Digital Audio Devices

29 August 2007 - Creative invited media in Singapore to their Zen launch this morning over at Raffles City. Click on this article and we'll let pictures of the player do all the talking.

1 August 2007 - As of late, we have been taking quite a few looks on the Asus Xonar D2 soundcard, and it’s time that we brought out its worthy competitors. We did a sound test on some of the cards a week back and met with some criticism, and in this review we will be doing RMAA tests as well as provide some VR opinions on the construction and sound quality of the cards.

13 July 2007 - SteelSeries announced the SteelSeries Siberia Neckband Headset, the first circumaural neckband headset created for professional gaming. The new professional gaming headset is optimized for use with personal computers while offering "street-style" functionality for use with MP3-players and other digital devices.The original Siberia Full-Size Headset was released in late 2004 and instantly became a smash-hit among leading professional gamers. The product was the first professional gaming headset to fully cover the users' ears, adding new levels of comfort to audio products for gamers. The new SteelSeries Siberia Neckband Headset will be released in Q3 2007, pricing details to be announced.

2 July 2007 - We took a look at the Creative Zen Stone just before we set off for Computex in June. During this period, Creative added an one-inch LCD to the product and viola, we've got the Zen Stone Plus! At the same time, Creative also launched the Travelsound Stone speakers to compliment the stone...

26 June 2007 - Creative will not increase the current suggested retail prices of its personal digital entertainment products sold in Singapore with the impending increase in Goods and Service Tax (GST) that will take effect from 1 July 2007. This initiative will help provide an additional cushion to lessen the impact of the GST increase to consumers as Creative will absorb the 2% GST increase. As announced in the Singapore Budget 2007 on 15 February 2007, the GST in Singapore will be increased from 5% to 7% with effect from 1 July 2007.

21 June 2007 - Creative today introduced an exciting new choice in MP3 players to complement the recent introduction of the Creative ZEN™ Stone MP3 player. The new Creative ZEN Stone Plus is a featherweight 2GB MP3 player with a rich selection of features, including FM radio, a clock and stopwatch, voice recording and more for the great low price of only S$99.00.

14 June 2007 - We managed to get some Creative Xmod Wireless goodness before we flew off to Computex, and now it's time for us to tear it apart and take a look at its sexy innards...

5 June 2007 - ASUS has unveiled their Xonar D2 series at CeBIT previously and now for the first time, they are going to have a live demo of their Xonar D2 sound card at Computex. Check out what ASUS has to say about their solution vs the Creative X-Fi Elite Pro.

25 August 2007 - VR-Zone managed to get an exclusive sneak peak at Creative's latest 2.0 speakers, the Gigaworks T40! Check out this article for more pictures.

17 July 2007 - The guys at VR-Zone spent 10 hours last Saturday pitting the Asus Xonar against a series of other sound cards! Do read up more on our tests and conclusion right here!

12 July 2007 - VR-Zone brings you on a 2nd joyride with the Asus Xonar D2!

29 June 2007 - For those who are eagerly awaiting for Auzen X-FI Prelude 7.1 sound card, the mass production is going to kick off by second week of July so the cards should make their way into the retail channels by end July. Using the Creative X-FI CA20K audio processor, the Prelude 7.1 enjoy features like EAX 5.0, CMSS-3D, Crystalizer, 64MB X-RAM etc. Other features such as Dolby Digital Live, DTS Interactive, DTS NeoPC will be available later through drivers updates in Q4 as well as the expandability with HDMI 1.3 board. Auzen X-FI Prelude 7.1 sound card will be retailing at US$199.99 and we will be looking forward to compare it against the ASUS Xonar D2.

26 June 2007 - It's fine time that someone took a first look at the Asus Xonar D2 Soundcard, and of course it's none other than the guys at VR-Zone!

18 June 2007 - VR-Zone has a good opportunity to talk to a bunch of X-Fi guys over at Creative Technology recently and we managed to find out a little more about their direction and upcoming plans. We learned that Creative will continue to focus on their X-Fi technology and is in fact very open to licensing of their technology. There is a shift from sales of complete solutions to chipset solutions. One fine example is the licensing of their X-Fi technology and sale of the X-Fi sound chips to Auzentech where they are going to release the Prelude 7.1 into the market soon. It is interesting to know that Creative might attempt to take on the audiophile market by making audiophile standard sound cards by themselves or perhaps through 3rd party makers. Lastly, we managed to find out a little more about the X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCI Express card that surfaced in Akibahara Japan recently. Creative revealed that the sound chip has a PCI to PCIe bridge internally but the downside is that the latency is high so they plan to have the native PCI Express X-Fi chips coming by end of 2007.

9 June 2007 - ASUS held a special press conference during Computex to demonstrate its new range of sound cards to complement its "Sensory Euphoria" concept of all encompassing Audio Visual experience. Sean Lai, the product manager in charge of Xonar and XG Station gave the press a peek of what's coming from ASUS. The Xonar D2 retails at US$199.

30 May 2007 - Creative has been constantly rolling out new portable players for the past two years, and today, we will be taking a look at their latest and also their smallest player, the Zen Stone.