Terratec Home Cinema Serial Codel

Like many PC manufacturers, Terratec don't provide any real guidance on their website as to what a 7.1 system should cost. Generally, a 7.1 system will cost around two times the cost of a 5.1 system, and also a little more than twice what a 5.1 system costs.

The Home Cinema Serial interface is compatible with the Omega Nebula2 sound card, so this is something of a double-edged sword when it comes to upgrading. You're not going to have the proven reliability of the Serial port, and the sound card will be almost three times as expensive as a generic PCI sound card. It's also possible that the PCI interface is a bottleneck for your system, so avoiding the Outsource link to the new sound card may improve the performance of your system -- though it doesn't help with the cost issue.

Again, like many PC manufacturers, Terratec aren't very informative on the exact power requirements of their TX3D and CAN1 boxes, and this information is not available via their standard manual. You should supply at least a 1200W power supply, which will more than suffice for the TX3D. The box will require around 350W from the card, so this may be a little on the generous side for a PCI sound card.

Just like its predecessor, the TX3D is a four-channel audio card supporting four separate audio channels. The new TX3D also supports I²S, which allows it to hook up to LCD displays without running through a mixer, and it offers support for SPDIF output. With the price of LCD monitors probably set to fall dramatically over the coming years, the TX3D is a good option for people wishing to attach their PC to an LCD display (and if you already have one, there's nothing to stop you hooking the two up directly). Other than that, the only feature the TX3D has over its predecessor is a stereo microphone input. d2c66b5586