Listening Tests
The Hollywood@Home 7.1 goes up against one of the more impressive motherboard based audio solutions, the Analog Devices SoundMAX AD1980, found in this case on the ASUS K8V, their K8T800 Athlon 64 motherboard I reviewed recently. Only six channels in spec, the AD1980 is a 20-bit resolution, 96dBA SNR chip that can sample at 48kHz. Slightly higher resolution than the Hollywood, it's a stern test for it.Speaker wise, Creative get the nod with their eight channel T7700 set. It's one of the few 7.1 speaker sets on the market and not too expensive, it's probably the logical all-in-one choice for pairing with the Hollywood. The speakers support upmixing of lesser channel audio sources when not paired with a 7.1 soundcard, that feature was made use of when listening to the AD1980 output.
CD Audio
To start with, I used CD source audio, rather than MP3 or an alternate audio format, just to keep fidelity as high as possible. While CD audio will offer relatively little over decent bitrate MP3, WMA or Ogg audio files, in terms of quality, on the test speaker setup and soundcards, it's worth trying it out.The digital output of my Pioneer DVD-106 IDE DVD drive was used to provide our protagonists with the CD audio data.
The CD used was The Chemical Brothers' album, Dig Your Own Hole. If you know the Chemical Brothers stuff, you'll know it's got a big sonic range. They use everything from digitally sampled high frequency effects, right down to floor shaking bass, with pretty much everything in between. In terms of testing each audio setup and giving the speakers as much work to do as possible, the title track, Dig Your Own Hole, along with Elektrobank, are the highlights. High frequency noises along with neighbour annoying bass for both tracks. I listened to the album right through on each soundcard, in CD track order, without any pauses or breaks.
The beauty or downside of soundcard reviews, depending on how you view it, is that this part is entirely subjective. My ears get to listen to my favourite music using my speakers in my computer room, in my house and I get to tell you what I think it sounded like. Here goes.
AD1980 first, with the speakers' bass setting adjusted so that there was no distortion and the volume levels adjusted similarly. The CD audio sounded crisp, the AD1980 able to pick up nuances in the tracks that lesser audio solutions may sometimes miss. The speakers help here, each satellite has two speaker drivers, a mid-range unit and a tweeter. It's a horrible term to use, but the music sounded warm, no obvious metallic sounded tones or noises, no clicking. Organic if you will, another horrid way of describing things, but apt nonetheless. It was a pleasure to listen to the CD version of the album for a change, rather than an MP3 rip, the AD1980 did well.
Hollywood@Home 7.1 was nearly identical in almost every way. There were a couple of noticable pops and clicks during playback, but given that the dynamic range of CD audio is well within the capabilities of each solution, it was hard to tell them apart using the T7700 speakers. Another 'warm' reproduction of Dig Your Own Hole, it actually seemed to generate more bass at the same subwoofer volume than the AD1980, adding to the effect the album wants to create.
In terms of CD audio reproduction, I prefer the AD1980, it didn't have the audible clicking that the Hollywood had, but the Hollywood was more bassy. However not enough to make much difference, I was barely able to tell them apart, I had to repeat Elektrobank a couple of times to make sure I wasn't kidding myself.
MP3 Audio
A similar listening test to the CD audio side of things, this time using U2's Pop album, compressed to 192kbps CBR MP3 audio with 44kHz sample rate, the output of our LAME benchmarking test that we use for system reviews here at HEXUS.The MP3s used are again well within the dynamic limits of the audio solutions, less bassy than the Chemical's Dig Your Own Hole, but with Bono's voice to add some vocal reproduction. Dig Your Own Hole has little vocal representation.
AD1980 first again, we get great playback using the T7700s, nothing seems to be omitted from the original CD version of the album (I had a quick listen to that beforehand). Reproduction seemed to be faithful and again, AD1980 sounded 'rich', 'warm' and 'organic'. I've had some poor audio solutions in the past that would make things sound metallic and flat, no such rubbish here.
Hollywood does just as well. We're upmixing to eight channels remember, each speaker positioned in my room according to the guidelines set out by Creative in the instructions. It sounded good, Bono sang his little heart out and I didn't hear anything untoward. There was good bass, good vocal reproduction compared to AD1980 and everything seemed to be on a par, MP3 wise. I can't split the pairing.
