Ballistics Report

Pros

Low Profile: As far as low profile audio cards go, the X-Fi Forte is probably one of the best ones on the market. Of course, there isn’t exactly a huge selection of low profile audio cards right now, but that doesn’t take away from the fact the Forte is a great sounding card. As far as low profile goes, your only other option is really the Xonar DX series from Asus, however it lacks EAX 3.0+ support as well as the processing capabilities of the X-Fi.

Dedicated Front Panel DAC and Swappable OPAMPS: When we reviewed the Xonar Essence STX last year, we were impressed with the ability to swap OPAMPs on the card. The same goes for the X-Fi Forte here, as we love the idea of fine tuning the card to our specific audio tastes. Headphone specific features on a sound card speaks to the audiophile in me, so I love being to adjust the tone and warmth of the audio produced especially when listening with headphones.

Dolby Digital Live/DTS: Interactive: The X-Fi Forte supports Dolby Digital Live and DTS: Interactive, which increases its versatility for the average user. This makes the Forte near perfect for users who need something a little better than on-board for a HTPC or living room gaming rig and want to hook it up to a decent surround system.

Cons

Volume Issues with DDL: Unfortunately, once the signal is passed to the DDL encoder, you cannot control the volume anymore. This means you need per-application specific settings, which may be fine for Vista, but XP users may find it frustrating to be unable to use the multimedia keys to adjust audio volume. Also, the maximum volume of DDL actually a little bit lower than we would’ve liked, which kept us from enjoying some ear-blistering sounds with our surround system.

Lack of EAX Enabled Games: Windows Vista pretty much killed audio acceleration for the time being and, with Windows 7 right around the corner, following the same trend, you are going to be limited to either Windows XP or messing with Creative’s ALChemy program to get the most from the 3D sound processor. Many developers have just decided to skip EAX, instead going with their own audio solutions which work pretty well, although they still aren’t a match for EAX during its heyday.