The Soundblaster Card lets you plug in multiple speakers for those special DVD / Quake / Tactical- Ops moments with surround sound.
Great, but what about iMacs, Cubes and the Books?
Wouldn't it be possible to create (or does there already exist) some sort of simple, consumer- level audio out solution that plugs into USB/ FireWire and provides 4 or 5 outputs for speakers and a subwoofer?
Would it be too heavy a hit for the CPU, without any dedicated DSP processors?
Or, alternatively, could you, in theory, fit a SoundBlaster-Type-of-DSP into an external fitting and feed it through FireWire?
The size of the external box would most likely be smaller than the space taken by a full expansion card slot, so the point about smaller machines still holds - you shouldn't need a tower mac to do this - surround sound fits in perfectly with the Digital Hub stuff: DVDs, Games and Music.
An external solution would be nice for those 'consumer- level' users who want it.
Can it be done? Does it already exist?
Judge_Fire
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