Creative unveiled a long-in-waiting revamp of its Sound Blaster sound cards branded with the Recon3D name at IFA. They will use the company’s Sound Core3D tech, which it bills as the first in the world with a quad-core sound and voice processor. The sound cards will accelerate THX TruStudio Pro processing and also improve vocals with CrystalVoice.
Sound Core3D uses the company’s Quarter DSP and is also the first to get an array of DSP cores with high-quality HD audio codecs for over 100dB on a single chip.
The range-topping card is the Sound Blaster Recon3D Fatal1ty Champion. It sports a convenient I/O drive with headset mini-jacks, volume control and audio inputs. A high-quality, beam-forming microphone with CrystalVoice Echo Cancellation, CrystalVoice Focus and CrystalVoice Active Noise Reduction is included. It allows gamers to send nothing but their voice while gaming. This card is due to arrive in the winter of 2012, though prices haven’t been announced.
Next up is the Sound Blaster Recon3D Fatal1ty Professional, which skips the I/O drive in favor of connections on the card itself. Ship dates haven’t been revealed.
Finally, the core Sound Blaster Recon3D sound card provides the hardware acceleration but few extras. It ships later this year.
The PCI Express cards have 6-channel, 24-bit, 102dB DACs, 4-channel, 24-bit, 101dB analog-to-digital (ADC) converters, an integrated headphone amplifier-out, a digital microphone interface, S/PDIF inputs and outputs, and general purpose inputs and outputs (GPIO). They are Mac compatible.
