Subjective Listening Tests - Movies

Movies

We will dispense with the normal DVD test and skip to testing of some BD media.

According to the feature set, The Home Theater HD 7.1 has the full range of HDMI 1.3a audio and video output options.  Unfortunately we were unable to procure an HDMI 1.3 processing receiver prior to our deadline for this review.  That being said, we continued to test every facet of the card that we could without using an external receiver. 

To note, full resolution output is NOT possible in Windows XP.  Proper audio output through the card for Blue rays is tightly tied to the protected audio path in Vista or Windows 7.  Both test movies were tested within XP Professional for comparison sake and both codecs were down sampled to 16 bits @ 48 KHz.

No matter what the native encoding of the blue ray the player/OS software will down sample.  Vista/Win 7 is another story; we performed our Blue ray media testing in Vista Ultimate.  Vista allowed full resolution output over analog for the tested media.

Blue Ray Media Testing
A main feature of the HTHD 7.1 is offering HDMI 1.3a I/O to the end user which allows full resolution, high definition audio with no down sampling. A very interesting feature of the HTHD 7.1 is the use of an external receiver is NOT required to have support for these high definition standards. 

While the use of an external receiver is an option, the card allows any speaker system connected to the card to output Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby True HD and DTS-HDMA in full resolution. So lets fire up our test BD ROM and check out some BD Audio/Video.  First up on our list is Dolby Laboratories new high resolution codec, namely Dolby True HD.

Without getting to deep into the specifications of each format, TrueHD is a new multi channel surround sound codec and is full resolution lossless audio. On the BD disk the codec is allowed 8 channels at 24 bit - 96 Khz.

88 Minutes
We have the 88 minutes Blue ray disk, with a Dolby TrueHD soundtrack.  Upon loading there is a great effect which is a ticking clock that moves from the rear right to the front and back and forth great imaging.  In movie dialog was very clean and focused and the surround effects were very intense. None of our tests team has seen this movie and we watched it for the first time during testing.  We would have screen shots of this movie but

As part of the copy protection screen capture is disabled in PDVD9.  All we could get was just the blank screen showing the information for audio and video from the movie.

There were some great surround effects in the movie and we also have nice deep bass throughout the movie.  Not that this is an exceptional movie for sound effects, the audio in this movie was quite good, directional effects such as vehicles driving by from one channel or through the scene, "flashback" sequences all sounded great and very immersive. Explosions, gunshots, it all sounded great.

DTS-HDMA is a lossless audio codec and offers similar bit depths and frequencies in comparison to Dolby TrueHD.  This codec offers 24/96 in 8 channel surround sound format. Again without boring the reader with specifications of this codec, lets just say it is a variable codec that can offer the end user an identical representation of the original movie sound tracks.

Kingdom of Heaven
The religious chanting in this movie sounded quite good in the opening scenes.  The beginning scenes in the forge with the bellows pumping vibrated our testing bench with nice deep bass and it sounded most impressive. 

There were various horse chase scenes throughout the test media and the horses running sounded excellent moving from one channel to the other through the scenes. 

The battles scenes were also very impressive arrows flying across the sound field, offering impressive imaging to say the least.  The ships sailing to Jerusalem through the storm sounded incredible with a bit of volume.  We were surprised at how "authentic" the musical backing tracks sounded during the testing.  Screams and other sounds during the battles sequences added to the excitement and this movie drew us right in during testing.

Further Notes on features and options:

Dolby Digital Plus is also offered on the Home Theater 7.1 also along with Dolby Digital Live and DTS-Connect through both S/Pdif and HDMI connection.

This card can send all audio out over the HDMI connection you will get the following maximum resolutions for each mode:

• Entertainment Mode: 24/192 KHz
• Gaming Mode: 24/96 KHz
• Audio Creation Mode 24/48, 24/96 KHz

For instance your game audio will be sent out over the HDMI connection using the Dolby Digital Live or DTS-Connect real time encoders.