Bij Gamecenter kunnen we weer een review lezen van de Philips Acoustic Edge geluidskaart. De Acoustic Edge is aan te sluiten op twee, vier of zes speakers (incl. subwoofer), en heeft een coaxiale digitale in- en uitgang. Wat hierbij ontbreekt is een optische uitgang. Naast het eigen Qsound ondersteund de Acoustic Edge ook DirectSound3D en EAX 2.0. Aan MIDI heeft Philips ook gedacht, er zijn namelijk 64 hardwarematige instrumenten beschikbaar die aangevuld kunnen worden met 512 softwarematige.
If you have a 4.1 or 5.1 speaker set, the Acoustic Edge will take any stereo signal and expand it to play through all of your speakers. Music and other stereo audio take on an immense, enveloping quality.
The most impressive aspect of the Acoustic Edge is its ability to simultaneously route different types of signals to different decoders. For example, if you're playing a game whose sound effects are EAX 2.0 encoded, you'll hear all the positional and environmental goodness the developer intended; meanwhile, the Acoustic Edge will take the game's background music and give it the same multichannel treatment it gives to other stereo signals. It'll similarly enrich the scene sound effects and music from cut scenes.
Oozing with professionalism and polish, the Philips Acoustic Edge is the finest sound card available. The clever handling of signals alone would warrant a recommendation; add to that its across-the-board compatibility, terrific assortment of input and output ports, and ability to make any speaker system sound its absolute best, and you've got a winner. This editor has never given the highest score to a product (he probably never will), but the Acoustic Edge comes closer than anything has before.