Alphacool Cape CORA 442 Convect Midi Black

Advantages: Sound quality, software, front panel connectors and comprehensive range of inputs/outputs
Disadvantages: Not the cheapest card available by a long shot

...with no hitches, the improvement in sound quality is immediately noticeable. Everything sounds clearer, sharper and more precise. The card supports many different decoding and audio effects including Dolby Digital EX, EAX for games (providing that the game has been written with suport for EAX), THX for movies, CMSS surround, all to enhance your listening pleasure! The EAX effects come into their own in games, you can hear footsteps in the right direction and bullets whizz past your head so realistically that you duck! The live drive offers a multitude of connections, aux phonos input, SPDIF, optical in/out, MIDI jack in/out, headphone and mic sockets with adjustable levels and not forgetting the SB1394 port, which is also known as Firewire or iLink, allowing you to attach devices such as hard drives and DV camcorders. There's also an infra red remote... Read review

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Advantages: cheap, glows
Disadvantages: packaging problems, can cause problems, dim glow

...-----| Reason for purchase |----- I had just bought two Maxtor Maxline III 250GB drives and needed some SATA cables to attach them to my computer. These were very reasonably priced, i think somewhere around £1 - 2 which was cheaper than a normal non UV reactive cable. No brainer to buy these over the others. -----| Length 45 cm |----- For my midi case (Thermaltake Tsunami Dream) these were more than long enough, as the hard drive bay is right next to the SATA ports on my motherboard (Abit KV8 MAX3). Even if your hard drives were near opposite ends of the case this length of cable would be satisfactory. If you have a server case of a particularly large midi case (my Thermaltake is one of the biggest so this is more for the server case people) you may want to buy the 60 cm or 100 cm versions of this product. -----| Glow |----- Ok... Read review

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Advantages: Microphone boost,choice of MIDI sound sets
Disadvantages: No sound in DOS

...I bought my card about a year ago now, and have enjoyed every second of listening to it. The sound quality on it is fantastic, and for once, the MIDI is good too. Unlike earlier systems, the MIDI instruments are not built onto a chip, they are stored in a file on the HDD. There are 3 different sets you can use, the 2Mb, 4Mb or the 8Mb set. Obviously, there's better quality for each of them you use - the *mb one is actually quite good, which in my opionion, is a rarity for MIDI. But no doubt, my favourite feature of this card is the microphone boost... on most soundcards, this is sadly lacking, often so bad that most microphone just simply don't work. Thankfully, when it's switched on, this card picks up everything, in fact, it clipped when someone downstairs closed a door. However, there are problems with earlier DOS games, due... Read review

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