• PC World
• » Components

Are you looking to dabble in home recording or music creation? Wanting to pump up the sound quality of PC games? Eager to watch DVDs in Dolby or DTS sound on your PC? To do all that, it helps to have a sound card with more inputs than just the usual stereo headphone jack.

Enter the latest PCI sound card and external rack combo from Hercules, the $149 Game Theater XP, offering audio and gaming enthusiasts a pathway to immersive audio and clearer desktop sound. With its stylish rack of connectors, this product is outfitted with plenty of places for you to plug in your stuff. In fact, the Game Theater is one the first products I've seen to rival the Live Drive rack from Creative's $199 Sound Blaster Live Platinum package.

Like most of the new 5.1-channel-capable boards PC World has looked at, the Hercules card I tested pumped out great audio and convincing 3D game effects. It's simple to switch between headphone, two-speaker, four-speaker-stereo, four-speaker-surround, and 5.1-channel sound through the PC's system tray. (The 5.1-channel name refers to typical digital movie sound, which has tracks for five different speakers plus a subwoofer.)

The Game Theater XP supports digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital conversion, which allowed me to listen to Dolby Digital sound. The included PowerDVD software player allowed me to switch to Dolby Digital. With PowerDVD, DVD movies sounded outstanding on everything from a full 5.1-channel speaker set down to a simple pair of headphones.

Racking Up Connections

Instead of housing audio connections in a drive bay, the Game Theater XP uses a solidly constructed rack about the size of an average paperback novel. The front of the rack houses headphone and microphone ports with separate volume controls. There are also line-level RCA inputs, two USB ports, and a game port. Turn the rack around and you'll find the usual six-speaker outputs, with both RCA and stereo minijack connections for the front and rear speakers (the center-channel and subwoofer connections are RCA only). Optical and coaxial digital in and out jacks, MIDI in/out ports, and two more USB ports round out the rear connections.

How does the system work? The USB and game-port connections greatly simplify swapping out different game controllers, a process that usually requires getting at the back of your PC. The digital connections and different speaker connections ensure that you can connect almost any set of speakers you buy, and that you can run sound to your home stereo if you desire.

At $50 less than Creative's Live Platinum system, the Game Theater XP seems like the better deal. But that's judging by price alone. My DVD and CD-RW drives took up the Game Theater's two internal audio connectors, leaving me no way to hook up my TV-tuner card. Most competing cards offer three audio connectors plus an internal digital connector, which the Hercules product doesn't have. Without that internal Sony/Philips Digital InterFace connector, playing digital audio straight from your DVD drive is out.

Other options, such as an included remote and a generous software bundle, make the extra $50 you'll pay for the Creative Live Platinum worthwhile. The Hercules Game Theater XP ships with software including MusicMatch Jukebox, PowerDVD, Sonic Foundry's Acid (a music creation package), and the Siren MP3 jukebox software. But Creative includes comparable editing software and throws in a robust set of games as well.

If you can't spare a drive bay for Creative's Live Drive, the Hercules Game Theater XP won't disappoint. But Creative's product is more full-featured and worth the extra money.

• See more like this:
• sound card,
• DVD,
• Dolby Digital 5.1,
• speakers,
• games,
• audio