The AMD Live! Experience Arcata CA

An Intriguing Single-Box Media Center And Home Theater Option

In the world of Windows Media Center systems there are a number of ways to distribute the media experience throughout the home. We have seen installations where "headless" Media Centers mounted in central racks feed Extenders like the Xbox throughout a home or where the Media Centers themselves are distributed throughout the home... or a combination of both. In these cases, for a surround sound experience, we always have added receivers or local amplifiers to provide the audio experience.

Now, Intel rival AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) has introduced its Live! Home Cinema Platform (also known by its code name Maui), offering the newest generation of Home Theater PC based on Microsoft's Windows Media Center. My engineer at cyberManor, Rick Kalm, recently reviewed the new product and provided his input for this column.

UNIQUE ATTRIBUTES
AMD Live! is unique in several areas, including the fact that it can be outfitted with a highquality

The new AMD Live! Home Cinema Platform is aimed at those locations in a home that need a single box capable of Blu-ray, HDTV, and up to 7.1 surround sound.

internal five-channel-by-100-watt audio amplifier or a seven-channel studioquality line-out pre-amplifier. This makes it ideal for those areas, like a family room or master bedroom, where you want Media Center capabilities to watch movies and TV, listen to music, or look at photo slideshows but don’t want the added expense or configuration of a traditional audio receiver. With a Blu-ray drive and CableCard support, it could be the only piece of hardware that your client would need for a Media Center experience in that room.

Audio cards for AMD Live! are based on the Intersil D2 Audio DAE-3 engine and deliver a great sound experience. The sound is enhanced through the use of D2Audio’s SoundSuite audio processing technology that extends bass response, expands audio sound stages for a larger theater feel and provides vocal enhancement to help ensure that soft voice passages are not lost in the more dynamic audio content.

A recent audio firmware upgrade to our evaluation unit provided a 6dB jump in amp output. This upgrade showed how easy it is to change the audio profile and add things like bass management, speaker virtualization, speaker equalization, etc., with just a simple firmware update. The D2 Audio system also intelligently manages the power output of the system, helping to ensure that all critical components always have power and never allowing the power supply to overload. One change that we would like to see is a larger terminal strip on the back of the amplifier card. It was okay with the recommended 16-gauge wire, but it could pose a problem inserting a bundle of 12- or 14-gauge wires into it that are in use in a lot of surround sound systems.

HD AND 3D CAPABILITY

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