Ghammer
I bought and binned a SB Audigy 2 Platinum EX
-It upamples audio to 48KHz thus mangling the original signal
-Apart from ropey 3rd party drivers, there is no way of bypassing its reliance on windows audio architecture and Kmangler
-It has toy 3 pole mini-jack outputs for which Creative do not supply cables
-To cap it all, the outputs are located too close together for all three to be used at once
(I had to shave the plastic grips off my audio jacks to make them fit!)
-SB software is incoherent, disparate, confusing and broken
RME produce professional sound cards with balanced (XLR) audio output and superior drivers resulting in bit perfect D/A conversions and have won the respect of the professionla recording world.
My M-Audio Delta 410 also has Bass controls, and they work just fine thank you very much. However, I am keen to upgrade my audio output hardware to the best available. Yes, it would be great if RME included bass managment in their software but that appears unlikely. That being the case, I have posted here to enquire as to whether JRiver might consider adding bass managment to MEdia Center (As TheaterTek have done with version 2 of their player).
My sub has crossover settings but I want to use my HTPC in flexible 2.1 or 5.1 arrangements and don't wish to engage in complex cable routing changes when switching between music and movies.
I am not interested in turining this into a hardware discussion thread. Let's assume a need for flexible bass managment within Media Center thus facilitating greater choice on behalf of end-users.
Does anyone else want that? Will it ever happen?
Peter