Cheap M-Audio Revolution 7.1 Surround Sound PCI Card ( PC / Mac ) (Electronics) Price

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Customer Reviews of M-Audio Revolution 7.1 Surround Sound PCI Card ( PC / Mac )

Superb sound quality at a great price
I purchased this card for my custom-built Home Theater PC (HTPC) running Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 and it sounds absolutely superb. M-Audio is known for their pro audio gear and the attention to quality can definitely be heard from this great card. <
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>I would give this card 5 stars if it wasn't for the fact that currently there are no Vista drivers for this card. Also, this card is OLD. I believe this card was originally released in 2003. Not only that, M-Audio hasn't released an updated driver for this for a long time. The newest driver is from 2004. <
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>Although the card does not "officially" support XP Media Center, it works perfectly fine with the drivers for regular XP. I had a bit of a problem getting the digital output to work, but their superb tech support was able to provide all the info I needed. Currently I am using the single digital out cable to my receiver and it's outputting PCM, DTS, and dolby digital audio via the digital interface without any problems. <
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>One note of caution if you're using the digital output with XP Media Center Edition: turn off the media center interface sounds (you know, the annoying little sound effects from the buttons, etc.). The digital output can only send audio in one format at a time, so the following scenario can happen: <
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>If you are playing a DVD in DTS, raw DTS audio will go through the digital output. However, if you have sound effects on in Media Center, those are generated in PCM format. XP will send the audio in PCM format via the digital output. Going back to the DVD, you'll find that you get no sound because for some reason either XP doesn't switch the format back or the card doesn't see the change. <
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>If you are planning on running Windows Vista (which I don't recommend at least for a year till the bugs are worked out), then this won't work, but it's a great sounding card for XP.

Do Not Buy If You Own A Mac
The M-Audio Revolution 7.1 is listed as being Mac compatible but with all the issues it has currently, I am not sure how that is true. <
>I own a G4 Mirrored Drive Tower and have had nothing but problems with this sound card. Currently there is still no driver for anything past 10.4.6 and if you upgrade any higher the card will not work in Surround Sound. Besides that there is constant speaker popping and horrible buzzing and squeals when switching between programs, sometimes even when the computer is not in use. It has been flakey with surround sound when using DVD Player and Quicktime, as well. During the 10% of times it works without a hassle the sound is great through my Logitech speakers, so it is quite sad when it doesn't work. It seems that this is the only option for Mac users to achieve surround sound that I know of, which is also very saddening. <
>I have a feeling I will be selling this to a PC user in the near future and just settling for good ol'stereo.