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News: January 15-21, 1999
Creative
Liveware Update Creative has updated their SBLive site with a new liveware release. Its not 3D related as this time. What it is is sound fonts and lots of them. There are 500 E-mu SoundFont banks, Chinese orchestra SoundFonts and Sonic Implants which are SoundFont-compatible banks. While you're at it you can check out their new Live on Live RealAudio show. Interstate
82, A3D and EAX We already know about the planned 3D audio API support in Interstate 82 but its still nice to see it being talked about by the developers when they are listing the "wow" factors. Check out the post from I'82 's Zack Norman on the I'82 Initiative Board (courtesy of Blues News and I76.Com): In terms of audio - we now support A3d, Eax which gives us monstrous sound support for DVD. Zero Gravity Fighter Combat Will Feature DS3D Zero Gravity Fighter Combat will feature Hardware-accelerated 3-D sound support for Microsoft Windows and cards with compliant DirectSound3D drivers. It just went gold so it should be out shortly. Turtle
Beach Montego II Preview 3D Audio Immersion has posted a preview of Turtle Beach's Vortex 2 based Montego II. Labtec APX
4620 Review For many people, myself included, Labtec had come to mean entry level speakers for people who don't rank their audio right up at the top of the priority list. Well in September they set out to change that impression by launching two new speaker sets. I got the APX 4620s to review and while they are second from the top of their new performance line of speakers, boy do they perform! EAR Updates I grabbed a few updates from the Extreme Audio Reality site. In order of most to least recent they stated that: They will be upgrading the audio components
again, since A3D has released new drivers and DirectX 6.1 is scheduled to be released (and Direct X 6.1 has infact now been released) Thief and EAX Through the Looking Glass has information as to when and if Thief will support EAX. Here's some of the info they had. Got from AGN3D
More Press
Releases Two new press releases today, the first is from Intel stating that it is licensing Intel's 3D Realistic Sound Experience (3D RSX) software to RAD Game. And the second Aureal stated Myth II will support A3D. Midiland
Foranza Plus Review Thanks to A3D Central for the pointer to a review of these low priced speakers over at Cool Info Descent
Freespace Review Marland over at 3DAI has posted his review of Freespace. Head on over and check it out under "software" A Point
of Clarification Thanks to Julian from TZAR development team for pointing out an error in some comments I made back on the 17th (and have subsequently corrected) about EAX and DS3D. What I meant to say was that EAX support does not mean that a game will utilitize the 3d positional audio features of DS3D. As EAX is an extension to DS3D, all games that support EAX obviously must utilize DS3D. However, if and how sounds are positioned in 3D space remains a choice of the developer. Tuesday January 19, 99 Aureal
Press Releases Aureal has released 2 new press releases. One stating that Gremlin's upcoming games: Wild Metal Country and Rally Masters will incorporate Aureal's A3D 2.0 The second, is an announcement that accelerated PCI audio cards based on Vortex technology will now be included as standard components on the new Presario 5600i series desktops. Check them out below or visit our Press Release Page. New
Vortex1 Drivers New Vortex 1 (8820 and 8808) drivers are up. They
are version 4.06.1185. There are two ZIP files on the FTP site: ftp://ftp.a3d.com/pub/Public/Drivers/Vortex/w9x1185eng_updt.zip Sin 1.02 Patch Supporting EAX! Visited Ritualistic, and noticed a news bit on the site which indicated EAX will be coming to SiN this week! Here's the bit Just fired off an email to Mark Dochtermann and I'll be darned, he replied within the minute. Anyways, I asked if 3D Now was ever going to supported, and yuppers, it's coming with SiN 1.02 and should be ready this week! 1.02 also adds EAX support, so you SB Live owners will finally be able to hear the sounds like they were supposed to be here heard :) Monolith's 3Dsound Frenzy Boy are we going to be spoiled with 3dsound implementations this quarter! Monolith has plans to release A3D patches for both Shogo: MAD and Blood2: The Chosen. Creative also has both games on the Eax support list, but without any indication of dates. You can check the A3D list Here. Note: If you go to our soundwaves page and look under blood2 you will notice brad pendelton (Lith Tech team) stated: "Lithtech uses DirectSound. It simulates 3D with panning and volume. Once there is a significant number of 3D sound cards in distribution, we will support a true 3D sound solution." Update: what the older soundwave missed is the Lithtech engine will be using the Miles Sound System to implement 3D audio and that means that EAX and A3D 1.x support should be simultaneous. Check out the Mile's Sound System PR here. TerraTech Xlerate Review@ Fresh3D Check out the Xlerate review @ Fresh3D. Grabbed this from Aureal Central. The first thing one notices when opening up the package is the PCB is not your standard green, but rather brown/black. This is so not to clash with the gold parts. That's right, everything on this card is gold-plated. I told you they didn't leave their pro audio roots behind. This way, you can be sure you're not losing any quality (provided you have some gold-plated stereo cables as well). A
Gamer's Guide to Direct Sound 3D We have seen a lot of confusion in newsgroups about what
DS3D Deus Ex
Interview Altered
worlds have posted an interview with Chris Norden who is the Lead Programmer and
Assistant Director on Deus Ex. Here is a clip on the audio: Check out the entire interview. Sim City 3K
Review 3DFiles have posted a review of the DS3D with EAX supporting Sim City 3000. For details on the audio you can check out our interview with Sim City programmer Alex Zvenigorodsky Sunday January 17, 99 DirectX 6.1, etc. DirectX 6.1 is now availabe for download (4,954 KB) so in case you did not grab the 6.1 beta that was out a few weeks ago you can grab it now. The only change for audio is the inclusion of DirectMusic. While on the topic of DirectMusic, a fine interview with the Surreal programming team working on Drakan over at Flame Lands makes mention that Drakan will used Direct Music for the sound track. Thanks to Voodoo Extreme for the pointer to the interview. Bargain
Priced MX300s? We are not in the habit of posting retail links but this one seems too good not to pass on. A reader (thanks Brian) pointed out that CompUSA Online is offering the MX300 for $50.00! Seems too good to be true... Check it out here. Baldur's
Gate Review Thresh's Firing Squad has posted a review of Baldur's Gate and offer the following about sound. The sound in the game is also a mixed bag. BG supports Creative's Environmental Audio but not Aureal 3D which disappointed me because I own a Monster MX200. I did try swapping in a SB Live card but I didn't really notice the positional audio that much. It would seem that 3D audio doesn't play that big of a role when the game isn't first person. The sound effects in the game are one strongpoint; the ambient sounds of town chatter or animals in the wilderness contribute to the overall immersiveness of the game as does the music, which has a definite adventure theme. This comment drives something home that gamers are going to have to be very aware of. EAX support does not mean 3D positional audio support. The pre 1.0.0.8 version of Half Life is a perfect example of this (as it supported EAX on the Live but not 3D audio. 3D audio was only by A3D ) and I think that Baldur's Gate falls into the same category. To carry the EAX label a games needs to take advantage of the reverb API developed by Creative Labs. To support 3D audio a developer still needs to implement 3d positioning using Direct Sound 3D from Microsoft and/or A3D from Aureal. Dark
Vengance Review Alive has posted a review of Dark Vengance and you just have to know they are going to cover audio. Check it out. Coming
Soon...Thief EAX Patch Thanks to Voodoo Extreme for the pointer to Through The Looking Glass where they have news that the patch which will include EAX support and a number of other fixes is now in playtesting and, according to the Edios news letter, should be out this month. Carnivores 2 and Carnivores IceAge Thanks to Aureal A3D Central for the news (and 3DAI for the expansion) that the aforemention titles will support A3D 2.0 and DS3D with EAX. Heavy
Gear II Preview Thanks to AGN3D for the
pointer to a preview
of Heavy Gear II over at 3D Unlimited. Here
is a snip on the audio: I can add that the final release is slated to have both DS3D with EAX and A3D and is also supposed to be the first game to support Interactive Around Sound (IAS) out of the box. Another
Labtec APX 4620 Review AGNHardware has posted their review of these beauties. Stuff... While visiting the 3DNews Network I came across a link to a cool new site called The Gamers Mosh Pit where they are striving to develop the best collection of gaming related links on the net. For example, in their audio links I saw that Gamasutra has recently (December 18th) posted an article on Mixing and Surround Sound (note that the Gamasutra article is aimed at programmers not gamers). While I am on the stray, I will point out that Thresh's Firing Squad has has scored an exclusive review of the yet-unreleased Pentium III (Katmai) 500Mhz Processor from Intel Gamecenter's
SB Live vs. MX300 Thanks to Ken Feinstein for the pointer to Game Center's big SB Live vs. MX300 article. Some of the conclusions in this well done piece drive a point home for me. That is, unlike CPU's and video cards where a simple benchmark can give you frames per second, audio is very subjective and this will lead to many perspectives of the same result. MX300
Review @ Singularity Thanks again to DK for the pointer to this MX300 review at Singularity. PC Mag On
Sound Thanks to Lee from ALive for pointing out a fairly long set of audio articles over at PC Mag Online. I found some of their references to the 3D audio APIs a little mixed up, so keep that in mind as you read through it. MP3 Players Thanks to DK for letting us know that Frontline has posted an insider tip on Creative's upcoming MP3 player. For the whole deal head over to Frontline and check it out. While on the topic of MP3 players, for more on Diamond's RIO check out reviews at 3D Audio Immersion , Thresh's Firing Squad and AGN3D |
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