I have to admit onboard sound has been getting better, especially with the Introduction of Intel’s integrated HD Audio. Same thing for notebooks, eventhough I still believe in add-in cards like Creative’s Audigy and X-FI line. It’s especially gaming performance where these cards are ahead. So while on the PC we’ve had the X-FI line from time now, notebooks were still stuck with the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Notebook. While this is undoubtedly better than onboard audio it would have been nice to have something like the X-FI for notebooks.
Well, new pictures on the net are revealing this soon-to-be announced Creative card. First obvious difference is that uses the ExpressCard slot instead of the previously used CardBus slot.
On the back of the card it we can see three connection: one for the Line-in/Mic in/Optical, one for the Speaker Docking Jack and lastly one for the Headphone jack/Optical out. Included is the Speaker Docking Cable allowing you to connect up to a 7.1 speaker set. From this it seems that from the connection point of view nothing has changed. Expect the usual like THX-certification, DVD-Audio. Dolby/DTS decoding, EAX and the expected X-FI upgraded features.
Source:Notebookreview
Written by Devin