Reviews for Diamond Multimedia XtremeSound 7.1/24 bit Sound Card

Nice Soundcard

Strengths: Excellent price, and very good 3d sound

Weakness: Buggy Diamond drivers

Using the supplied Dimaond drivers for this card, it would cause a couple of games to almost instantly crash on me. I tried it in Guild Wars Factions, and it would crash soon as I turned the sound quality selector to its full setting. It also would crash instantly in Nascar Racing 2003.

I then tried the drivers off of the www.cmedia.com.tw website (for the 8768+ chipset). And they too would crash every time.

Finally I downloaded the latest beta drivers for the Auzentech Mystique soundcard(which uses the same chipset). And edited its .inf file so that it had the Diamond Xtremesound card hardware ID inside it (I copied and pasted it from the Diamond drivers .inf file). And installed the driver fine that way.

The Auzentech drivers fixed the crashing problem. Hopefully Diamond or Cmedia will update theirs for the fix also. As its a hassle to do get someone elses drivers to install.

Other than those problems (which I shouldn't have had). I like the card very much. The color coded connections also help a lot when connecting the cables. Plus the price is much more reasonable than other cards, for the features it has.

I'm only giving it a 4 star rating due to the driver hassle/bugs.

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Diamond Multimedia XtremeSound 7.1/24 bit Sound Card

Strengths: -Dolby Digital Live -Music sounds good -Sounds great with games -Rebranded turtle beach Montego DDL -No static on mic

Weakness: -Can't have analog and dolby digital at the same time -Only has toslink for spdif in/out

This card works great. You can actually use auzentech xplosion drivers by replacing the CMHiTec.INF with turtle beach one. Another alternative is using cmedia's reference drivers

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OK for the price

Strengths: 7.1, decent sound quality, cheap

Weakness: bad drive

It's easy to install the card in my desktop and the sound quality is noticeably better than the onboard sound chip. I used the Auzentech X-Mystique drive though. But for the price, I won't complain.

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Diamond Multimedia Xtreme Sound - 7.1/24 bit Sound...

Strengths: Sound Quality. Features.

Weakness: Difficult to set-up.

This card sounds great listening to Pandora in Dolby Digital 7.1, which is what I bought it for. I don't play games so I have no comments about that aspect of it. It was a severe pain in the butt to install and make work properly, but that could have been as a result of my system and not the card. All in all, I recommend it.

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Nice sound card but buggy drivers

Strengths: Good price, good sound

Weakness: Buggy drivers

This is nice sounding sound card if you can work out the driver problems. Many people have problems with the included Diamond drivers. Others use the cmedia or Auzentech drivers. Why can't Diamond just work out the driver issues with this product? Once you get a set of working drivers, this card produces excellent sound at a good price.

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Affordable 7.1 solution

Strengths: No hiss Affordable High quality for game

Weakness: Not as great as Creative one

Flawless installation with detail manual. Work great with my new computer E6300 and motherboard 680i. Now my room is 5.1 surrounded sound. Don't know how 7.1 would perform like but that is for the future when I have enough $$ to buy a good 7.1 system. Very cheap I got this $10 from Staples.. so no complain here. WAAAAy better than my onboard sound card..

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Xtreme Sound - 7.1/24 bit Sound Card with Dolby...

Strengths: Dolby Digital Live/Good audio quality at a low price.

Weakness: Choice of drivers on CD software bundle

The Diamond Multimedia Xtreme Sound 7.1
is a good choice for the home theater pc user
or for the casual gaming user.
The Diamond Multimedia Xtreme Sound 7.1 has good
audio quality plus the Dolby Digital Live is great
for music and movies.
I am very satisfied with this purchase and product.

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Great Card -- Reasonable Price

Strengths: Many features for the price. True digital signal pass-through.

Weakness: No significant weaknesses that I've found.

You can spend a lot more on a sound card than I did on this one, but I doubt you'll find better performance for the price. The built in SPDIF port is a feature you'll have a very hard time finding anywhere at this price point. The accompanying documentation is very basic, though; just a guide with the very basic installation instructions.

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Decent sound card for the money

Strengths: Decent sound quality (definitely better than many on-board cards); optical in and out; cheap.

Weakness: Dolby digital is hit and miss; drivers are buggy.

I bought this card as it was cheap a card with AUX-IN, which was needed to get some video software to work (AUX-IN is not usually present on many recent motherboards). It took some time to install the card as the drivers are buggy, and had to search and install non-OEM drivers (Mystique's Xplosion drivers) to get things in good shape. Dolby digital is hit and miss as some cards are shipped with non-+ CMI chipset, needed for DDL to work (search for this fairly common problem). It is either due to the lack of QA by the manufacturer, or ...! Anyways, as I stated above, my reason for purchasing this card was different and DDL was not crucial for me; nonetheless, if you are buying this card for DDL, caveat emptor!

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Good Soundcard

Strengths: 7.1 and 24 bit

Weakness: None

This soundcard works great with my existing 7.1 home surround sound system. The drivers provided on the cd with the product work fine with Windows XP professional. The sound is very good and I would recommend this to anyone.

The diamond website has updated drivers that resolves any problems related to the sound card connected to the sound system.

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Great product for the price

Strengths: sound, price

Weakness: installation

This card sounds as good as $50 card. It only costed me $20. I am happy with the purchase. It took 3 hours to instal the carda and make it start to make soundsm which as a little longer than I hoped.

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Excellent sound card

Strengths: Inexpensive and excellent sound

Weakness: none so far.

I bought this card to replace my 2.1 card and I am very satisfied with the results. Contrary to other reviewers, I did not have any problems installing the drivers for this card. It works very well with games and DVD movies.

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Great sound card

Strengths: Good sound, nice price

Weakness: none

Very easy to install this sound card in my desktop computer. Sound quality is decent with nice outputs. This sound card is pretty cheap for a product with dolby digital live sound. I can feel a big difference in sound after installing this card. Overall great buy for the price.

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No problems

Strengths: Sounds good

Weakness: Drivers a weak point

This was my first experience with a Diamond product and the end result was favourable. The sound was everything I expected and a little bit more. The drivers are not yet works of art, but that is something for Diamond to improve upon. (You are listening Diamond, right?) Another complaint was that their website was not fully function and their rebate process is rather contorted. Still a good product in and of itself.

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Great cheap htpc card!

Strengths: cost, better than on board sound

Weakness: not the best sounding card out there, but for this price, what more can you ask? driver compability

get it from buy.com with google check-out & this is a good bargain!
Several people have recommended not to use the cd driver that comes with it and download the latest one from c-media. I'll give that a try next.

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Budget sound card with very good quality

Strengths: Low price; Good quality; Satisfying Performance;

Weakness: Weak drivers and software bundle

It's a good quality card at lower price offered by Diamond, compared to Creative ones. It has a good features set including Dolby EX and DTS formats 7.1 channel, 96K/24bit playback, 48K/16bit recording, 7.1 virtual speaker shifter providing surround sound, EAX 2.0 and A3D sound support and most important the Dolby Digital Live. The performance is very reasonable, high quality audio output overall. I have used Creative Audigy 2 ZS and couldn't find much difference between two. Well, I do notice that in some new games Creative one has better support and performance. But for most of casual games and CD or MP3 playback, Diamond card is just as good as Creative's. One thing I don't like this card is that the driver is weak. I installed the driver on CD and found that the sound from a microphone was too low. After doing some research on-line, I gave up the manufacturer's driver set and went for the one downloaded from Cmedia.com. It's still not appealing to offer much potential in card's performance but at least sounds from microphone can be clearly heard. The package CD has some other bundled software, Acrobat Reader, WinDVD and Audacity (a sound editing tool). Acrobat reader and Audacity are free software which I can download from internet without purchasing a sound card. WinDVD is also useless as Windows media player or Real Player will do the same job. I don't understand why the manufacturer offers these junk softwares. They really should have given me a better bundle that I would appreciate.

I like this sound card considering the price and performance. Recommended!

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It's time to purchase a good speaker.

Strengths: Very good price for 7.1 channel surround sound

Weakness: Software and driver is not good as other brands.

Because the price is cheap enough for this card, I purchased it instead the old one. When I played some games, the sound quality for this card is good. I try to play CD and DVD in my computer and I feel it's better than my DVD player. Right now, I need to ask someone how to use S/PDIF function.

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Xtreme Sound - 7.1/24 bit Sound Card with Dolby...

Strengths: Good quality for price. Easily beats onboard sound quality.

Weakness: Not a top of the line card; drivers aren't the best.

I'm not much of a gamer, so I can't comment on how good the card sounds w/ games. However, I do listen to a lot of music (CD's and mp3's), and the sound quality when listening to those is near perfect. The music is quite crisp and clear. It beats the heck out of my onboard (soundmax) audio.

For those who are seeking a check, yet effective, upgrade to their onboard audio, I would definitely recommend the Diamond Xtreme Sound card.

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Pretty good Card for the buck!

Strengths: 7.1 Optical Simple Software

Weakness: None

This is a really nice card. It has 4 output ports, not 3 like most others. The drivers are much less complicated - the software is very simple and practical. This card is a great bang for the buck - cheap for the quality and uses a nice sound processor that some $80-100 cards use.

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Great bang for the buck

Strengths: Great sound quality! Better sound than any creative card on the market. Crisp, clear, easy-to-setup software, OPTICAL!!!

Weakness: No support from the company

I have tried all of the major sound cards in various systems. These diamond cards have the best overall sound quality. Creative has a niche market where people have started to buy only for the name. This card is far better than all the others. Sounds great

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Xtreme Sound - 7.1/24 bit Sound Card with Dolby...

Strengths: Dolby Digital Live (DDL). Optical out

Weakness: Driver need to be refined.

As other reviewers said, I used Auzentech X-plosion drivers by adding Xtremesound hardware ID in CMHiTec.INF file. It worked well. If your onboard sound chip doesn't have DDL or optical output, this sound card is very nice addition to your motherboard. If your onboard sound chip has a name ending D or M (for example, realtek ALC882D or ALC882M), your sound chip has already DDL function.

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Best Budget Sound Card

Bestcovery experts have rated the Diamond Multimedia Xtreme Sound 7.1/24 bit Sound Card as a best pick for the Best Budget Sound Card. Bestcovery's experts recommend the best products and services for a particular need based on extensive research and evaluations. Click below to see Bestcovery's full review of this product.

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Diamond Xtreme Sound 7.1 Dolby Digital Live XS71DDL PCI

Testseek.com has collected 7 expert reviews for Diamond Xtreme Sound 7.1 Dolby Digital Live XS71DDL PCI and the average expert rating is 80 of 100. The average score reflects the expert community’s view on this product. Click below and use Testseek.com to see all ratings, product awards and conclusions.

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