| To: HedgeCola who wrote (948) | 3/19/1999 6:27:00 PM | | From: chris431 | | | |
Game Developer Conference Report...
David Gasior has made a HUGE post to A3D Central regarding what he saw at GDC. This is a very, very good read, so go check it out.
Above is from 3dai.com
David Gasior is from Aureal Developer Relations.
A direct link to the article is 3dfiles.com
Full Post Below
Game Developers Conference Report
By David Gasior
For those of you who don't know, this week marked the 13th Annual Game
Developers Conference. Basically one of these big shows like Comdex, but
geared toward the game developer. Of course, Aureal had a booth at the
show, as well as all the major audio players. Anyway, I thought I would
give my own little recap, highlighting what I took away from this show,
from an insider's point of view. Please bear in mind that I write this at
12:40 in the morning after leaving the Microsoft party, so my grammar and
spelling may not be anywhere near accurate (or English even)!
AUREAL
We kicked ass!!! Just kidding. :)
We had a nice booth - mid sized. Three game pods were up and showing off
Unreal Tournament (with A3D 2.0 support), Slave Zero (with A3D 1.x),
Heretic II Enhancement Pack (A3D 2.0), Sin: Wages of Sin (A3D 2.0), and
the wavetracing demo (which surprisingly was one of the biggest draws for
developers). We also had Flatland in our booth showing off A3D 2.0 in
their 3DML engine. We also demoed A3D Pro, our Digidesign Pro Tools plug
in for the Mac. And of course, the big thing was the A3D 2.0 SDK.
We had lots of traffic, got the chance to meet a lot of the guys from the
web sites (although I was disappointed that Kenn and Thresh from Firing
Squad didn't make their way by - or at least I didn't see them), and met
with more developers than I will ever remember to email when I get back to
the office. I am so bad with names; I hope they will forgive me when I
totally forget who they were! People were extremely friendly and seemed
very impressed. Like I said, everyone loved the wavetracing demo. Unreal
Tournament was kinda cool too. :) On top of that, we probably
gave out about 1000 SDKs for A3D 2.0. I think we're going to see some
really cool A3D 2.0 titles. Gosh, there are so many I wish I could just
spill the beans on, but arggghh ... soon, grasshopper, soon ...
One of the highlights that sticks out for me was having Mark Rein (one of
the creators of Unreal, from Epic Games) sitting in our pod playing Unreal
Tournament. He really was doing a great job of showing off UT for us.
The game looks great, and our initial A3D 2.0 support sounded great as
well. But just watching Mark sitting there playing was simply fantastic.
The other highlight was having Jake Simpson (talented programmer for
Heretic II) playing Heretic II in our pod. He was spawning monsters and
using the sword-like weapon to just start slicing through them. He was
flipping and spinning Corvus all around; it was like watching one of those
great martial arts movies. Not that Jackie Chan stuff, but real serious
martial arts. It was great.
We held a sponsored session on A3D 2.0. We had let one of our software
partners borrow a set of speakers that we were going to use for our first
session (we had two scheduled) so we had to borrow some ourselves for the
first session, but when we plugged the speakers into our session demo
system, it fried the hard drive! So, unfortunately, we had to cancel that
session. David Sparks and two other employees of Creative Labs came to
our sponsored session, but didn't ask any questions or stick around
afterwards.
CREATIVE LABS
I could write pages and pages about Creative Labs, but I'll just pick the
more interesting things.
1) EAX Session: I attended the EAX session (hosted by Creative and
presented by David Sparks) with our Developer Support Manager. After
getting past the few jokes the other attendees made about us being there,
the session got under way. It was way too long and David unfortunately
seemed out of his element. Apparently, Jean-Marc Jot, the Chief 3D Audio
Scientist, was supposed to give the talk but something happened and David
gave it instead. Not that he was bad - just that he wasn't quite sure of
some things. There was a lot of information provided, but it was more a
high level overview. What I found the most interesting were:
- EAX 2.0 kind of went away since everything in it is
in I3DL2, so the EAX 2.0 drivers Creative will release
in April will be I3DL2-compatible, although they seemed
a little unsure about this. EAX 3.0 will be the next
step, with a full SDK to be released at Creativity in
May 1999. Creativity is a Creative-sponsored event that
is invitation-only, so I'll be waiting for mine. :)
- David was very good about *not* bashing the geometrical
model that Aureal is using; he simply said that Creative
did not think it was the best way to do it. Fair enough.
He pointed out why Creative feels their statistical model
is better. However (and this is a BIG however), in order
to do occlusions and obstructions, the programmer will
need to use room geometry. Creative will expose "small
knobs" for the developer to create the occlusion effect
they want, but while EAX can create the effect, it will
still be up to the developer to program in an occlusion
engine! Currently, EAX has no mechanism for doing this
automatically like A3D 2.0's wavetracing engine can. The
burden falls on the developer to track the sources and
the listener and determine if there is an object between
them that will occlude or obstruct sound, then use tweak
values to create the effect. Presumably, this must be done
for each frame! So much for geometry being overkill! To
me, this completely validates our model and engine.
- One of the developers asked about using multiple reverbs
at the same time. Apparently (according to Dave), doing more
than one reverb on the 10k1 is currently too much for the
chip to handle. I found this shocking considering how they
love to boast about MIPS and being programmable.
- In discussing how EAX works, David (and Jean-Marc, who was
there) re-iterated that you do need to open DS3D buffers in
order to apply EAX effects to them, but you don't actually
need to position the sources. So, while a game boasts EAX,
and technically is using DS3D, it doesn't mean there will be
3D audio - just 3D buffers created. EAX cannot be applied to
2D buffers.
- One of the slides mentioned that EAX 3.0 will now have "no
need for presets". So, while the 26 EAX presets will remain,
they can be fully tweaked.
- EAX 3.0 will most likely be proprietary to Creative Labs; the
question was sort of skirted with a "we're not sure right now,
but we think so" kind of answer.
So that was the session. I found it very interesting, and while some of
the material on the slides were innacurate (at least in how it related to
us, in the case of the geometrical model), I am certianly glad I attended.
Also note that I and my colleague also did not ask any questions although
we did stick around, leading to number 2 ...
2) Meeting with Creative. I got the chance to talk to one of my
counterparts over at Creative, Liam. Like me, Liam has the title of
Evangelist, and we both have the same goal - convince people to use our
stuff. Simple enough. Liam was very nice, very friendly, commented on my
newsgroup postings, and invited us back to the Creative booth for a
demonstration. He also wanted to get a demonstration of our stuff, so we
arranged for it all to happen.
I had already been to the Creative booth earlier in the day and gotten a
cool reception from the staff (I guess the Aureal logo on my shirt wasn't
what they wanted to see). But when we went back, it was much nicer. In
addition to getting a demo of the occlusions, we also met with Bill,
another Creative Evangelist. (Apparently, they have more evangelists than
the Church of Latter Day Saints!!!) Anyway, the demo sounded very cool,
much like our wavetracing demo without the reflections. Although,
occlusions are occlusions; nothing too fancy there. Their new FPS2000
speakers looked cool, and they sounded nice, although it was very hard to
hear over the noise in the area, especially with their DVD stuff a few
feet from us. They had a lot in their large booth, but I think it was too
much - it was really impossible to hear the audio they were trying to
demo.
Anyway, David had touched on it briefly in the EAX session, but Liam and
Bill mentioned that Creative was totally revamping their HRTF usage in a
future driver update and that all four speakers would get HRTF filtering.
My colleague asked if they would be doing crosstalk cancellation as well,
but they didn't know the answer so they pulled over Jean-Marc. Then I got
real confused. :) We asked Jean-Marc (who is very French, by the
way, and his English seemed slightly broken) about the new 4 speaker setup
and he said that it was doing HRTF filtering on all four speakers, so we
asked about the crosstalk cancellation and he said no, they weren't. So
my colleague said something like "oh, so you'll be doing crosstalk
cancellation on the front, and HRTFs on all four" and Jean-Marc told us
no, HRTF filtering was only on the front speakers. Considering that
Creative doesn't do any HRTF filtering at all in 4 speaker mode right now,
I though the Evangelists may have been confused, or maybe Jean-Marc
misunderstood us. But then Jean-Marc gave a little smile, and basically
said "Why would you want to do HRTF on all four speakers? There is really
no need." So I was totally confused! I think Jean-Marc might have just
misunderstood us, but we let it go.
So, anyway, then we got a demo of the new S3 Savage 4 board they are
doing, and I have to say that their demo was much nicer than S3's demo.
The texture compression they were showing in Half-Life looked so great,
and the speed at which it was running was phenomenal. I personally prefer
quality over quantity so I wasn't paying any attention to frame rate, but
the game never hiccupped and looked awesome. Moving on, we went and
grabbed some beers (lots of drinking this week, let me tell ya) and took
Liam and Bill back to our booth to recruit them. Naw, just teasing. We
brought them over to give them the demo. Basically, we looked at Heretic
II, and chatted some more over the beers.
Liam had made a comment to me that he never goes to a developer and tells
them not to support A3D. He feels (like I do really) that if a game
developer wants to support A3D and EAX, then he should. Game developers
should be doing whatever it takes to sell their game, and if supporting as
many standards as possible does that, then by all means do it. I actually
believe Liam was telling the truth, and I think that's great because that
means that the end users benefit more. Bill and I also had a nice
discussion about supporting each other's technology - I brought up the
Dave Rossum interview where Dave mentioned that for us to support EAX, we
had to submit samples to Creative. I told him I found that extremely
hypocritcal considering Creative's emulation of A3D without providing us
with samples. Since Bill and I were talking informally, I won't go into
specifics of that conversation, but we also talked about a few other
points about each other's hardware/software that "irked" us, and I came
away understanding more from their side. I certainly hope they understood
more from my perspective as well. I think the biggest thing is that we
both want the same things: to provide good products, to further quality 3D
audio on the PC, and to make money.
Personally, I would like to see Creative and Aureal settle their
differences and play more nicely together, because I think together we can
continue to leapfrog each other pushing the audio technology far beyond
what it is now.
Now before it seems like I'm getting all chummy and mushy over Creative, I
will say that my initial reception at Creative was very cool - plenty of
stares. And I was also very disappointed that I left my business card
with someone in their booth to give to Chris Owens because I did want to
meet him and say hi as he and I have shared numerous newsgroup postings
and email discussions, and unfortunately, it just didn't happen. Chris,
you bastard! :) There were also some other stupid little squabbles
between the two camps, but whatever ... moving on ...
3) Perfect scenario. This was just the best situation I could have asked
for. I'm in our booth speaking with a reviewer from a larger
site/publication and I'm doing the spiel about A3D and Vortex and the like
and all the while, there are two Creative Labs guys sitting at our game
pod playing Heretic II. Now you have to understand they look just like
us. Our shirts are exactly the same except for ours have an Aureal logo -
theirs have the Creative one. But the logos aren't that big, so at first
glance, or from the side, you won't notice. So anyway, he and I are
talking and eventually we got to EAX vs A3D - why are we better? And he
brought up the Dave Rossum interview where Dave had said that while Aureal
may be doing things more realistically, they've found that their
perception model is preferred bu users. He said he wondered how Creative
could justify that line of thinking when most reviewers are giving the
nods to A3D 2.0 and the MX300. I told him I wasn't sure either, and
directed his attention over to the Heretic II game pod, and pointed out
the two Creative Labs employees in full Creative outfits sitting there
playing the game - huge smiles on their faces commenting on how cool it
was and how great it sounded. It was perfect. He laughed, and I hope he
makes comment on it because it was just the best.
Anyway, to wrap up Creative, I want to thank Liam and Bill for taking the
time to chat and demo for us. Hopefully, we'll see and talk to them
again, because while we still are competitors, its much nicer when
everyone is friendly in this community.
SENSAURA
Peter Clare kicked my ass for calling ignorant!!! :P
Actually, the folks at Sensaura were great. Peter (who did bring up my
comment about him, though jokingly) and Adam and Neela were all very
friendly and demoed their MultiDrive technology for us. After hearing it,
I've decided to go work for them now. Woo, I'm getting really punchy now
that its 1:30 in the morning!!! But seriously, their effect was very
nice. I can't say it was better or worse than ours, but it is certainly
better than any of our other competitors (who basically have sucked). I'd
love to do some A/B comparisons with our stuff. As I said in a previous
post, I hope their partnership with ESS doesn't doom them since ESS
continually churns out crap. Sensaura shared a small booth with ESS, and
while Canyon3D was all over the booth, I don't know if they had any for
demo or not. Didn't really talk to anyone from ESS, although I did meet
two of their team at the Microsoft party. (When you're trashed,
everyone's a friend!)
Again, I want to thank Peter, Adam, and Neela for their time as well.
They had the funniest t-shirts too.
VLSI
Not much to say about them other than they are either really really
stupid, or I just kept walking by at the wrong time. Seriously, every
time I walked by their little booth (which was about 20 feet behind ours),
they were demoing the game Forsaken. Hey, there's a great idea - show off
your new chipset, dubbed the first true 3D audio accelerator (I know, ESS
says the same thing about Canyon 3D - let em fight it out), with a game
that doesn't support 3D audio!!! I was with a friend (not in the gaming
or audio industries) who I went around with for an hour today just to show
him around and get free t-shirts (the real reason anyone goes to these
things) and sent him up to ask if it was a special version of Forsaken
(maybe they got 3D audio put in it for them) and they tolf him it was the
retail version that he could buy in the store. He listened to it and told
me it sounded crappy. He has the Xitel Storm Platinum card, so he knows
what A3D sounds like. I didn't bother listening myself because I think
its going to die a quick death soon anyway.
TRIDENT
Not there. No one cares. Don't buy a 4DWave chipset-based sound card.
Really.
CRYSTAL
Not there. Wish they were since I used to really like their chipsets, but
I think Cirrus is just killing them off.
YAMAHA
I think they had a suite for press and OEM only - no real display. So I
didn't check them out.
AND JUST SOME GAMES ...
Quake III - looked very cool
Unreal Tournament - looked very cool
Prince of Persia 3D - looked very cool
Drakan - looked cool (when it didn't lock up on ATI's systems)
Homeworld - my friend was just in awe!
And with that, its 2:20 in the morning. I hope you enjoyed a little look
at GDC, from the perspective of someone other than your average reviewer.
The future of PC audio continues to look great.
Now I'm going to go sleep until Monday! :)
------------------------------------------------------------
David A Gasior h: dgasior@home.com
Developer Relations, Aureal w: dgasior@a3d.com
------------------------------------------------------------
Please note that this post reflects my own opinions, and not
necessarily those of my employer. If they want to share any
thoughts, they can post their own messages! :) |
| | Aureal Semiconductor | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| To: Artslaw who wrote (947) | 3/19/1999 6:59:00 PM | | From: chris431 | | | |
Highlights & My Comments regarding Game Developers Conference Report by David Gasior
"On top of that, we probably gave out about 1000 SDKs for A3D 2.0. I think we're going to see some really cool A3D 2.0 titles. Gosh, there are so many I wish I could just spill the beans on, but arggghh ... soon, grasshopper, soon..."
"David Sparks and two other employees of Creative Labs came to our sponsored session, but didn't ask any questions or stick around afterwards."
-NOTE: Damn spies :) Typical CREAF of recent....use others ideas/technology and hype it with expensive ad campaigns. (RE: Spies....don't take the comment to seriously....viewing ones competitors' products, etc. is legitimate and done all the time....I have no problem with it, none the less I have a great dislike for CREAF.) But alas, David Gasior also visited the CREAF presentations. Probably didn't learn much since AURL really has nothing to learn from CREAF given CREAF's inferior EAX.
From the section regarding CREAF's presentation:
"- One of the developers asked about using multiple reverbs at the same time. Apparently (according to Dave), doing more than one reverb on the 10k1 is currently too much for the chip to handle. I found this shocking considering how they love to boast about MIPS and being programmable."
-Again, not surprising. Hype, hype, hype. I'm sure most here have read that CREAF announced EAX 3.0 when they don't even have EAX 2.0 released (and probably not even finished). Typical hype in the vein of Nintendo (announce your next system to be released in 1 year knowing damn well it won't be released for 2-3 years) and Microsoft (they've been promising their Directory Services for Networks for a few years now hoping it would slow the adoption of Novell.)
"EAX 3.0 will most likely be proprietary to Creative Labs; the question was sort of skirted with a "we're not sure right now, but we think so" kind of answer."
-All the better IMHO. Aureal is already winning the battle of API's and consumer support. Game developers realize they are developing for a specific audience (game players) and that audience is overwhelmingly pro-Aureal and A3D. As such, the number of Lives! sold and marketting blitz of CREAF does not really help them get their API adopted b/c it is a focussed group which EAX and A3D are for. A3D and EAX are not about a "battle of soundcards" in general but rather a battle of soundcards for gameplayers. AURL is already ahead of the game and given CREAFs continually slow production AURL will be even further ahead.
"....directed his attention over to the Heretic II game pod [an AURL setup], and pointed out the two Creative Labs employees in full Creative outfits sitting there playing the game - huge smiles on their faces commenting on how cool it was and how great it sounded...." |
| | Aureal Semiconductor | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| To: Robert Pekka who wrote (945) | 3/19/1999 7:11:00 PM | | From: chris431 | | | |
RE: ESS Canyon3D
In case you didn't read the entire article by Aureal's David Gasior, here is a paragraph discussing ESS's Canyon3D chip:
"SENSAURA
Peter Clare kicked my ass for calling ignorant!!! :P
Actually, the folks at Sensaura were great. Peter (who did bring up my
comment about him, though jokingly) and Adam and Neela were all very
friendly and demoed their MultiDrive technology for us. After hearing it,
I've decided to go work for them now. Woo, I'm getting really punchy now
that its 1:30 in the morning!!! But seriously, their effect was very
nice. I can't say it was better or worse than ours, but it is certainly
better than any of our other competitors (who basically have sucked). I'd
love to do some A/B comparisons with our stuff. As I said in a previous
post, I hope their partnership with ESS doesn't doom them since ESS
continually churns out crap. Sensaura shared a small booth with ESS, and
while Canyon3D was all over the booth, I don't know if they had any for
demo or not. Didn't really talk to anyone from ESS, although I did meet
two of their team at the Microsoft party. (When you're trashed,
everyone's a friend!)
Again, I want to thank Peter, Adam, and Neela for their time as well.
They had the funniest t-shirts too." |
| | Aureal Semiconductor | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| To: Robert Pekka who wrote (945) | 3/21/1999 9:52:00 PM | | From: chris431 | | | |
Xitel Storm Platinum review
9/10
agnhardware.com
Introduction
It finally looks like Diamond's MX300 is going to get some competition in
the Vortex 2 market in the form of the Storm Platinum from Xitel. Even
though Xitel does not have the name recognition of Creative or Diamond,
there is more to a good sound card then what can be summed up in only
a name.
As with Diamond's MX300, the Storm Platinum is based upon the tried and
tested reference design from Aureal. This decision to use a reference
design is sure to eliminate all of the tech support problems that a unique
design seems to create. Just look at the problems that Canopus has had
with their video cards and I think that you will understand what I am
talking about.
About the Vortex 2
Aureal's Vortex 2 has an impressive design that includes a massive 3.3 million transistors on
the chip. The massive amount of power that is hardwired into the Vortex 2 allows a single
chip to perform the amount of work that would have taken many DSPs just a short time ago.
Wave, midi, digital input and output, graphic EQ and more are all handled on the processor.
16bit audio has been upped to 18bit at 48Khz, bringing the quality of output up to a level that
true audiophiles would only dream about till now.
Supporters of 3D sound will be happy to hear that the Vortex 2 supports
up to 76 Directsound 3D streams in hardware. This may seem like overkill
for the most part, but it does give you bragging rights when you are
talking to your friends at an upcoming computer show. It also allows the
Vortex 2 to power multiple speaker gaming rigs with excellent sounding 3D
sound without batting a processor cycle.
For those of you who are still playing around with MIDI, you will be happy
to hear (pun intended) that the Vortex 2 has some pretty impressive MIDI
features. With the ability to play up to 320 voices at the same time, you
will be able to bring an orchestra to your PC. You will also be able to
tweak the output with 8 real-time effects including echo, reverb and
more.
What about A3D 2.0?
One of the biggest features that the Vortex 2 offers the gamer is the fact that it supports
Aureal's A3D 2.0 API as well as the older A3D. A3D 2.0 is a very impressive AP that can
handle positional sounds, doppler effects, wave tracing and more. Using special algorithms
that were originally developed for NASA, Aureal brings the next level of 3D audio to the
home PC. The biggest advance with A3D 2.0 is the inclusion of wave tracing to simulate
realistic environments. Using the wave tracing engine they are able to place you in a room
and then simulate how sounds would act when bouncing off of walls or other objects. If you
are walking on a metal floor your footsteps will echo throughout the hallway as they are
created off the floor and then they'll bounce off the walls.
A3D 2.0 also supports a feature called occlusion - the ability to give a
sound a blocked property. Occlusion will allow sound to be muffled and
blocked as it travels from room to room or it is blocked out by an object.
If a monster is standing in front of your screaming wife, her screams will
not sound as loud. Once the monster moves and allows her screams to
pass through to you, the volume will increase and you will hear her telling
you to do the dishes or die.
A3D 2.0 is as impressive as it is complicated and is truly a much better
API than Creative's EAX. On the other hand Creative is working on EAX 2
which will include occlusion as on of its features, allowing you to upgrade
your Live card to support those features. But at the same time EAX is an
open standard and the MX300 will support that API as well next year. The
facts can be confusing but at the same time they will set you free.
Card Specifications
Controller Chip
Aureal Vortex 2 - AU8830 Controller
CODEC
Quad Channel Output 18-bit AC'97 CODEC
Features
Hardware Accelerated A3D 2.0 and DirectSound 3D
96 DMA Hardware Accelerated Channels
Professional 320 Voice MIDI Synthesizer
Digital 10-Band Graphic Equalizer
Multiple Speaker/Headphone Support
Optical S/PDIF (TOSLINK) Output
Accelerated Joystick Port
SoundBlaster Pro Hardware Support
Inputs and Outputs
CD In (MPC)
Aux In (MPC)
Modem In (MPC)
Mic In (for electret and condenser mics)
2 Stereo Line Outputs For Up To 4 Speakers
Optical S/PDIF Output (TOSLINK)
MIDI/Joystick Port
Wavetable Header
Expansion Header
General MIDI Interface
MIDI MPU-401 UART Mode
16 Byte FIFO's For MIDI IN and MIDI OUT
Doubles as Joystick Port
Signal Specification
Output: 1Vrms Typical (AC'97 Specification)
Input: 1Vrms Typical (AC'97 Specification)
Frequency Response 20Hz - 20 kHz
THD+N: Less than 0.007%
SNR: Better than 95 dB
Hardware Acceleration Features
Full A3D 1.0 and A3D 2.0
DirectSound and DirectSound 3D
MIDI Synthesis Including DirectMusic
48 kHz Sample Rate Conversion
Digital Mixing
10-Band Graphic Equalizer
Joystick Port Commands
API's Supported
Aureal A3D 1.0
Aureal A3D 2.0
Microsoft DirectSound
Microsoft DirectSound 3D
Microsoft DirectMusic
Microsoft DirectInput
EAX (future driver revision)
About the Storm Platinum
The Storm Platinum is based upon the same design as Diamond's Monster Sound MX300.
This means that you are going to get all of the same features as the MX300 for a retail price
that is $20 cheaper. For those of you looking for a big bundle or any bundle at all, you are
going to be a little disappointed with the Storm Platinum. The only software that the card
comes with other than an A3D demo disk is drivers. This means you don't get the cool DVD
player with 3D sound support, one of the nicer features on the MX300.
One feature that the Storm Platinum includes that Diamond's MX300 did
not is an Optical S/PDIF-out port for hooking up your computer to a
digital receiver or mini-disk player. This should allow you to hook up a
Mini-disk player to your computer for some true digital recording. This
should also support output of true Digital Dolby AC-3 sound to your
receiver in the future for those of us using software DVD decoding.
The card also has 2 speaker output, microphone-in with gain, line in, as
well as an accelerated gameport for lag free gaming. The technology
behind this game port can actually speed up your response time when
playing a game with a joystick, gamepad or wheel that hooks up to the
card. Considering that a good accelerated game controller costs $60 or
more, the introduction of this technology to the soundcard makes it an
even better buy.
After seeing the S/PDIF connector on the outside of the card I have to
admit that I was surprised to see that there was no digital connector on
the card for hooking up your CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive. This digital
connector is one of the features on the Live! that allows you to stream
audio from an audio CD in true digital form, rather than analog. Although
this feature is not necessary for true gamers, it would have been nice to
have.
Force Feedback Headphones
Xitel sent me their Storm Platinum Gamer's pack that
included a set of force feedback headphones for a MSRP
of $99.99. When I first heard about force feedback
headphones I was not exactly sure what to expect. Force
feedback usually means that something pushes against
you, usually a joystick or wheel, making it hard for you to
move. The idea of force feedback headphones brings up
thoughts of a truly head moving experience. The controls
for the headphones are attached to the cord, allowing
you to turn down the volume and turn on the force
feedback.
In reality the force effects are nothing more then
vibrations from a vibrating puck that is in the headpiece
of each speaker. This vibration creates the effect that
the speakers are carrying some massive bass that is
capable of shattering walls. It is actually pretty impressive technology
and well worth the $20 extra expense for the Gamer's pack that includes
the headphones. I tested out the force effects with a few games
including South Park and of course, Quake 2. The chain gun rattled the
headphones to the point where you could realistically believe you were
being bombarded by the massive sound created by that type of ammo
discharge. In South Park a herd of turkeys came running at me to peck
my eyes out, leaving the feeling that the ground was truly shaking. My
biggest complaint about the force-feedback is the amount of battery
power that the effects use. I was able to only play with them for a day
before the batteries had drained and I was left with no more force
feedback. AAA batteries do not come cheap, so I suggest you buy some
stock in Energizer if these headphones ever take off.
I spent an afternoon playing around with the headphones and was left
with one of those silly grins that leave people wondering what is going on
in your little brain. Although the output is not going to blow away true
audiophiles, for a set of $20 headphones I do not think you could ever do
any better. In fact the quality of the audio was as good as a set of digital
Sony headphones that I paid $60 for. Throw in the digital force effects
and it is truly an experience that is worth the money.
Now you are probably going what is up with pushing headphones when
just above I was talking about the benefits of 4 speaker sound? The nice
thing about A3D 2.0 is it is able to provide 3D surround sound through
headphones or just 2 speakers. So while playing Half-Life with the
headphones I was able to get a surround sound experience that was
almost equal to having 4 independent speakers.
The Ratings
Welcome to our new method of rating, where rate the product in individual areas and explain
the reasons for the rating.
Sound Quality – 10 Stars
One of the most important features of a sound card is the output quality of its sound. Since
the Vortex 2 is a fully digital chip, the quality of the sound is excellent. There is no crackling
or other problems that some of the older sound cards have suffered from. The addition of the
10-band graphic equalizer has also added value to the card by allowing you to tweak the
audio within the sound card rather then on the processor. ‘
Features – 9 Stars
The Vortex 2 is the best audio processor on the market that is available
to the general gaming public for a price that we can afford. The addition
of features like 320 voices of MIDI and the hardware graphic equalizer
make it the perfect choice to replace your aging sound care. Xitel has
also gone one step beyond what was required by including the optical
digital output so that those of you with digital receivers and other
devices can make use of that feature. The force feedback headphones
are well worth their price, just make sure that you pick up some
rechargeable batteries for them.
Bundle – 0 Stars
Is an A3D demo disk a bundle? Hmmm did not think so....
Value – 9 Stars
With a single card price of only $79.95 you are essentially getting a MX300 for $20 less. The
only thing holding back the value of the card is the lack of a bundle. I do not think it would
have been that hard to bundle a shareware MP3 player or anything to add to the initial out of
box experience with the card. If I were you though I would suggest paying an extra $20 and
going for the force feedback headphones, they are well worth the money in my book.
Overall – 9 Stars
With the lack of bundle aside, I have to admit that the Xitel Storm Platinum is a great card
with some great features. With the lack of competition that Diamond has been getting in the
Vortex 2 market, it is nice to see that someone has finally came out with something that is
going to give Diamond a run for their money.
-Click here to leave your own comments or review
Other sound card reviews
Monster Sound MX300
Sound Blaster Live! Value
Montego A3D Xstream
|
| | Aureal Semiconductor | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last ReadRead Replies (1) |
|
| To: PHarris who wrote (953) | 3/23/1999 2:57:00 AM | | From: chris431 | | | |
Fitzgerald Communications
As most of you have read, Aureal has just become a client of this investor relations company. Here is a link to the company:
fitzgerald.com
Of the clients listed at fitzgerald.com, I have searched for the ticker symbols of those that are public.
Here are the results:
Cylink Corp. = CYLK
Corixa = CRXA
Memco Software Ltd. (not sure if correct b/c on Fitzgerald's site, the company is listed as Memco Software Inc.) = MEMCF
Mapics = MAPX
Manugistics Group = MANU
Newbridge Networks = NN
Segue Software = SEGU
Sapient = SAPE
Excel Switching = XLSW
Great Plains Software = GPSI
Here is a link to the quotes for these companies:
dbc.com
Chris |
| | Aureal Semiconductor | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| To: Steve Sucheck who wrote (939) | 3/23/1999 3:19:00 AM | | From: chris431 | | | |
Quantex increasing use of Vortex
I often browse OEM's websites and advertisements in magazine to see how aggressively they are pushing Aureal cards. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Compaq continues to increase it's use of Vortex based cards as does Dell. One company I have been looking at for quite some time in hopes they would start adding Vortex cards as an option is Quantex. My first computer was a Quantex (486DX2/66) many years ago before Quantex became a player. As it now stands, I believe Quantex is in the top 5-10 sellers of PCs.
A couple months ago I noticed that they did add the MX300 as the card for their high end "Multimedia Gaming" computer. Yet, they continued to use low end sound cards for the rest of their computers and did not offer the MX300 as an independent option. In their most recent PC Magazine ad, I noticed that they started using an Aureal Vortex 2 8830 based card as the default soundcard in more of their systems. Their website now adds Vortex based card option for most PC's through a "multimedia package" for $199 (also includes Voodoo card). While this is far from pushing Aureal products, it is better to have the option in most of their PC's than none. Furthermore, in their higher end "Power" systems, they are now using the Vortex 2 card as their default sound card....not as an option. This is very good news for Aureal and chalks up one more major OEM who is using Aureal's cards for their systems. I am now hoping that they will expand their use of Aureal cards to not only include the Vortex 2 based card, but also to replace the current default card on their lower end systems, Creative AudioPCI Wavetable 3D Sound, to Vortex 1 based cards as Compaq and Dell have.
Chris |
| | Aureal Semiconductor | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last ReadRead Replies (2) |
|
| To: Fred Mah who wrote (957) | 3/24/1999 12:48:00 AM | | From: chris431 | | | |
Nice post. I remember the press release regarding PB Europe but forgot about it. Very interesting mention of an "8810." We should look into that rumor a bit closer as it definitely sounds interesting.
Chris
P.S. The PB link retrieved "nil" via Netscape. |
| | Aureal Semiconductor | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last ReadRead Replies (1) |
|
| |
