bluegears b-Enspirer 7.1 Channels 24-bit 192KHz PCI Interface Sound Card - Retail

GOOOD

Reviewed By: UnimatrixOne on 9/24/2006

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

Pros: Sound Blaster X-Fi Watch out here comes a real sound card. Sound Blaster Claimed they had 24-Bit Card and they got a lawsuit. Audigy Bords only had 24-bit DSP's bit the card rendered in 16-bit. But this card is Real 24-bit. Its Got REALTIME Upconversion from 2ch to 5.1 and 7.1. It outputs DTS and Dolby Digital Streams. Plus it has EAX 2.0 And Aureal 3D 2.0, Dolby Digital Live. You cant beat the price.

Cons: No Cons Just all Pros

Other Thoughts: 4 Tims better Than Sound Blaster Can Ever Be. After they Lied about The Audigy Series Cards with i spent Redicilous Amout of money on my Audigy 2 PLAT EX I will never buy a Sound blaster Product again. It isnt the first time they bent the truth!!!!

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Works great under Windows 2003 Server / Great tech support

Reviewed By: on 11/7/2006

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: * Bluegears has quick and helpful tech support
* Great, clean sound
* Dolby Digital Live / DTS Connect
* Stable 2000/2003/XP drivers

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: I bought this card after a decent amount of research and it seemed to offer the best value for the features I was looking for (specifically DTS Connect).

My only apprehension when buying this card was I could not find any reference to the card working under Windows 2003. I only saw references to 2000/XP.

I decided to email tech support before ordering and I was extremely impressed by how fast they responded. I emailed them first thing Monday morning, and they must have emailed me as soon as they got in (time zone differences). He was very helpful and said that it should definitely work and if I had any issues to contact him. So I decided to order the card.

All in all the card has worked great. Software install was seamless, the non-bloated setup software works well, the card sounds great and I am able to listen to 5.1 audio through my receiver with only an optical cable (Note that there is no coaxial digital out).

I highly recommend it.

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Reviewed By: Royce on 1/7/2010

Tech Level: somewhat high - Ownership: more than 1 year

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Extremely high sound quality, digital and analog connections (until the analog dies), easy setup, nice control panel, good drivers. I have used this card on XP, Vista and 7. I have been able to get great 5.1 audio on all three.

Cons: Analog connections seem pretty much guaranteed to die after a year. Read all of the reviews on here... You'll find that many people report the same thing. They died for me. Luckily, I don't really even use them, I use the digital connection, but still, that's not good. However, I can't use the mic port for voice chat in games because that's dead. I have to enable my mobo's onboard mic which is generally not recommended to do, since having two audio devices running a the same time can cause problems. Also, by enabling the onboard audio in the BIOS, I am also enabling my onboard video, which I can still disable in the Device Manager, but that's still not recommended and can still cause even more problems.

Other Thoughts: Overall, I've been pretty happy. If you plan on only using the digital connection, this card could possibly still work for you. It has extremely crisp sound, but you never know when you might need the analog connection. Definitely not an option if you plan on recording. If you asked me to review this card after owning it for only a few months, I probably would've given it 5 eggs, but after owning it for almost three years, and finding out that my analog connections are dead, and that everyone else is having the same problem, I'd say you might wanna look elsewhere.

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Worked for a year

Reviewed By: Moosh on 1/1/2010

Tech Level: high - Ownership: more than 1 year

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Good card, worked well while it lasted.

Cons: Died after a year.

Other Thoughts: Brand new system and the sound card was the first thing to fail. Should have just used onboard sound from the beginning and saved myself over $100.

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Not Vista Compatible

Reviewed By: Give Me Drivers on 12/31/2009

Tech Level: somewhat high - Ownership: more than 1 year

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Purchased from Newegg 2.5 years ago. Loved the card while I was using XP.

Cons: When I switched to Vista and installed the 'Vista" drivers the interface lost features and speaker channels.

B-Gears needs to provide a decent Vista driver or they will lose customers. I bought a Fatality Titanuim champ card for $50.00 dollars more than this card and it works great in my Vista 64 machine.

I used to be a very happy B-gears customer.

Other Thoughts: Took me a while to figure out it was the card and not the speakers or MB.

Installed it in my brothers xp system last night and all the old features were there and the card works great.

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