Philips is a company almost everyone has heard of. They now make just about every type of consumer electronic device out there.  PC sound cards are probably the last thing most people would associate with the Philips name. To those of us in the PC hardware field, this has changed to a marked degree with their entrance into the PC sound market with three lines of products:  Rhythmic Edge (stereo output), Seismic Edge (quad output) and Acoustic Edge (up to 6 channel output).  These cards are all powered by the Thunderbird 128 -  a chip gained by Philips when they took over VLSI.  Their high-end card in this range is the Acoustic Edge. This sound card is quite impressive for the $99 price tag. I\’d venture to say Philips has entered this market with authority. Read on to find out why.

The Specs

Music:

• Creates 5.1 distinct surround sound channels
  
• Revolutionizes the music listening experience

Movies

• 5.1 channel surround from any A/V source
  
• Dolby Digital, QMSS and QSurround DVD playback to 2, 4, or 5.1 speakers*
  *Requires compatible soft-DVD player

Games

• 2, 4, and 5.1 speaker 3D for every game
  
• Transforms game play into a home theater experience! 

Technical Specifications

Audio Accelerator/Digital Signal Processor

• PHILIPS ThunderBird Avenger ™ DSP for extreme hardware acceleration Codec
  
• AC97 CODEC

Bus Interface:

• PCI 2.1 bus master

Industry Specifications:

• Exceeds PC98 & PC99 audio requirements
  
• SNR  92dB typical

Digital Acceleration:

• 96 streams of 3D audio acceleration including position reverb
  
• 256 streams of DirectSound accelerations and digital mixing
  
• Full-duplex, 48khz digital recording and playback
  
• 64 hardware sample rate conversion channels up to 48khz
  
• Wavetable and FM Synthesis
  
• Direct Input devices

Comprehensive Connectivity

• 5.1 (6 channel) channel analog output
  
• Digital S/PDIF output (stereo, AC3 or DTS signal)
  
• Digital S/PDIF input
  
• MIDI in/Midi out/dual game port
  
• Additional external inputs: Line in, Mic in
  
• Additional internal inputs: CD in, Aux in,TAD in, S/PDIF in)
  
• Special effects can be applied to any audio input including conversion of stereo to quadraphonic or 5.1 output, QXpander, 2D-to-3D remapping and reverb

Music Synthesis

• Up to 576 total Wavetable synthesis voices
  
• Reverb and chorus
  
• 96 channel hardware CD quality (16 bit, 44.1khz) Wavetable synthesizer with5.9MB sample set
  
• Hardware FM Synthesizer (real mode DOS)
  
• 512 voice professional quality soft-synch with XG and GM compatibility

Digital Signal Processor Algorithms

• QSound3DInteractive ™ positional 3D for 2 speakers, 4 speakers or 5.1 speakers
  
• QSound Multi Speaker System ™ for quadraphonic or 5.1 channel output of stereo music, video and games
  
• QSound Environmental Modeling for EAX ™ and DirectSound3D ™ games
  
• QXpander ™ and “2D to 3D remapping” for 3D enhancement of stereo playback
  
• QSurround ™ virtual 5.1 playback of DVDs using 2 speakers** Requires compatible soft-DVD player

System Requirements:

• One available PCI 2.1-compliant slot
  
• Genuine Intel‚ Pentium class 133Mhz or faster processor
  
• Intel or 100% compatible motherboard chip set
  
• 16MB system RAM
  
• CD-ROM for driver installation