Hydrogenaudio Forums > Hercules Digifire 7.1 or Fortissimo III?

Full Version: Hercules Digifire 7.1 or Fortissimo III?

Hydrogenaudio Forums > CD-R and Audio Hardware > Audio Hardware

faceless007

Dec 31 2003, 22:02

I see the Hercules GameSuround Fortissimo III 7.1 recommended fairly often here as a good budget card, but searching for "digifire" doesn't turn up a single result. One's about $30 more than the other, but looking at the tech specs on Hercules' web site, it seems the cards are exactly the same, except that the Digifire has a few Firewire ports. Is that really the only difference?

_Shorty

Jan 1 2004, 03:56

I believe so

Audible!

Jan 1 2004, 04:58

Yup. As I recall, Tomshardware did a test of both and the digifire actually had appreciably worse quality on the surround channels (?) due to interference or some such.

edit: here it is: Toms notes:

QUOTE

"In the objective RMAA tests, this quality difference of Fortissimo III 7.1 and Digifire 7.1 was blatantly obvious. It was definitely noticeable in the bandwidth and appalling when it came to stereo crosstalk. This, by the way, is a measure of the isolation between the card's left and right sound channels, in other words the highest level of sound that can be heard on a channel before it starts to be heard on the other as well. This is an important factor in multi-channel environments."

And later explains that a driver fix may solve certain problems....

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