News: April 19 - April 25, 1999

Sunday, April 25, 1999

Canyon3D Processor Aritcle - Frank @ 17:22 EST

Kerts page has written an article on the Canyon3d audio processor from ESS. A really great read, kert goes off to explain the sensuara algorithms and much more.

Sensaura's positional 3D algorithms rely upon a library of 1,111 HRTF (Head Related Transfer Function) pairs, a small subset of which will be implemented on 'Canyon3D'. The HRTF library is measured from a proprietary artificial head system. When sounds are emitted from a loudspeaker, they are perceived via the listener’s own HRTFs. This factor must be removed from the 3D audio synthesis chain.

Klh Soundbites Speaker System Review - Frank @ 15:43 EST

3Dhardware has a review of the klh sound bites speaker system

The SoundBites (satellites) are magnetically shielded, and feature a 93mm (3.625 inch) dynamic fibre woofer, an impedance of 8 Ohms, a sensitivity of 86dB at 1W/1m. With a frequency response of 150Hz-20KHz, they offer a pretty good crossover to the subwoofer, which overlaps them from 150 to 180Hz. (more on this later). The SoundBites can be used, on paper, with amplifiers ranging from 5-50W, and they sure did work (and put out some heavy sound) when I plugged them into my home stereo system (100W).

Off to Creative Labs - Mark @ 06:10 EST

Thats right. I am off to get the goods on the latest from Creative Labs including (I hope) first hand experience on some of their new software technology (Liveware 2.0, EAX 3.0??) and hardware technology.

Look for an quick summary as soon as I am back on Tuesday night and an indepth report soon after.

Saturday, April 24, 1999

Dawn of Darkness Demo - Mark @ 11:49 EST

A demo of the Quake 2 addon by Ward Six Entertainment has been released.

Dawn of Darkness will take you into a world of industrial fantasy that blends magic, swords, demonic forces, and flintlock weapons into something very unique and original. Building on the foundation of Quake 2's classic gameplay, Dawn of Darkness will weave a tale tied to the levels and told in narrated cutscenes and interaction.

What got my attention was this mention of audio - If you make sound, enemies will hear you realistically-- running is louder than walking, for example.

Homeworld Chat - Mark @ 11:34 EST

Thanks to Aureal A3D Central for the pointer to a Homeworld chat log over on Homeworld.org.

The participants on the chat included Janik Joire (Lunarboy), one of the audio programmers and Shane Alfreds (rupract), lead audio programmer. Unfortunately, we did not participate on the chat and NO ONE took advantage of having 2 audio guys on the chat. There was not one single audio related question! Come on people! :)

Warzone 2100 Patch - Mark @ 11:20 EST

Pumpkin Studios have released a patch (v1.01) for Warzone 2100 which includes a new audio system which I believe impliments 3D audio and also EAX. Here is the complete list of what the patch does:

• Support for warzone addon packs.
• New maps.
• Unit limit increased to 100 per side in Multiplayer.
• Maps can be played at 2 different technology levels.
• Players in a team share radar information and research.
• Can see visibility and units/structures for allies in teamplay in realtime.
• New technology update.
• Some suggestions from the forum.
• New audio system.
• Critical audio crash bug resolved (unit lost).

Fixes/Improvements.

• Revised skirmish code with improved AI.
• Key bind hack fixed.
• Mplayer fix.
• Interface change to allow more structures and unit designs.
• Single player fixes/tweaks.
• Partially built wall bug fixed.
• Multiplayer communication tweaks. [end of message]
• Flashing cursor added to text entry code.
• Transparent water in d3d.
• Construction lines working on TNT cards.
• Temporary speed up after video playback in faster modes fixed.

Friday, April 23, 1999

FPS 2000 Review - Mark @ 19:17 EST

The Sanctum has posted a review of Cambridge Soundworks new FPS2000 Speaker System

More on A3D 2 2030 Drivers - Mark @ 18:05 EST

After yesterday's post on the status of the Vortex 2 2030 drivers we received quite a few e-mails from people asking about EAX support. I checked with Aureal and EAX suport is not in 2030. The feature list for 2030 is done and they are going through final testing phases now. The next major rev after 2030 will be focusing on adding reverb features (EAX and a bunch of other reverb related goodies)

Windows 2000 Sound Card Fixes - Mark @ 08:24 EST

The Unofficial AudioPCI/PCI64 Support Page has a pointer to an article over at BetaNews that you will want to check out if you are using the beta of Windows 2000 and are experiencing problems using the PCI 64, PCI 128, or Ensoniq 1370 AudioPCI.

In case you missed it earlier, BetaNews also has a similar article addressing the Sound Blaster Live and another one addressing Vortex 2 based sound cards.

Terratec Xlerate Pro Review - Mark @ 08:01 EST

Extreme Hardware has posted an excellent review of the Terratec Xlerate Pro. The Xlerate Pro is Terratec's version of the Vortex 2. According to EH, the Terratec, as with most Vortex 2 sound cards, faired very well in 3D sound quality tests as well as performance (for the most part). Here's a quote from the review :

"Many readers are probably wondering right now, "Sure, it's got great 3D positional audio and good environmental effects as well, but how is it going to help or enhance my gaming?" believe it or not, a good implementation of 3D sound in any given game can greatly enhance gameplay. If it doesn't increase your skill, it will at least boost the realism or general feel of the game. For example in a first person shooter, knowing the approximate (or exact) location of you opponent by sound is extremely beneficial. I was reading over some of Thresh's comments on Quake II the other day, and it reiterated the value of good 3D sound. Here's what he had to say: "Fundamentally however, the only way to improve is to actively concentrate on what you do and what your opponent does.When you hear sounds, can you tell which part of the level he's in and where he might attack you from?"

Informal 3DAI Contest - Mark @ 01:39 EST

To quote the email I received:

Some guy at 3D Audio Immersion is having a contest. It's rather informal, but a nice way for anyone who needs an A3D card to go with their Live or hasn't gotten into 3D sound to get hooked up.

Thursday, April 22, 1999

Labtec LCS-2414 Review @ P3D - Frank @ 18:39 EST

P3D has posted a review of the Labtec LCS-2414 3-Piece Speaker System. They gave it a rating of 8.5/10

Installation is basically a snap—all of the cords are attached to the satellites, so you just have to follow the colour-coded plugs and you’ll get by, but I did find it somewhat agonising trying to sort through the mass of cable. Length-wise, the cable should be adequate with 9" between each satellite. Two of the three coloured plugs go into the sub, and the third goes to your sound card’s speaker output, and the included AC adapter goes into the sub as well. A pretty simple installation procedure.

The Week in Review - Mark @ 08:02 EST

Just incase you don't check out menu items on a regular basis I thought I would mention that yesterday, Mikael posted our latest Week in Review. This feature looks back on all that happened in the sound world from April 12-18 and offers a glimpse of what we have on the go in terms of upcoming features.

Vortex 2 2030 Drivers Expected Way Before June - Mark @ 07:54 EST

I woke up this morning to a couple of 2030 related messages. Most importantly, Aureal's Skip McIlvaine let us know that they are expecting the 2030 drivers to be released WAY BEFORE mid-June.

Second is a news group post that Mikael forwarded to me with more details from Aureal's David Gasior on all the fixes that ARE already done in the 2030 drivers (and a mention of 'delayed' that may have fueled the "released by mid-June at the latest" statement by the 3DSL guy for release of 2030). Here is the most informative part of the post (which was done by Randy Perry quoting an email he got from David Gasior):

Unfortunately, all I can tell you is that the drivers are delayed. They have been a long time in coming, and I don't now anyone who is happy with that at all; I'm certainly not. But our driver team for the Vortex 2 is working on making sure the issues are all ironed out before release. Unfortunately, there has not been a release of the drivers that we felt was bug-free enough to release on our web site. While I hate the fact that we don't have releasable drivers that fix the issues, I'd hate it even more to release drivers that do, but knowingly introduce other problems.

Whether you want to believe me or not, the bass problem has been fixed and the 2030 drivers will fix it for MX300, Xitel Storm Platinum, and Videologic SonicVortex 2 users. We believe we have addressed the screeching issue, though its hard to tell as it rarely ever happens for us, so testing and reproduction is difficult. Crackling during MIDI playback seems to be fixed. CPU usage has been reduced for gameplay (a demo I use for demonstrating Heretic II's audio capabilities used to yield 29.9 fps on my machine with the 2015 drivers - it now yields 35.2 fps with the latest beta driver I tested). There's also been numerous other features added, which I can hopefully go into more a little bit later.

E.A.R. Audio Updates - Mark @ 01:26 EST

Extreme Audio Reality has posted a bit of info on two titles they will be working on. One is Spec Ops 2 which will be going Alpha at the end of April and the other is Battlezone 2 which goes Alpha at the end of this week (or beginning of next).

Battlezone 2 is one title I am looking forward to with the original being one of my favourite games. The EAR gang has indicated that they plan on incorporating some of the wish list they have generated from the original Battlezone, and they welcome any ideas you might have on making the 3D audio for Battlezone 2 "kick ass"!

Low Cost 3D Sound Boards - Mark @ 01:11 EST

Thanks to the Whiteknight for pointing out some low cost Vortex 1 and 2 boards over at Multiwave. I don't like giving retail links on 3DSS but this price is too low to not pass on ($35 for a 2 speaker Vortex 2 board and $55 for a four speaker version). I think that these are the OEM boards that Aureal is now selling to system integrators and I did not think that they were supposed to show up in the retail market for resale. Anyway, you can go check em out. They also have an OEM Live! Value for $49.00. Keep in mind that for those low price you are not getting more than the card and drivers (i.e. little or no support compared to retail versions of the products).

Wednesday, April 21, 1999

Vortex 2 4.06.2030 Reference Drivers By Mid June? - Frank @ 23:32 EST

Roy Taylor from 3D Sales Limited (European distributor for Aureal) mentioned on their MessageBoard that the vortex 2 Windows 9x 4.06.2030 reference drivers will be released by mid June at the latest. Grabbed this from our pal Kirben over at Aureal A3D Central

Future Games Network - Mark @ 15:05 EST

If you have not aleady done so you should take a look at the flagship site for the Future Games Network which we are now a member of. There's some great stuff on our FGN affilates.

Aureal Announces Record Date for Rights Offering - Mark @ 13:17 EST

Yesterday Aureal Semiconductor announced the record date for its previously announced $20 million subscription rights offering as April 22, 1999. Stockholders will receive, at no cost, a right to buy one share of common stock at a price of $0.60 for approximately every two shares of common stock that they own on April 22, 1999. In addition, stockholders may oversubscribe for, or offer to purchase, additional shares.

Bits and Bytes - Mark @ 13:12 EST

How do you recognize a good heatsink from a not so good one, and more importantly what makes a good heatsink work. These questions and more are answered over at Hard O.C.P.. Firing Squad has posted their Internet Connection Guide and Tech-Junkie has posted issue number two of their cool web magazine that includes a write-up on the ULTIMATE toy pussy ever tested and a whole lot more ;)

Tuesday, April 20, 1999

Starsiege Patch - Mark @ 21:36 EST

Dynamix has released a patch for the excellent A3D 1.x, DS3D supporting Starsiege. Nothing audio related in the patch. Here is what it does do:

OpenGL speed improvements

Lower memory/VM requirements

Fixed bug in server query causing inf loop

Addresses known console server attacks

Other little things

Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Awards - Mark @ 15:57 EST

The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences will be presenting their annual Awards at a gala ceremony in Los Angeles on May 13, 1999, the first evening of E3 Expo

Included in the awards under the category of crafts is an award for Outstanding Achievement in Sound and Music

The nominees for this year are:

Grim Fandango, Peter McConnel & Team,
LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC/LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC

Heart of Darkness, Heart of Darkness Sound Team,
Interplay Entertainment Corp./Amazing Studio

Road Rash 3D,Don Veca,
Electronic Arts/Electronic Arts (PS)

Wild 9, Tommy Tallarico,
Interplay Entertainment Corp./Shiny Entertainment

Expendable Demo supports DS3D with EAX - Mark @ 13:01 EST

3Dfiles has posted a huge (read 75 MB!) demo of Rage's latest shooter, Expendable. According to their description, "Expendable joins the ranks of Incoming and Hostile Waters in Rage's lineup of visually gobsmacking titles, pushing the boundaries of 3D-accelerator technology to new limits".

You play a space marine who is dropped in to a series of unfamiliar alien worlds to fight for the survival of your race with a huge arsenal of apocalyptic weapons at your disposal. The ability of the game engine to freely mix outdoor and indoor environments (such as tunnels, underground bases, ruined cities etc.) creates a beautiful world for the player to explore and destroy!

Most importantly from our perspective, the demo supports DS3D with EAX!

IWill LE370 Motherboard Review - Mark @ 12:40 EST

Firing Squad has posted a review of the IWill LE370 motherboard. So what? Well it has a Vortex 1 chip integrated. Thanks to Vortex of Sound for the pointer.

DirectMusic Programming Tips - Mark @ 12:36 EST

Interested in learning more about how to take advantage of DirectMusic? Microsoft has posted a link to a white paper from the recent Game Developers Conference. Jon Laff, an engineer at VR-1, Inc., shares his experiences building DirectMusic support into the upcoming VR-1 Crossroads game. To find out more, visit the VR-1 Crossroads. Thanks to Voodoo Extreme for the pointer (Note that as of when I am posting this the VR1 site is down).

FPS 2000 Speaker Review - Mark @ 11:43 EST

Ear on Games has posted a review of Cambridge Soundworks FPS 2000 speaker system.

Monday, April 19, 1999

New Sound Blaster Drivers - Frankie @ 22:38 EST

The Creative Files Download page has new WinNT 4.0 drivers for all Sound Blaster ISA cards (SB16, SB32, AWE32, AWE64 and AWE64 Gold), also new NT, and Win95/98 drivers for the Sound Blaster PCI128, Sound Blaster PCI128 (CT4700). Grabbed from Blues News

Press Releases - Frankie @ 22:37 EST

Some new audio related press releases for your reading pleasure:

TCL King Electronics Co., China's Third Largest Television Manufacturer, features SRS 3D Sound in New Products

SRS Labs, Inc., a leading provider of complete audio and voice technology solutions, announced today a licensing agreement with the third largest television set maker in mainland China, TCL King Electronics Co., Ltd.

QSound's Products Promoted on broadcast.com Web site

QSound Labs, Inc. a leading supplier of digital and analog audio solutions, announced it has entered into a product distribution agreement with broadcast.

New Cirrus Logic Codecs Offer Highest Quality Audio for PCs and Embedded Systems

Drawing on its years of experience in the high-end consumer and professional audio markets, Cirrus Logic Inc. today introduced two new AC-97 v2.1-compliant codecs that promise the highest-quality audio for PCs and embedded systems.

ESS Technology's Maestro Audio Accelerator Selected by Toshiba For New Notebooks

ESS Technology, Inc. announced today that Toshiba has selected the Maestro-2E PCI audio accelerator for its new line of Satellite notebook PCs.

Half-Life Review Updated - Mark @ 22:34 EST

A couple of weeks ago we posted our very comprehensive review of Half-Life which featured extensive audio testing with 4 sound cards. One thing we were unable to do at that time was use the timedemo feature to benchmark the various sound cards and audio APIs as there was a bug in the Half-Life feature. Well, on top of adding the excellent Team Fortress Classic, the latest patch for Half-Life also fixed the timedemo feature, so we though we would go back and run the benchmarks. This yielded some very interesting results and we have some feedback from Valve and Aureal as to why we found what we found.

You can read the entire review or go straight to the benchmarks.

Bits & Bytes - Mark @ 22:33 EST

We get lots of requests to post news with no link to sound and our Bits and Bytes section is our attempt to help out our friends and stay true to our audio focus. So, with no furthur adieu...WickedPC has posted a Voodoo3 3000 Review, 3DHardware Net has posted a review of Soyo's new SY-6IZA Socket 370 motherboard and Extreme Hardware has posted a TNT2 Guide

News from April 18th

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