If you aren't already feeling sufficiently surrounded by 5.1 sound, the new Terratec Aureon 7.1 PCI might be the soundcard for you.

Adding left and right side channels to the centre, two front, two rear and sub-woofer 5.1 layout, the Aureon brings the total living room speaker count up to eight.

Audio is encoded on the fly into a Dolby Digital Live bitstream, which is then sent via a single optical cable to a suitable Dolby Digital capable amplifier and set of speakers.

Of course, you don't have to install all eight speakers if you don't want to - the card works perfectly well in 5.1 or even two-channel stereo.

Six 3mm analogue jack sockets on the back panel conform to the Microsoft PC99 colour code standard.

At the top of Terratec's trademark gold plated back panel, is the mono microphone input, coded pink, followed by a blue socket for the line inputs, a green socket for the front loudspeakers or headphones, a black socket for the two side speakers, an amber socket for the centre and subwoofer and a yellow socket for the rear speakers.

Below the jack sockets sit the S/PDIF format optical input and output Toslink sockets. A second back panel bracket carries a 15-pin connector for joystick/midi use.

Two further four-pin sockets on the edge of the card provide CD and auxiliary line inputs.

The Aureon 7.1 is an extended full-duplex card for simultaneous recording and playback and Terratec provide a WDM driver and audio control panel software for Microsoft Windows XP and 2000.

Those looking for ultra-high quality audio should check out our review of Creative's X-Fi Elite Pro, but this offering from Terratec is a good value and well-specified 7.1 soundcard