Hardware Review: Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1 HiFi

**durwood** · 02-12-2007, 07:37 AM

Something tells me that anyone that wants this card is going to suffer. I cannot confirm anything, but it seems ESI or EGO ssytems that owns Audiotrak is not providing any updates and most of their products are not available on their websites. Get them while they are availalbe still here:

http://www.dbsys.de/webshop/product_...9851ae0a54ee43

What is strange is the that the link Kap posted shows a very identical product called the Comrade 7.1 Hifi.

http://sound.zol.com.cn/26/269860.html

The nice thing about that card is that they added jumpers to boost the output voltages by 3dB. No ASIO support, but I wonder if there is anyway to flash the card or use the Audiotrak drivers.

On another note I updated the opamps to the OPA2107 and wow, I must say with these opamps it blows the my Audigy card out of the water. Amazing!

**Sebl** · 02-18-2007, 09:42 AM

Hey,

do you think i can use this card for my Sennheiser HD595 Headphones or will there be problems because of the low output-voltage?? I dont want to buy an additional amplifier right now ....

thanks

**durwood** · 02-18-2007, 07:36 PM

Actually it has a dedicated headphone output feature in the driver control panel. It locks the output for better use for headphones. I have a pair of Sony MDR-V700 DJ headphones that can accept up to 3W and they are plenty loud. I can't even tell a difference between this card and an Audigy with 2V output as far as volume goes.

I hope you can find one of these cards, since they are difficult to locate. The are available from a European/German website.

**Sebl** · 02-18-2007, 09:46 PM

That's where I'm from and that explains my skills in English

Well, I still try to decide between a Maya44 and the Prodigy, because I need it mainly for stereo. How did you connect your headphones with the Prodigy?
Thanks for your help.

**durwood** · 02-19-2007, 08:55 AM

Your English is pretty good.

One of the outputs can be routed in the Prodigy control panel as a headphone output. I conencted them directly to that 3.5mm output. If you don't need multiple channels maybe you should look at the prodigy HD2. you will have to look at this website. www.audiotrak.jp (Use Google to translate).

Or consider a USB Headphone DAC if you only need it for headphones.

**takisot** · 03-08-2007, 03:20 AM

Hello everybody!
This is my first post to this nice on line community and I would like to ask for your help on an issue I have with this wonderful audio card:
Everything works like a charm, exept that I cant find any option in the control panel for bass management via analog out i.e. I cannot set my speakers to be large or small and I cannot send the the <80khz signal to my sub as I would like because my main speakers havent a big woofer.
Do you have any solution on this? Maybe an external bass management software?
Thanks in advance.

**durwood** · 03-08-2007, 08:57 AM

Welcome!

I sent you a PM, but I thought I should respond here as well for others who might want to know. Well this card does not have that feature. Creative Labs and Turtle beach cards have that kind of feature. However, if you use a program called Frequency Allocator Full/Lite you with get crossovers for each channel which will do your bass management. www.thuneau.com

You won't be able to set speaker size, but you won't need it. This program is much more powerful then the stuff provided with other soundcards.

**durwood** · 03-13-2007, 07:29 AM

Just an update....

I was finally ready to try to switch over to all audio processing done on the computer with this card but I ran into a problem. I was having some small issues getting the audio processing setup, and then when I was ready, I found that I had lost half a channel. So now my 7.1/8 channel card is only a 7 channel.

I lost the right channel, channel 8. I can still use the card since my sub is mono anyway, but now I don't know if I can trust this card.

Now to find out if Audiotrak has any customer support.

**RedGTiVR6** · 03-13-2007, 08:25 AM

What died? Just lost stereo output?

**durwood** · 03-13-2007, 09:26 AM

No that's the weird part. I only lost the right channel on channels 7 and 8 of the card. I thought maybe I screwed something up in the control panel settings. I double checked everything. Then I thought, maybe the driver is corrupted so I removed the old driver and re-installed it. When that didn't work, I checked to make sure the dongle cable had continuity. That checked ok. SO then I thought, well maybe the one of the opamps died so I moved them around to see if the problem would follow the opamps. Nope. So then I decided to try it in a completly different computer. No luck. Now instead of 8 channels its only 7 channels. Still enough to work with, but something electrical failed on the card. I am going to see if I can get it replaced under some type of warrarnty, but the only available cards left are out of Germany. Germans don't believe in things failing or warranties so this should be fun.