Names can deceive. The moniker we’re stuck with at birth might be at odds with who we are, or who we want to be. Does “Marion Morrison” sound like a two-fisted rough-n-tumble cowpoke to you? The name “Noah Kaminsky” doesn’t exactly conjure glitzy images of sequinned showbiz excitement. And if you want to be America’s girl-next-door sweetheart and hair model for millions, it might be difficult with an unwieldy name like “Jennifer Anastassakis.” Luckily for those people, they were sentient beings endowed with free will, and so were able to change their names to better suit their ambitions: John Wayne, Neil Diamond, and Jennifer Aniston.

Alas, the AuzenTech HDA X-Plosion is merely a 7.1 sound card, and hence is unable to do anything about the lousy nom de merde its parents forced upon it. First there’s “AuzenTech”, which is awkward enough, but then that’s followed up by the laughably cornball “X-Plosion”. Yeesh. Did they choose that name on a dare? Do they want this product to fail?

It’s a real shame, too, because this card’s surroundy-soundy features are as right-on as its name is way-off. Thanks to embedded (and fully certified) Dolby Digital and DTS technology, the AuzenTech X-Plosion can send a 5.1 digital signal to your home theatre system for cinema-quality sonics, or a 7.1 signal to your PC speakers for a 360-degree gaming audioscape. What’s that you say? You don’t have a source for multi-channel sound? Well, you do now. The AuzenTech X-Plosion can upconvert those measly stereo signals into mighty 5.1 or 7.1 sonic titans.

And oh, the quality! Grown men are reduced to whimpering infants in the presence of the sheer power and grace of the X-Plosion’s sound. Upgradeable IC amps, gold connections, an included TOSLINK cable, and the world’s first DTS Connect-certified PCI audio board: the makers of the AuzenTech X-Plosion didn’t overlook a single detail.

Except, of course, that awful name. But nobody says you have to keep calling it that once you get it behind closed doors. We call ours The Mind-Blowing Dr. Sonic, Audiodelic Master of Noise.

Hey, it’s not any worse than “AuzenTech X-Plosion.”

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