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The Week in
Review: June 3-9, 2002
Last week's features at
3DsoundSurge
Last week's sound news
Drivers and bugs
New games, demos, patches and bugs
- NASCAR Racing 2002 Season
A new (v1.1.0.2) patch for NASCAR Racing 2002 Season has been released. You can grab it
from Avault
- Jeremy Soule Interview
The Stratos Group has posted an interview
with game soundtrack composer Jeremy Soule. His credits include 1995’s console
hit "The Secret of Evermore", "Morrowind: The Elder Scrolls" and
"Dungeon Siege". Upcoming work includes "Neverwinter Nights" and
"Unreal Tournament 2003". Here's a snip:
SG: As was discussed in the article that you paneled on for
Stratos Group, sound technology for PC’s has improved greatly in recent years. Are
there any technological advances that you wish would come about that would make your job
easier or more effective?
JS: YES! This isn't really considered game technology but Midi needs
a replacement. Someone needs to create a new Midi Protocol that works over Firewire or USB
2 that has more than 127 units of resolution. The MMA (Midi Manufacturer's Association)
has been talking about Midi 2 for years but nothing's been done. Now that synthesizers are
mostly becoming software-based, it think it's clear that retooling an assembly line is no
longer necessary to replace a standard that's been with us around 20 years! Midi is old
and decrepit and should have been replaced in the late 80's.
- Star Wars Jedi Knight® II Interview @
Soundblaster.com
Creative has conducted an interview
with Raven's sound designer about his work on the EAX Advanced HD supporting Star
Wars® Jedi Knight® II: Jedi Outcast. Here's a couple interesting Q&A:
Q8. What was your reaction the first time you heard the game
running with the full EAX ADVANCED HD Environmental Audio enhancements?
A8. EAX ADVANCED HD has the knack of bringing any product to life. Jedi Outcast is no
exception. As a sound designer, I'm pretty attuned to what I'm hearing in a game and there
is a world of difference in the game experience once you have EAX ADVANCED HD activated.
The world comes to life and reacts much more like a real place. There are certain
"leaps" the game takes during development like when that first weapon or
creature or piece of music goes in the game. Adding the EAX environment enhancements is
another way the game makes a leap toward realism. It enhances the immersion and excitement
of Jedi Outcast a lot!
Q9. What is your ‘vision’ for the future of audio in
games? What technical advances do you think will be necessary to enable you to realize
these wishes.
A9. I think that my personal vision is to see game audio become more and more like the
audio in movies. A movie has the advantage of creating fantastic audio to perfectly suit a
specific situation. They can do that because it will always happen the same way and at the
same time in that movie. Because our games are dynamic in structure, you don’t always
know what the player will be doing, where he’ll be and what will be going on around
him. So, you have to create more “generic” audio elements that will be useable
in a variety of situations. My hope is that future sound engines will be given more
attention and upgrading to put greater control into the hands of the sound designer. I
hope someone can work on a simple way to define more complex functions and implementation
of audio within gameplay. I’m no programmer, so I don’t know how that would be
handled technically. Another part of that realism will occur when all the audio is played
at a higher resolution with true stereo. The closer we get to immersing the player in an
audio environment that sounds real, the greater an impact we can have on the entire game
experience.
Reviews of soundcards, speakers, headphones and MP3
players.
- VideoLogic DigiTheatreDTS
Savage Games has posted an overall very positive and very detailed review
of VideoLogic's DigiTheatreDTS speaker/decoder system. An unusual aspect of this
review is the use of an acoustically dead room designed for testing speakers, although
based on how the satellite results differ from our own Crossfire (same sats) results using
a different method, I suspect there are some refinements to come. Another interesting
point from the review is they report that as a result of sourcing issues VideoLogic has
moved away from the Audax subwoofer driver that the system originally shipped with (and we
reviewed it with).
- Philips MMS306/A3.600 5.1-channel Speaker System
MultiXperience has posted a review of Philips' MMS306/A3.600
5.1-channel speaker system, a system that like the Philips MMS305/A3.500 4.1 that we
have done an initial
review of, uses modified NXT based flat panels for the satellites and Philips own WooX
technology in the subwoofer. MultiXperience found the system to be an overall good 5.1
performer for the price, particularly if you are looking for a $150-$200 flat speaker
system.
- Altec Lansing XA3021 Speakers
hardCOREware.net has posted a
review of Altec Lansing's XA3021 speaker system. It's the 2.1 system in their new
speaker series for consoles and retails for $100. It can of course be used for PCs as well
and hardCOREware even found it to be better designed for PCs than consoles. When it comes
to sound quality they found it to sound great especially considering the $99 price tag.
- NoiseControl Stealth Tower with Whisper Box
OCPrices has posted a review of
the NoiseControl Stealth Tower with Whisper Box. What's that you ask? It's a
high-quality tower case pre-lined professionally with noise dampening material plus a
metal box heavily lined with noise dampening material for the rear of the case with some
cleverly aligned holes that allow air to circulate, but should stop 90% of the noise from
escaping. Overall a positive and detailed review with lots of pictures of the product.
- DIY Sound Dampening Revisited
Monster Hardware has posted an article called DIY Sound Dampening
Revisited that checks out some commercial quality automotive sound deadening material,
of course used in a PC environment.
- Silent Drive Enclosure
The Hardwire has posted a review of the Silent Drive Enclosure
from QuietPC. According to the official specs, the unit reduces hard drive noise by over
90%. The Hardwire tested the unit in a custom case with a passively cooled CPU where the
only standard noise is from a Panaflo fan at 7 volts and found it made a notable
difference. For all the details check out the review.
Other sound news
- NVIDIA nForce Platform Processors Selected for
NEC Desktop PCs
NVIDIA® has announced that NEC Computer International and NEC Corporation have chosen
NVIDIA nForce(TM) Platform Processors as the core technology foundation for all of its AMD
Athlon(TM) XP processor-based consumer desktop PC systems. You can find more details in the press
release
- AOpen announces AX4B-533Tube -- world's first
vacuum tube motherboard
AOpen Inc. has announced that it is introducing the world's first vacuum tube motherboard,
coinciding with Intel's announcement of the Pentium® 4 845E chipset. AOpen engineers
admit that their original notion to add the unmistakable sound of tube output to a
modern-day motherboard was initially a lark. "We were all together late one
night, kicking around lots of crazy ideas when I proposed it would be really cool if we
could combine the warmth and depth - tonal realism, if you will - of the sound produced by
an audio tube, with one of our state-of the-art motherboards" says Al Peng,
product manager at AOpen America Inc., an audiophile for more than 10 years. "Laughter
turned into raves a few months later when we did our first lab demo of our unique hybrid
creation. The reproduced sound was absolutely amazing. It left everyone stunned. What we
realized at that moment was how the limitations of typical audio output from a PC as we
knew it, had come to an end - and what we were pioneering was a way to literally combine
the best of two audio worlds - old and new". You
can find lots more detail on the motherboard, tube technology, how they have dealt with
the inherent difficulties of utilizing tubes for audio output amplification and why AOpen
is convinced that this board is an aural step forward. In addition to the tube technology
AOpen reports that audio grade components are used throughout critical circuitry. By
cooperating with Reliable Capacitors, high-end Rel MultiCap coupling capacitors were used.
Cardas wires are also deployed strategically on the output to achieve faithful
reproduction of music and sound effect.
As you may know, not all are convinced about the benefits of tube
technology even on audiophile amplifiers but time will tell just how this interesting new
product performs. Something worth noting is the output of the motherboard when connected
to any multimedia system will still be going through typical solid-state amplification.
For all the details check out the
full press release.
- Abit SP70 Speaker System
The following is from a Computex
Report by TweakTown where you can also see a picture of the system. We have not come
across additional details on the system at this time.
ABIT had an interesting demo setup at their stand featuring
their new Siluro Theatre SP70 speaker system. The system was hooked up to an XBox running
demo loops of various XBox games and from what we the demos we saw at their booth, the
sound quality was very impressive. Although these speakers are packaged in XBox style
enclosures, they can be used in the PC as well as the XBox through an SPDIF output.
- Microsoft Announces New Windows Media Support
Microsoft has announced that leading audio chip makers MCS Logic Inc., MediaTek Inc., NEC
Corp., Oki Electric Industry Co. Ltd., Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd., SigmaTel Inc., Sunplus
Technology Company Ltd. and Toshiba Corp. are licensing Microsoft® Windows Media(TM)
Format for use in their audio chip products. These chips, ready-made with Windows Media
Audio (WMA), will be used in a wide range of devices, including CD players, car stereos,
portable audio players and wireless handsets by a number of manufacturers in the coming
year. Today's announcement further accelerates the wide-scale
adoption of Windows Media by a broad range of chip makers and consumer device
manufacturers. More than 120 device types are now supporting Windows Media. Microsoft
projects that the worldwide installed base of consumer devices supporting Windows Media
will reach 27 million by the end of 2002. These devices range from DVD players and CD
players to portable music players, PDAs, gaming devices and mobile handsets. You can find more details in
the press release
For more news from last week check out our news archive.
Upcoming features at 3DsoundSurge
- Reviews that we are currently working on:
Updated Santa Cruz/Sonic Fury and GameTheaterXP reviews
Hercules Fortissimo II
Terratec DMX Xfire 1024
CMedia CM8738 Reference Review
Full Audigy Review
Full Philips MMS305 Review
- There are several other hardware reviews in the pipeline
including, but not limited to the following:
Guillemot Maxi Sound MUSE
Terratec m3po
DigMedia MusicStore
Philips Seismic Edge
Lots of other stuff on the go in including several guides and major site revisions that we
will soon be releasing more details on.
As always if you have any ideas for products we should review or
features we should do, please let us know.
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