HT Omega Plus+ Sound Quality

[zen101]

Because of the Auzentech X- Meridian disappearance and my refusal to use anything that remotely resembles an Creative X-Fi I chose an HT Omega Plus+ replacing my Audigy 2 ZS

Installed it yesterday and have had the following experiences:

1. Lightweight software installation (7 Mb) Great
2. CD's and Mp3's that have sub standard recording/encoding sound absolutely horrible.
3. DVD-A and Good DTS sound tracks sound AWESOME

I run Boston acoustic VR floor standing fronts(bi-wired) , Boston Acoustic bookshelf rears , Centre and Boston Sub.
6 channel Rotel power amp
3X Monster Minijack to RCA cables

I run this setup in Vista, I would like to know if the windows XP software for the Omega plus is more feature rich and if so, what are the differences, I see the XP download is 23MB vs the Vista 7 mb download.

[ROBSCIX]

With newer cards with good DAC's and opamps substandard recording will sound bad. You hear all the deficiencies in the recording. The drivers are basically the same as the X-Meridian 7.1 so NO, the drivers are pretty much the same..no extra features etc. Your right the X-Meridians are very hard to find these days and are still very expensive, IF you can get somebody to part with one.

BTW, if you still want EAX 1,2,3,4 /OpenAL and the sound quality of the Claro+, look into some software we developed called "Velbac" Keep your Audigy 2ZS if you still have it.
You install both cards and the software links them internally. You can use the DSP of the A2 but bypass the output section and send the audio data to the Claro+ for output. I know a couple of guys that run X-fi XM and X-Meridian combos. This was basically the first "Prelude" Just a idea...