Key Features

• Low Profile Audio Card
• Developed around Creative X-Fi Native PCI Express audio processor
• Support for Dolby Digital Live for Microsoft Windows® 7, Windows Vista® and Windows XP®
• Support for DTS Neo:PC & DTS Interactive on Microsoft Windows Vista® and Windows® 7
  ( DTS™ for Win 7 and Vista via Download)
• Low-profile and standard-profile brackets included.
• Headphone Amplifier
• Microphone Pre-Amp

Minimum System Requirements

• Intel® Pentium® 4 1.6 GHz or AMD® Athlon XP 2000+ processor (Pentium 4 2.2 GHz, AMD AthlonTM XP 2400+ processor or faster recommended)
• Intel, AMD or 100% compatible motherboard
• Microsoft® Windows® 7 32/64-bit, Windows Vista® 64-bit with Service Pack 1 (SP1), Windows Vista 32-bit with SP1, Windows® XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2), Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) 2005 or Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004
• 256 MB RAM (512 MB RAM for Windows Vista)
• 600 MB of free hard disk space
• Available PCI Express® (x1, x4, x8 or x16) slot
• CD or DVD ROM

Rear Panel

Rear Panel Brackets

The X-Fi™ Forte includes two rear panel brackets, a Standard bracket and a Low Profile bracket. Use the appropriate bracket for your PC.

Digital Output

RCA/TOSLINK Combo Jack: Can connect to external DAC, AV Receiver, and Decoder through a 75? Coaxial cable or optical mini cable. Can play S/PDIF Stereo PCM and Dolby Digital AC-3, DTS bit-stream content.

Headphone Output

3.5mm(1/8 ”) stereo mini-phone jack: Includes an independent Headphone amp and can activate an impedance 16? ~ 600? headphone or earphone. Also, can be used, when configuring a Stereo system, not using the Analog I/O cable, as an Front Line Output.

Note If you connect a Passive Speaker (with lower than 16?) to this Headphone output, it can cause this audio card to not function correctly.

Analog I/O Multi Connector

D-SUB 15 pin connector: Connect the Analog I/O cable bundled in this package and use for Mic input, Line input and 8-channel line output Jack.

See also: How to Change the Rear Bracket

Analog I/O Cable

MIC input connector
3.5mm(1/8”) mini phone jack (Pink color label: ‘MIC IN’): Connect Stereo/mono unbalanced condenser microphone and input, record audio from the MIC through the audio card. Also, connect to Balanced Dynamic Microphone through the jumper setting of this audio board.

Line input connector
3.5mm(1/8”) stereo mini-phone jack (Blue color label: ‘LINE IN’): Connect CD player, MP3 player from their headphone output or line output, and input/record audio through this audio card.

Front Line output connector
3.5mm (1/8”) stereo mini-phone jack (Lime color label: ‘FRONT’): Connect Active multichannel speaker or AV Amplifier’s “Front”.

Rear output connector
3.5mm(1/8”) stereo mini-phone jack (Black color label: ‘REAR’): Connect Active multichannel speaker or  AV Amplifier’s Rear. Connectiowheabove 4-channel system is needed.

Center/Woofer output connector
3.5mm(1/8”) stereo mini-phone jack (Orange color label: ‘C/SW’): Connect Active multichannel speaker or AV Amplifier’s Center/Woofer. Connectiowheabove 5.1 channel system is needed.

Side output connector
3.5mm(1/8”) stereo mini-phone jack (Gray color label: ‘SIDE’): Connect Active multichannel speaker or AV Amplifier’ Side. Connection to 7.1 channel system is needed.

X-Fi™ Forte Connections

X-Fi Forte Connections (above). Click image to enlarge.

Headphone Amplifier

The Auzen X-Fi™ Forte 7.1 Headphone Jack uses an independent Headphone Amplifier. It is not there to simply to provide an additional output. It is there to provide a listening experience limited only by the quality of your headphones.

You can see from this graph that when connecting the Headphone amplifier, the output is stable output in all frequency ranges. When connecting the headphone to the line output as do standard soundcards, however, the output is unstable due to the headphone impedance curve.

See also: Tech Notes tab.

Microphone Pre-Amplifier

Microphone signal level is very small, and thus weak in relation to external noise. Therefore, most professional microphones used a Balanced Connection system.

When in “BALANCE” mode, the Auzen X-Fi™ Forte 7.1 supports professional Balanced Microphones (configured using on-board jumper; see image). The MIC Pre-Amplifier has a very low E.I.N and over -60 dB CMRR (Common Mode Rejection Ratio).

• It is possible to connect a Balanced dynamic MIC or Powered Balanced condenser MIC. Most MIC cable will use 1/4” Phone jack, and thus will need a converter to be able to use these MICs. 
  ?
• When in “STEREO” Mode, it is possible to use Mono Multimedia Condenser microphone and Multimedia Stereo microphone. The Left and Right channel sound will be mixed when input.