance of as a lot as 600 Ohm. The frequency response ranges from 20 Hz by 20,000 KHz, and the signal-to-noise ratio is 124 dB on the RCA (Tulip) out and 120 dB on the 6.3 mm jack. It is a little bit lower on the jack on account of the signal goes by the headphone amplifier, whereas it would not obtain this for the RCA ports. The OP-Amps are swappable.
For outputs, the cardboard has the 6.3 mm jack, RCA ports, coaxial port and an optical output on the mainboard. The cardboard comes with a daughterboard, which is mounted in a separate enlargement slot and gives 7.1 analog connectivity with 4 3.5 mm jacks and a microphone enter — all-in-all, a complete set of I/O connectors. The cardboard interfaces collectively along with your PC by a PCI-Particular 1x connection.
On the current, PowerColor had prepared a demo using two related strategies. One was using their sound card, and one different was using the Purity Sound II sound card on an ASRock motherboard. That’s pretty a daring switch, as ASRock’s Purity Sound II {{hardware}} already sounds on paper pretty good to start with.
Sadly, PowerColor was clumsy enough to have these strategies associated to a pair of gaming headsets made by Razer. I attributable to this truth offered to grab my very personal headphones, as I was coincidentally carrying my Audio Technica ATH-M50x set on me on the time.
To verify the excellence, our very private Editor-in-Chief Fritz Nelson had a take heed to the two strategies and was requested if he may hear a distinction. With Fritz being a bit a lot much less of an audiophile than myself, I wasn’t anticipating him to hearken to a distinction, nonetheless the second he moved from the PowerColor Devil HDX to the ASRock sound card, he heard a distinction. Fritz described that the bass was additional managed, the mids had been hotter and further distinguished, and the extreme frequencies had been a lot much less shrill on the Devil HDX sound card. I moreover had a listen, and agreed absolutely.
Oh, and certain, I did make sure that there was no adjusted equalizer to make the excellence additional apparent, and that the an identical audio file was used.
PowerColor may be releasing the cardboard over the approaching months and slapping a ticket of $159 onto it. Based mostly on the PowerColor advisor, that is about $50 lower than similarly-equipped merchandise from rivals.
Observe Niels Broekhuijsen @NBroekhuijsen. Observe us @tomshardwareon Fb and on Google+.