GameTheater XP

The gametheater xp is a sound card made by Hercules. While I say sound card, it's a lot more.

A big selling feature for me on this is that it has on-board mp3-processing. Meaning I can run servers and stuff on my second pc in addition to using it as an mp3 jukebox. I don't know if the on-board processing is upgradable to additional codecs(ogg)

The sound card itself has only one port on the back. A big parallel port sized thing. You attach a big external box to it. Not huge, it's about a foot by 6 inches, and three inches high. The thick wire going out to the box also has a usb cable running to the computer. The box functions as a 4-port USB hub in addition to its other junk(er, features).

On the front of the box are the following:

• two usb ports
• one game port
• two line inputs
• headphones output with volume knob
• microphone input with volume knob

On the back of the box are the following:

• The to-computer port(of course)
• Front and back stereo 1/8th inch(3.25mm) outputs
• Front and back seperated left/right mini outputs
• Center and subwoofer mini outputs
• two more usb ports
• front/back digital coaxial outputs
• front/back digital optical outputs
• midi in port
• midi out port

The Gametheater XP also comes with an impressive software bundle including Musicmatch Jukebox and Acid. Or so it looks from the box...it turns out once you get it home that all of the software is handicapped versions you could've downloaded from the internet for free. That misleading bull still pisses me off.

The Gametheater drivers and software are available for Windows: 2000, XP, ME, 98. As yet I haven't found any linux drivers, regretably. That would be double plus good if the on-board mp3 and stuff worked in linux.