Bluegears made some waves in 2005 by introducing the first standalone Dolby Digital 5.1 encoding soundcard in North America, the X-Mystique. Previously the only products that could do this were the nForce 2 and some other motherboard integrated products. Of those products, only the nForce 2 could do DD 5.1 very well at all, as the other options were host based and relied on software to enable that functionality. The X-Mystique was actually designed and built by HDA of Korea, but Bluegears was the distributor for North America and they were able to brand the card as their own. The X-Mystique was a fairly successful card, and the ability to encode DD 5.1 made it an instant favorite of the HTPC crowd.



Link: Penstar sys