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When Taiwan-based Skywell technology, who are best know to gamers for their "Magic" series of Video and Audio boards, asked us to take a look at their latest product, the Magic Theater Pro, a 5.1 Surround Sound kit for the PC, we were intrigued…

With DVD video playback on the PC becoming more commonplace, Skywell obviously saw the need for a capable Dolby surround compliant audio solution that could easily be connected to your PC. One that didn't cost an arm and a leg either. The Magic Theater Pro kit, which has an estimated retail price of US $180 consists of a 5.1 speaker setup, a Dolby surround compliant audio board, the Magic Sound Live! (which is also available separately) and the necessary cables for hooking up the speakers to your computer.

First off we're going to have a look at the sound card. The Magic Sound Live! is based on a sound chip from ForteMedia, Inc., a silicon valley company that designs, manufactures and markets multimedia communication solutions and has partnered with the likes of Yamaha and Q-Sound Labs.

Let's take a look at some of the features embedded in this little board, which is of course of the PCI type. First off it has a 128 voice wavetable for those lovely MIDI tunes that we thankfully don't hear much of these days, as per usual the MIDI instruments are stored on the host system and not on the audio board which makes for some pretty big sound banks being possible.

Furthermore, the board lists a low SNR at over 96dB on its spec sheet, which means it's capable of delivering pretty sweet music through one of it's many Ins and Outs. Talking Ins and Outs, there are Audio-In for CD-ROM/DVD-Rom drives and Video-In connectors on the actual board and Microphone-In, Line-In, Line-Out (stereo) and a Mini-Din connector for multi channel cables on the back plate as well as a Joystick / MIDI Port. The Mini-Din outputs signals for Front Left / Right, Rear Left / Right, Center speakers (5) and for a Subwoofer (1). Hence it has Dolby Digital 5.1 output.