HT Omega Claro Sound Card Review

As per the other sound cards we've reviewed recently, the HT Omega Claro has at its heart C-Media's latest 'Oxygen HD' CMI8788 audio processor, giving it the same basic feature set - That being a more powerful DSP than its predecessors, with support for 24-bit, 192kHz playback and ASIO for the professional musicians out there , together with real-time Dolby Digital and DTS encoding as well as other audio upmixing abilities such as DTS Neo:PC and Dolby ProLogic IIx. Eight-channel audio output and other features such as Dolby Headphones and Virtual Speaker are also the order of the day, to give the part an unrivalled feature set.

Much like Auzentech's X-Meridian, HT Omega have opted for a custom PCB layout for the Claro, although it is still closer in the component department to the b-Enspirer in some senses, as we'll see later. The board does however squeeze in more capacitors than Bluegears offering, using solid state capacitors to boot, which could potentially help to improve both audio quality and the longevity of the board. Again, we'll look into just how it fares later on.