Hercules Gamesurround Fortissmo II

Rating:
Summary: Great Soundcard
Review: Can't beat it for the price. Excellent software bundle, too.

Rating:
Summary: The optical in/out is great plus 4.1 gaming too!
Review: I purchased the Yamaha TSS-1 which is a 5.1 speaker system with dolby digital and DTS decoding built in. My sound card did not have either a optical out or coaxial digital out to connect it to the speakers. The sound blaster live 5.1 did not help either as the DTS passthrough was not working with the TSS-1....After installing it I found out its a perfect marriage between the Yamaha TSS-1 and the Gamesurround card. You can configure it to direct power DVD 3.0(provided with card) dolby digital out to the optical out. As a added bonus you can connect 4.1 analog speakers for gaming. There is no point spending $99 for a sound card with a DD decoder if your speakers have a built in decoder after all. EAX is not as good as the SB live! but its a good compromise between sound quality and features, another fact is that its not easy to find a sound card with optical in/out for below $75 these days.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding value!
Review: Purchased this card after buying (and returning) the Phillips Acoustic Edge card for about half the price. Never could get the Phillips card to work in my Dell machine. The Fortissmo II card installed with some minor problems (of my own doing). Downloaded the latest drivers from Hercules-performs flawlessly. Attached my old 2.1 speakers to the rear channel and my new Monsoon 2.1 setup to the front - Sounds awesome. Works well with my games (Homeworld never sounded better!) as well as my CD's and MP3's.
For it's sound quality and features I feel it's a great value.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding value!
Review: Purchased this card after buying (and returning) the Phillips Acoustic Edge card for about half the price. Never could get the Phillips card to work in my Dell machine. The Fortissmo II card installed with some minor problems (of my own doing). Downloaded the latest drivers from Hercules-performs flawlessly. Attached my old 2.1 speakers to the rear channel and my new Monsoon 2.1 setup to the front - Sounds awesome. Works well with my games (Homeworld never sounded better!) as well as my CD's and MP3's.
For it's sound quality and features I feel it's a great value.

Rating:
Summary: DO NOT BUY THIS!
Review: This card is (...)! I bought it for home theater use, because it has optical output and does dolby digital 5.1. My biggest problem is with the DD5.1 audio. The card can either do stereo our dolby digital(w/ PowerDVD) but not both. You have to manually switch between the two in the sound card properties!

I had a very difficult time getting dolby digital working at all with my system. Now that I've gotten it to this point I can hear DD5.1 encoded DVDs in all their sonic glory...for about an hour straight. At that point the sound CUTS OUT! It will return if I back up a couple of chapters on the DVD and go back forward to the start of whatever chapter I want to start from. I can't fast-forward/rewind within a chapter--that's a sure way to cut the sound off.

Stereo sound/Dolby Surround work fine over the optical connection, but that's not nearly as good as DD5.1 when it works.

As far as gaming goes, I have not done much with it, but I can recommend that if you don't want your PC to lock up, turn off the 3D-sound features.