GA-Source heeft een review geschreven van de nieuwe Aureal Vortex II SQ2500 geluidskaart. Hier heb je een plak uit de review.
For non-3D sound applications there is something less of a difference between a high end and low end card, but there is still definitely a difference. One that makes the Aureal chipset stand out among the competition is the inclusion of the hardware equalizer onboard. This lets you really tweak the sounds to get things to sound the way you want them to through your own speakers.When you look at the spec of a 98db signal to noise ratio, you know that there is not going to be any distortion from the soundcard itself. This means that "regular" sounds from Windows are as crisp and clear as possible. For CD audio as well, you can be sure that the quality of playback is as good as your speakers/headphones are.
One thing that the SQ2500 is lacking is a digital input for use with the CD player. I am not sure that this is any loss. In machines with soundcards that do have a digital in for the CD I still use the analog input. For me the sound that comes from the digital in is too crisp, and the high notes seem too high.
The other main component of 2D sound is MIDI. Actually I was rather pleasantly surprised at the MIDI quality, as it was definitely improved over the earlier Vortex2 cards. I must say that it is quite possibly the best MIDI I have gotten from a soundcard. The difference between this and Yamaha's Waveforce 192 Digital was so small, I really couldn't tell the difference.
