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Philips PSC724 Ultimate Edge


Date
: 07/7/04 – 05:11:25 AM

Author
:

Category
: Sound

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer:
Philips

Price:
$69.99

I would be willing to assume everyone reading this has heard of or even used a Philips product at some time or another. My assumption is largly do to the fact that Philips has a very diverse product portfolio in the electronics industry. Most of us are very familiar with their stereo, television, and semi-conductors already. Computer audio is definately nothing new for this electronics giant and much like the rest of its competitors there are not nearly as many updates to sound card lines as there are for video cards. This brings us to todays subject matter which has us looking at a new sound card from Philips that brings some improvements and new features over their last release of cards last fall.

What we have today is called the
Philips PSC724 Ultimate Edge
. Last September I was given the chance to write on the Philips Aurilium external sound card and in this article today I'll be pitting this new blood against both the Aurilium and the M-Audio Revolution 7.1 sound cards. While the Aurilium is an external sound card, we'll be paying most of our attention to the sound quality and not the performance of that particular product. This should give us an idea of where the PSC724 falls compared to last years technology as well as, what is still considered one of the best consumer audio cards available, the Revolution 7.1.

Without further ado, lets proceed.

Page 2 : Package

The PSC724 came 2-Day shipped from Philips by FedEx, my favorite courier. The package was handled well with no damage to it and the contents inside. On the inside was the Philips Ultimate Edge retail box. Behold:

Inside the box are only a handful of things: a quick start guide, the warrarty information, and a compact disc containing drivers and applications.

There are some things worth pointing out on the card itself. There is the auxiliry- and CD-ins on the top right corner of the PCB. Right below that are a set of pins with jumpers on them; remove the jumpers and you can connect a front audio panel if you have one (they are convenient and built into certain cases). To the lower left of that you can see the audio processor, the VIA Envy24GT.

On the back of the cards PCB it is pretty barren, so nothing to point out here.

Finally, the IO connections are all here and your standard colorcoded affair. While Philips has certainly included all the typical inputs/outputs I will miss the availability of an optical out that the Aurilium featured along with all the other IO connections shown.

Page 3 : Specifications

The following specifications were provided by Philips:

At first glance I didn't see any striking difference between the Aurilium and today's PSC724. However, I quickly found out that much of the software that powered the Aurilium has survived in this new card but a lot of the hardware has infact changed. The PSC724 now uses the very popular VIA Envy audio processor. Not exactly the same as that in the M-Audio card, the PSC724 is powered by the Envy24GT as opposed to the Envy24HT – both of which are identical minus the number of output streams (5.1 vs. 7.1 channels). Given this major adjustment the new PSC724 boosts the maximum playback and recording depths to 24-bit from 16-bit, lowers the total harmonic distortion from .009% to .004%, increases the frequency response from 20 Hz – 20 kHz to <10 Hz – >24 kHz, and last it more than doubles the maximum playback and recording sample rates from 48 kHz to 96 kHz. These are nice improvements on paper and knowing how well the M-Audio Revolution 7.1 harnesses the Envy chip it is definately possible that we could have a winner here. The major thing that seperates sound cards with great hardware though is the software and whether the engineers can exploit all that great hardware with great drivers.

Page 4 : Features

The following feature list was provided by Philips:

Hardware Features

Pro-grade 24-bit hardware converters

High Definition DSP Audio Engine

Intelligent Media Processing

24-bit signal processing for ALL sources

Software and Driver Features

Sound Agent 2 HD Visual Sound Interface

Sound Agent 2 HD + 32-bit floating point effects engine

Integrated Mixer
QInteractive3D (QI3D)

QSound Multi-Speaker System (QMSS)

QXpander

QSound Environmental Modeling (QEM) for EAX games

QSound Environmental Modeling (QEM) for audio enhancement

Digital Pre-Amp

S/PDIF Digital Output

QSurround

QSizzle

QRumble

Normalize

10-band Equalization

User Presets

Microsoft WHQL certified driver

Philips' Sound Agent 2 HD analyzes sound along two dimensions, the source and the medium, using sophisticated algorithms to automatically optimize sound quality along the two dimensions. The user also has the ability to tweak and adjust the resulting sound via the graphical user interface provide by the installation software.

Behind the Sound Agent 2 HD name is technology developed by QSound Labs. The developements by QSound Labs eliminate the need for cross-talk cancellation found in many other solutions using sate-of-the-art algorithms. The end result, as Philips says, is an ultra-wide 'sweet spot' for strong positional perception regardless of head movement and positioning, allowing listeners to enjoy a true 3D surround expereince with two, four, or more speakers in any environment. The PSC724 also takes advantage of QSound's exclusive QMSS 5.1 technology which analyzes each incoming signal and automatically approximates the location of where each individual sound should be in a surround environment. This method is in contrast to simply mirroring the front stereo speakers in the rear channels as seen in other solutions.

Along with Sound Agent 2 HD, Philips Intelligent Media Processing (IMP) works with Sound Agent 2 HD to constantly monitor the type of sound input and render it according to output. This is what enables the PSC724 to automatically adjust for headphones, two, four, or even 5.1 speaker setups. All-in-all the system is capable of handling DS3D, EAX 2.0, and A3D 1.0 APIs.

To bring more life back into compressed audio, such as MP3s, which lose some of their original quality and liviness through compression Philips gives users the ability to use QSizzle and QRumble. These are two algorithms that boost high and low frequencies respectively, adding life back to your music.

All of these algorithms were part of the Aurilium package and one of the things I will be looking at is to see if there is an improvement in their already good quality and performance impact. The distinction between Sound Agent 2 and Sound Agent 2 HD on paper looks only to be in that HD signifies 24-bit audio processing. This will also be compared with the previous release that came packaged with the Aurilium.

Page 5 : Installation

Installing an internal sound card is cake. Before installing any hardware one should make sure that the Windows installation is up to date with all the latest patches. Next thing on the agenda is to install the software and drivers that came with the sound card. Once complete, shut off the computer, open the case up, find or free-up a PCI slot, and plug in the card. Once plugged in you have the option to attach an audio cable (not included) from your optical drive to the sound cards CD-in. After the case is closed back up and the computer is booted Windows should detect and install the PSC724 without a hitch.

Drivers

The CD included with the retail package includes the user manual, MusicMatch Jukebox, QSound AudioPix, as well as the drivers needed to install the card. Installing the drivers means installing Sound Agent 2 HD. I wasn't expecting there to be much change between the Aurilium's Sound Agent 2 and this updated version, but on the contrary there were lots of changes to the different sections and what they contained. The previous Sound Agent 2 software that shipped with the Aurilium was already a slick, stable application. This updated version shipping with the Ultimate Edge improves on some areas and changes others to match the cards feature set.

The first section is labeled effects and allows the user to adjust the level of QSizzle and QRumble. These are high and low frequency enhancements that I find quite useful in music playback from MP3 or WMA in particular. These two modes can be enabled in the top row of buttons along with normalization, reverb, 3D effects, and equalizer. When applied these settings are used throughout the computer environment. Above them are a master volume control and the defualt/help buttons.

The upper portion where you can select the effects and control the volume are the most common functions, thus they appear above every section. Below every section is also a dynamic view of the audio settings. Within this view you can also adjust the different environment variables as well as presets.

Overall I have to say that the Sound Agent 2 HD software is a pretty easy to use and maneuver application. The Sound Agent 2 HD software loads with Windows and stays in the system tray unless otherwise disabled.

Page 6 : Benchmarking

Testing audio cards is subject to a lot of errors that are hard to control. The cables, system hardware, environment, and the testers own ears are variables that through extensive testing and control setups we best try to minimize in this section.

Comparing the cards is difficult in itself because I cannot listen to them all side-by-side – not going to happen with our limited resources. What we will use to compare directly are RightMart Audio Analyzer 5.3, 3DMark 2003, and Audio WinBench 99. While RMAA is a way to examine the supplied 'ideal' specs of the manufacter to what you may actaully obtain. 3DMark 2003 aids us in testing the performance of the system using no sound, 24 voices, and 60 voices. It wasn't too long ago that the only card capable of doing the 60 voice test was the nVidia SoundStorm, but as you will see in this article, we have more than one such capable card today. Along with testing the performance, 3DMark 2003 also works as an excellent subjective test on how well the positional audio works without the tester having to pay attention to, or setting up situations in a game that can lose the reviewers focus.

With Audio WinBench 99 testing is conducted to get exact CPU utilization numbers on 16-bit/44kHz and 8-bit/22kHz settings using DirectSound and DirectSound3D. On top of that, Audio WinBench 99 provides us with a tool for testing the positional audio in a controlled way for subjective comparison.

Subjective testing of audio fidelity was done through extensive play time with movies, music, and games. The movie viewed was LOTR: The Two Towers DVD. The music used for testing was Something Corporate's, Leaving Through the Window. Games used for testing through play time were recently released Unreal Tournament 2004 and Far Cry.

The tests were conducted using the following system specs:

Audio WinBench 99

Because the results are too many to post we're providing these results on a seperate page here.

To summarize, the Aurilium delivers the lowest CPU utilization of the tested sound cards despite being external and using a USB 1.1 connection. This is certainly not as much of a surprise as it was when I first reviewed it last year. Following that are the Revolution 7.1 and the Ultimate Edge which switch back and forth between advantages. Overall however, all cards deliver great CPU utilization in hardware mode with no scenario reaching above 7%. Please refer to the end of the supplied data for detailed testing comments and notes.

3DMark 2003

3DMark 2003 was foremost a very good indicator of positional audio. In this benchmark all three sound cards performed great, with the edge given to the Ultimate Edge and Revolution 7.1 for their clarity and smooth transitions as planes flew by and shells impacted the bombers. In terms of performance, the results were similar across the board with little drop as the number of voice increased from none to 60 as you can see in the below screenshots:

RightMark Audio Analyzer 5.3

Because the results are too many to post we're providing these results on seperate pages:
Revolution 7.1 16-bit/48 kHz
Revolution 7.1 24-bit/48 kHz
Ultimate Edge 16-bit/48 kHz
Ultimate Edge 24-bit/48 kHz
Ultimate Edge 24-bit/96 kHz

Comparison 16-bit/48 kHz & 24-bit 48 kHz

The results prove very well for the Ultimate Edge, besting the Revolution 7.1 in many cases while remaining competitive in others. Some things I didn't expect were teh lower than anticipated numbers, though good, could have been due to the cable or system environment itself because the results were reliably reproducable. I was not able to configure the IO levels of the Aurilium so unfortunately it was left out of the testing in this section. The Revolution 7.1 could not be tested in full duplex mode thus there is no result for the 24-bit/96 kHz test. Both cards did very well overall producing great results.

Movies

Testing movie playback was done using PowerDVD. I watched segments from LOTR: The Two Towers on each sound card. All performed equally well such that it is hard for me to state a victor. Clarity of highs and deep lows in battle sequences highlight what these cards can do.

Music

Music was tested using Windows Media Player 9 and Something Corporate's Leaving Through the Window album. Again, all sound was great. I particulary found sound using QSizzle and QRumble on the Philips cards as a great enhancement as well as Sensuara on the Revolution 7.1. All great cards for audio playback.

Gaming

Game testing was done using full versions of Unreal Tournament 2004 and Far Cry. Both were play extensively and I enjoyed much of it :) In Unreal Tournament 2004 I found the cards to all sound good, but really found it hard to concentrate on the sound positioning in this frantic online game. I then took to Far Cry which made it much easier to listen for the different sound channels. Aside from the vehicles and gun shots being heard in all directions the jungle ambience was impressive with the sounds of bugs filling the thick brush. Overall I'd have to say that for gaming the Revolution 7.1 and Ultimate Edge take the top honors in my opinion with the Aurilium coming close to their surround quality for gaming.

Page 7 : Conclusion

To say that I was not impressed would be a lie. The PSC724 was capable of besting the Revolution 7.1 on multiple occasions. One large advantage many of you should consider of the Ultimate Edge is the price that it rolls out at; a mere $69.99. While this isn't quite a budget sound card, it certainly brings with it high quality audio at an affordable price point. The package is a no frills bundle, but with the money one saves on this card over an expensive Audigy bundle you could buy the games you really want or sink that extra dough into a worthy set of speakers.

It seems that great sound cards are very abundant today and after finishing this look at the Philips Ultimate Edge I can easily add this card to my recommendations. One thing I'd like to remind our readers though is that it takes a good set of speakers to really take advantage of what these cards have to offer. I cannot imagine spending so much, especially $100+ on a sound card, when there is no high quality surround speaker system connected to them. My recommendation to anyone reading this is to go for great speakers first and then scrimp for the best sound card you can buy, the Ultimate Edge being one of them. With that it seems justly earned that the Ultimate Edge recieves our
O² POWER Award
for being a superior product in performance, price, and quality.

I'd like to thank Philips again for supplying both the Aurilium and Ultimate Edge audio cards as well as M-Audio for supplying the Revolution 7.1. All you people are great!