MP3 Sound Card

A: The best MP3 sound card will correct the damage done by MP3 downsampling.

Sure, you have a lot of music, but have how long has it been since you heard it the way it was intended? Converting your music to MP3 format has caused data loss and playback degradation. You can correct this at playback, but it requires a high quality MP3 sound card. In this article we take a look at the up-sampling technologies of Auzentech's award-winning sound cards that make them ideal MP3 sound cards.

Among their many capabilities, the Auzentech X-Plosion, X-Mystique, and forthcoming X-Meridian sound card are excellent MP3 sound cards. This is accomplished with same technologies that make these sound cards ideal for Home Theater PC (HTPC) and gaming applications.

The X-Plosion, for example, produces surround sound using either Dolby® Digital Live (DDL) or DTS®. DDL provides 5.1 channel surround sound, while DTS® Connect provides 5.1, 6.1, and 7.1 channels.  The surround sound can then be fed into powered multi-channel speakers or to an Audio Visual receiver (your home theater system) with a pristine optical bitstream. DDL and DTS technology makes the X-Plosion great for movies and games, but how does it perform as an MP3 sound card?

CD-quality audio—the parent of most MP3 files—is now at the low-end of the quality spectrum thanks to the development of DVD-quality audio. On CDs, audio is stored at a bit rate of 1411.2 kilobits per second. In comparison, MP3 encoding—usually at 128 to 320 kilobits per second—is only an approximation. While MP3 may seem good enough after all this time, the truth is that it is not up to the standards of the original CD, let alone to the standard's of today's audiophiles. But a good MP3 sound card can compensate for this damage.

When used as an MP3 sound card, the X-Plosion analyzes the stereo input and resamples it up, healing the damage done by down-sampling. The bitstream can be resampled up to 24 bits and 96 kHz, and the number of channels can be up-sampled to 5.1, 6.1, or 7.1 channels. If you have large collections of songs in MP3 format, an X-Plosion can transform the music quality during desktop playback.

Next Steps

Sure, you have a lot of music, but how long has it been since you could really hear it? To improve the playback of your MP3 collection, look into an MP3 sound card update from Auzentech. You can improve the audio frequency, the channels, and the all-around crispness of the audio with an MP3 sound card. Visit the links below to learn more about Auzentech sound cards.

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Category: Soundcards. Date published: May 22, 06