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Installation
and Software |
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Like Taking Candy From a Baby! |
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The
installation instructions included with the MAD
DOG Entertainer can't be called a manual because it's
really just a simple insert, but nevertheless, all
pertinent information is included. Installation of the card
is quite typical of any PCI device. Locate
an empty PCI slot on your motherboard and insert
the card there. After securing the card to
the case with a screw, close up the case and
power on the machine and install the drivers. We are using Windows XP
so a few seconds after the OS had
finished loading a little note popped up in the
system tray notifying us that XP had found a
new piece of hardware. Simply cancel out
of that screen and launch the included driver CD. A window will pop up with a
few options. Clicking on Setup will load
the drivers for the card. Once the
drivers are loaded the system requires a reboot.
Once the machine is rebooted the installation is
done.
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- Setup:
Installs the drivers for the sound card
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- Register:
Walkthrough of how to
register your product
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- Manuals:
Manuals in PDF format
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- DirectX:
Installs the
latest
version of DirectX onto your machine
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- Warranty:
Document
stating the warranty coverage of the
sound card
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With
the drivers installed, the
system tray contained a new icon. Clicking on it revealed the sound card's
configuration panels. You will notice that
there are seven different tabs for the various
output and input settings of the card.
Across the top of the screen, above the tabs are
five icons that are used to set the speaker
configuration. As you can see we have chosen 6
speakers which is equal to 5.1 surround sound.
Once the speaker configuration is set, the appropriate
controls are visible and adjustable on each tab.
Since we tested our speakers using an analog
signal, the tabs related to a digital signal
were grayed out and did not display any useful
information.
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Playback
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Record
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Speaker Configuration
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Device Info
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Playback tab allows you to set the volume level
of all the speakers you have connected to the
system. The Record tab allows you to set
the volume of your recording device, and more
importantly what input source you will be using
when recording. The Speaker Configuration
tab tests each speaker individually, which comes
in handy for a couple of different reasons.
One reason is to make sure each individual
speaker is working and secondly to hear the
volume of each speaker separately. This is
very useful for fine-tuning the overall
sound of the system. Finally, the Device
Information tab simply displays the driver
versions and some system information including
OS and DirectX versions. Overall, we found
the sound card's control panels to be
straightforward. The average user
should be able
to have their speakers set up properly in a
matter of minutes. Now that the
sound card is setup and ready to go, let's
get to some performance numbers for the MAD DOG
Entertainer DSP 7.1 sound card.
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