Halo

Comment:
Astounding sound for serious music. A high finish set of headphones and a excellent recording will put you in the orchestra. The card will incode a source to DTS or Dolby Digital and send it out on optical to a capable tuner but it does not DECODE a source to be played via a conventional software player such as Windows Media Player. I mention this simply because the advertised specs say "hardware decode". If you can hear the distinction among an mp3 and a lossless wave file, you want this card. If you adore music and you can't afford Mark Levinson in your living room, YOU WANT THIS CARD. I can't afford the several thousands of dollars it would expense to fill a area with audiophile sound, but with this factor, and a pair of fantastic Sennhiesers, I can fill my head.

Comment:
Remarkable sound excellent. Headphone amp truly tends to make a distinction. Now I want much better headphones. I had often believed that the on-board sound on newer computer systems was quite good, but I had the funds and I currently had so much cash into my laptop I figured why not. I am nonetheless amazed on how good my music sounds now. With headphones I can clearly hear the difference involving a mp3 and a CD. I know I haven't scratched the surface on what this card is capable of. If you like music you want this card!!! I just about forgot to mention that I do game a bit and so far it has delivered excellent audio in my games with no problems to speak of.

Comment:
Makes music and movies sound wonderful once you tweak the sound to your liking. Dolby headphone mode, and the 7.1 speaker shifter genuinely tends to make every little thing sound wonderful. 192Khzቴ bit(need i say additional? ) Has optical in/out, and RCA, and extremely easy to set up. Some gimmicky sound options such as "flex bass", and the dolby/dts neo modes actually don't do anything to improve the sound. The headphone amplifier isn't precisely what it says it is either . Even with the jumper impedence switched to "high", this sound card could not energy my sennheiser HD580's with the authority i wanted. Even with the volume and the levels maxed out, it just didn't power them the way i thought this sound card would be in a position to do. But, after i plugged my klipsch s4's into it,(which are low impedence phones) the sound just came alive and i have been pleased ever since. For medium to low impedence phones this sound card is the best on the market, but if you have larger impedence phones like myself don't exspect this card to blow you away.

Comment:
Wow Good SOUND! Sound is wonderful and will destroy any other sound card.Excellent tech assistance answered inside minutes by means of e mail with images and red outlines. I will be acquiring a lot more merchandise from this fantastic organization. Gold contactsChangable opampsHigh and low impedance setting for headphone amplifier.Supports tons of inputsSystem has tons of settings for audio settings. Uncomplicated but effective. High-priced.. But you get what you pay for.

Comment:
-straightforward setup-fantastic tech support-wonderful drivers-headphone output -no rca to three.five female cable (easy to get but would have been good if incorporated)-value bought these to use with sennheiser pc360 and that combo is excellent! easy setup, finest thing i have purchased for my system and can effortlessly transfer to any future systems.

Comment:
It's got great sound all around, I bought it as a less expensive pro style card for my live PA as I have a complete desktop incorporated into it for recording purposes from my firewire enabled mackie mixer. the RCA outs truly make a enormous distinction as nicely as 1Ǟ" inch can get scratchy I've discovered more than time and you have to twist it just appropriate to get excellent make contact with. none of that with this unit. I can record at full 192k 24bit suitable onto a 7200rpm really hard drive with really small latency due to the ASIO drivers. it's great! can't very uncover drivers to make a hackentosh, lol. I don't use the headphone that a lot, since I truly use the one particular on the mixing board but I've tested it out with my studio quality cans and it's remarkable!I've purchased two of these, 1 for my live recording rig and one particular for my house studio rig. excellent cards, pro sound at consumer rates!! matches up to various thousand dollar cards I looked at for my house studio rig.

Comment:
Went from a Creative X-Fi Fatality Qualified Gaming edition to this brand right after just looking for a thing bigger and far better. Right after quantity of Creative bugs and fixes I decided to speak to HT|Omega personally. Their client service will contacts you same day and even on Sundays to answer queries. I purchased this for a gaming rig, ideal after you get the settings dialled in. Loved that there was just one driver to set up and not all that Creative Bloat-ware. None at all. Tiny pricey compared to the competitors. If you got the paper why not. Took me a very good solid week to tweak and get used to the new sound processing, but now I can determine exactly where an enemy is stepping from across the map. Make sure your headphones are rated high adequate to take benefit of the amplifier. Something beneath 32 Ohm and you can\'t take advantage. Luckily my Sennheiser HD280s are rated at 64.

Comment:
Sound is exceptional even more than a X-Fi you seriously hear issues in films like you are there. Effortlessly installed which includes drivers a real plus and can even use the optical on the z5500's. Put it in 2 channel and you have surround sound when you don't have a five.1 supply. Nicely on my create I would have liked a pci x1 slot card and they are coming out with 1 in 2010. I have always had nicely you know the other card and was unsure of how I would like this but if the very best sound is essential to you then get this card. If you are a gamer and just want pretty accurate sounds accentuated then go with the X-Fi. This will give some good detail and you will be capable to hear whats seriously there. Yes you can adjust this card to the punchy sound but why when you bought the best card for listening and enjoying.

Comment:
This is card was a comprehensive surprise to me. My girlfriend and my ideal pal purchased this for me as an early Christmas present. Boy was I delighted! When I got the opportunity, I installed into my laptop effortlessly- it took less than five mins. I personal a pair of HD595 from Sennheisers and a Creative Audigy two LE. I compared the two cards, and the Claro sounds leagues greater. The built in hi-fi amplifer took out the notorious "Sennheiser Veil" by bringing out the sound. Likewise, this card is tremendously LOUD! There is no bloatware that came along with the CD and there were a lot of tweaking choices offered. Some of you could possibly like the solution to connect the card to the front panel for headphones or speakers with short cables. All in all, this is a good card, just a tad highly-priced, but properly worth the cash! I have to obtain both my girlfriend and my bud gifts with equal value.

Comment:
Great. This was a replacement from an old X-Fi Platinum inventive sound card. I really had alot of troubles with inventive.. usually an concern with either installs or crackling/pop sounds. Inventive support was also terrible.No troubles at all. No BSOD's no crackling/pop sounds and no overly enormous computer software installs. It just does not sound great... it sounds great. None !! I really purchased this from reading previous evaluations... and I'm glad I bought into this. No question that external sound cards are greater than integrated sound. If you are thinking of getting a higher high quality sound card... Appear no further and get this bad boy.

Comment:
Effortless to install and configure making use of Vista 64. Control panel was simple to use. Sounds wonderful, won't be shopping for a creative once again! A tiny trickier to set up with Windows 7 64 RC. The driver came up with an invalid signature from Microsoft. I disabled the signature checking and went in just fine. I don't consider this will be a dilemma when the Windows 7 drivers come out for it.

Comment:
Almost everything. No, genuinely. My only disclaimer is that I'm NOT a gamer, so I can't speak to that. I own a boatload of higher-high quality material, all of which sounds gorgeous with this card. I've spent alot of time ripping my stuff to digital format and storing it on PCs, and I wanted a sound card that didn't make me really feel like that was a waste of effort. As other folks have said, the headphone amp DOES make a difference if you are listening to higher top quality material. The drivers are strong, and the tech help is excellent. These guys know that a lot of you out there are browsing for an alternative to Inventive Labs, and they know they have the bull by the horns. Like you, $$ are difficult to come by for me, so initially I balked at the price tag for this card. I searched everywhere and was persuaded by a very profitable recording engineer to attempt this card. I reset the default jumper to permit for my higher impedance Sennheisers, and I was sold. None, and that is very, quite rare these days. In this case, you totally DO get what you spend for. I'm buying one for a friend who has "given up on getting fantastic sounds from a Computer".... I can't wait to see what these guys do in the months ahead.

Comment:
Superb SoundConsists of Cables and adaptorsSmall effective driversGood quality of components Limited EAX assistance This is the most remarkable sound card I have ever owned. I have a pair of Sennheiser HD595s and they truly benefit from the headphone amp. This card puts my SB X-FI to similar in sound quality.

Comment:
The sound is phenomenal and if you have nice head phones then this card THE card you want to obtain.Works ideal with Vista 64 which is additional than I can say for about any Inventive cards ideal now. Price tag is a tad steep but you get what you pay for

Comment:
- Phenomenal audio good quality- Super effortless to set up- Drivers work flawlessly- Outstanding and responsive tech support - Does not come with a appropriate/left RCA (male) to three.5mm (female) Y-adapter like the ASUS Xonar Essence series sound cards I had nothing at all but problems with my ASUS Xonar Essence ST PCI sound card so I returned it and bought this card. This worked perfectly in my technique and the audio good quality is superb. Not to mention HT Omega tech assistance responds really speedily and professionally.

Comment:
Blows onboard sound out of the water totally. No crackly sound that I've heard about on the Creative and Inventive based cards. High impedeance headphone amp. DD Reside and DT Live means I can use the optical output and get rid of the 3x analog ones. Swappable opamps. Consists of cables for the L/R output, really long optical cable, and a headphone cable extension!! Those alone would likely run 1Ǜ to 1ǚ of the card's cost if you just went out and purchased them. none so far. Well, it won't assistance the newer proprietary EAX formats but obtaining utilised onboard sound for the final 3 year on Vista, I'm not seriously worried about it due to the fact that didn't have the newer ones either. That could be a con for some if you really have to have the EAX stuff. Unless you obtain the XT model, you will have to have a device that accepts an optical input and can decode dolby digital or DTS if you want to get surround sound of any type. I have a Yamaha theater in a box with receiver and speakers connected to my system so no challenge there. I wanted to get rid of the six channel analog setup anyway. The headphone amp with Dolby Headphone is great. I'm using the Sennheiser Computer-350's which are a high impedance headphone so they require a headphone amp or other powered source apart from a soundcard's common output level to drive them properly. Placing the headphone amp's jumpers to high impedance mode on the card drives them perfectly.I'm not at present using the L/R analog outputs simply because the integrated cable was as well brief for my setup, the optical cable was additional than extended adequate although. I want to connect those outputs for music listening in two channel mode given that they are fed from the identical high top quality front channel opamps as the headphone output.

Comment:
Tends to make high-impedance headphones sound IncredibleUncomplicated InstallationAudio application is lightweightGood business PriceyAudio software is ugly and somewhat challenging to navigate I bought this following getting fed up with driver problems from the last soundcard I owned from a effectively-identified company. Sound top quality is about the very same, which is great, thinking of they had been the same price. You really should only get this card if you have some high impedance headphones, otherwise there's no genuine explanation to get this instead of the other HT Omega cards.

Comment:
Superb sound excellent and clarity, it surpasses my old Inventive X-fi Fatal1ty gamer card. The headphone amp is a extremely noticeable compliment to my Sennheiser PC350 headset (read the manual to get the complete effect from the amp). The control panel gives a large variety of different configurations, it took some time playing with all of them (and reading a few forums) to fine tune them to my individual taste. All in all I really like the card. Absolutely nothing key, the EAX sound effects are a little diverse from what I have been utilised to but it does not impact gaming significantly at all. I had the SCP (snap crackle pop) problem with my old creative card and was really disappointed with the lack of concern/help creative had in the matter. I had been searching for a replacement for a even though and this is it.

Comment:
I consider it's all been said. Simple setup. Superb sound. Smooth frequency response. No noticeable distortion or coloration. Dead quiet. What far more can you ask for? Read the reviews. 98% of the reviewers liked it. The other 2% possibly did a thing wrong. It's pricey but you get what you spend for. If you can afford to obtain the Claro Halo AND you have a decent sound method to connect it to, you won't regret the choice. I contemplate myself an audiophile but not to the point that it gets in the way of prevalent sense. I would by no means purchase a 񙇈 amplifier or 躔 cables. I can't afford to! You reach a point of diminishing returns exactly where spending twice as considerably doesn't yield a significant improvement. That applies to just about something... sound cards, speakers, cars, toaster ovens. The Omega Claro represents what I think about the point of diminishing returns for sound cards. Yes the Claro Halo sounds much better than the Striker (I have 1) and the Striker sounds far better than the Brand X card it replaced. Dollars effectively spent. More income equals far better sound. But don't bother seeking for anything far better than the Claro. I don't feel you'll discover anything better at any price. It's just my opinion of course, but it comes from 40 years as a musician, speaker builder, and audio/electronics hobbyist.A single final thought... If you're thinking about replacing the opamps, listen to the card with the stock 4580 opamps first.

Comment:
This card is anything the other critiques say it is. I'm making use of a pair of AKG K601 open back reference headphones, and the isolation of this card is outstanding. It works flawlessly with Pulseaudio in Linux, with 24 bit 96 khz audio (I don't have something with a larger sample rate to try). Someone else talked about this... the huge voltage protection capacitors are tall enough to compete for space with some other cards. Not a massive deal. If using Pulseaudio and the card seems quiet, attempt setting the bit depth to 24 or 32. I'm not positive why this aids, but it does. Now I can blast my ears out.