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View Full Version : BlueGears X-Mystique Gold, impressions


juliendogg
11-08-05, 10:16 AM
Some of you probably saw my thread looking for alternatives to SoundStorm audio for 5.1ch digital output. I puchased this card from newegg and installed it. Sound quality is quite nice for MP3 audio, and gaming, DVD is simply awesome.

Some things to point out,

#1: For such a high priced card, the audio control panel simply sucks. Options are lacking, and the interface leaves much to be desired. My biggest problem here is that there is no control for LFE crossover level that i can see. To me, this was fairly dissapointing.

#2: No front panel audio connector. Are you kidding me ? $100 audio card and no front panel connector. Again, dissapointing.

#3: When using the optical output in DDL 5.1 the analog jacks are completely disabled. I find this to be irritating, as with my soundstorm I was able to have the optical out allways on, and have the analog jack still active for headphones when I wanted to game while someone is watching the tube or something in my living room. I have to go into the CPL and set the optical jack to 2ch in order to use headphones.



All in all though, this is an excellent card that seems to be very high quality. For the price though, I would have thought that some of the above issues wouldn't have been issues at all. I would however recommend this card to anyone looking for a DDL card at a decent price.

There's my 2cents,

Jason.

lowfat
11-09-05, 12:25 PM
No front panel audio connectors?! eek.

zabomb4163
11-14-05, 02:22 AM
i dont know about you guys but front panel connectors is a disadvantage. in my opinion a clean setup is just that....clean. No visible wires. why would i purposely put the wires where everyone can see them?

you say where do you plug in your headphones......receiver has a headphone output on the front. I push it in 1/4" and it disables the speakers and i get nice clean output for my sennheiser 280 pros. pull the plug out 1/4" and now i have speakers again. 5 seconds to switch from 5.1 to headphones is ideal for me. Only thing that i would like more is a button on the remote that said headphones so i could hit it and have it start powering the headphones and disable the speakers.

juliendogg
11-29-05, 09:44 AM
i dont know about you guys but front panel connectors is a disadvantage. in my opinion a clean setup is just that....clean. No visible wires. why would i purposely put the wires where everyone can see them?

you say where do you plug in your headphones......receiver has a headphone output on the front. I push it in 1/4" and it disables the speakers and i get nice clean output for my sennheiser 280 pros. pull the plug out 1/4" and now i have speakers again. 5 seconds to switch from 5.1 to headphones is ideal for me. Only thing that i would like more is a button on the remote that said headphones so i could hit it and have it start powering the headphones and disable the speakers.

Yeah that's probably what I'll do. That's the main reason i'm bothered by the lack of front panel audio. I need a 3.5mm to 1/4 adapter for my reciever though. Still, the more I use this card, the more I love it. I wish the control panel was a bit more refined though. It's a bit lacking compared to the NV cpl...

Droban
11-29-05, 12:57 PM
Have you guys seen the new DTS Live encoding cards that should be coming out?

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=234500

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=234502

JCLW
11-29-05, 01:06 PM
Can you post a screenshot of the control panel?

I want to see if it's the same controls as the CMI 9880 chip that you often get on intel DDLive! boards.

JCLW
11-29-05, 01:19 PM
intel HDA w/CMI 9880:
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/7448/cmi98805jk.jpg

intel HDA w/Realtek ALC882D:
http://img363.imageshack.us/img363/2728/ddlive0fw.jpg

zabomb4163
11-29-05, 04:50 PM
Have you guys seen the new DTS Live encoding cards that should be coming out?

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=234500

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=234502

good job blue gears