Among audio devices we will study today AUDIOTRAK MAYA U5 external sound card. It is oriented on high quality reproduction of 5.1 channel sound ( card supports also other modes : 4.1, 4.0, 2.1 and 2.0 ) and on transmitting of protected Blu-ray or HD-DVD signals to other devices. It has no professional line inputs and MIDI inputs and outputs, so it cannot be used in professional studio sound recording; it has microphone input, but it is more suited for voice chatting, than for studio-level sound recording. Audio card supports only 48 kHz sampling rate ( USB 2.0 bus does not allow higher sampling rates with such amount of channels, but for sound playback it is enough ) and 24 bits precision. It has optical digital S/PDIF input and output. AUDIOTRAK MAYA U5 has built-in high quality controller VIA Envy USB 2.0 FS and digital to analogue converter ( DAC ) with 110 dB signal to noise ration ( this is good characteristic, if all other hardware components of card support sound processing and transmittance of such high clearness ). Package contains : AUDIOTRAK MAYA U5 sound card itself, USB cable, user’s guide and CD-ROM disk with drivers and software for Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8 and Mac OS X. All in all it is good card for optimal price for multichannel sound playback for films, games, virtual reality applications and multi-channel music. Its external placement also allows to reduce electromagnetic interference ( EMI ) on card’s components, which is always present in computer system case.
