The week in review: July 5-11

Last week's features at 3DsoundSurge

• Sound Forum Opens
  We have finally got our forum up and running. For the next few days I will be tweaking the settings so please give us your feedback. We hope you will join us to make the forum an active and fun place to visit. Head on over and share your thoughts or ask for support.
• A3D 2.0 and CPU Usage
  The A3D 2.0 engine and API has been undergoing progressive tweaking by Aureal. With the release of the latest drivers we decided to take a quick look at where performance was with the initial release of A3D 2.0 and where it is today using Heretic II as our prime benchmarking tool. Heretic II is the focus because it uses the latest A3D 2.0 engine that we have access to but we also looked at results from Motorhead and Half-Life to see what CPU usage of the original (in game) wavetracing engine was like. If the performance of Heretic II with the A3D 2.20 drivers is sign of things to come then Aureal will be hearing nothing in the way of complaints regarding unacceptable CPU usage for wavetracing. 
  For all the details please check out our look at the performance of the A3D 2.0 engine

Last week's sound news

Drivers and bugs

• Vortex 2 Prerelease 2031 Drivers
  Aureal has posted Pre-Release Vortex 2 Drivers on their website. Quadzilla owners, remember that you have to wait for the Voyetra Turtle Beach release or you will lose bracket board functionality. Here's what Aureal says about these drivers:
  
  This is a BETA OEM release. It is NOT intended for end-users. A retail release (4.06.2035) will be made available shortly that will fix many outstanding issues. This release only fixes problems with Dungeon Keeper 2, Need For Speed 3, and Need For Speed: High Stakes. This release also supports an upcoming motherboard technology. If you are not experiencing problems with the above three games, it is recommended that you wait for the release of 4.06.2035 which will address other issues, including fixes for many intermittent game crashes.
• 2.20 A3D Drivers
  Aureal has released a 2.20 upgrade package. These new A3D drivers work on NT 4.0 with the current Vortex 1 and Vortex 2 NT 4.0 drivers. The new 2.20 A3DAPI.DLL should also provide A2D support for all sound cards on NT 4.0. There are also speed and quality improvements in Wavetracing with this new version of the A3DAPI.DLL file. Make sure to delete all old versions and keep this one in the \windows\system directory. We have a local copy of the 282 KB 2.20 file package available for your convenience.
• Updated Terratec EWS64 Software
  Terratec has updated their EWS64 software offering a new ASIO driver and updated Ed!son and an updated NT driver. You can get all the driver update details and download locations from our EWS64 software update page.
• Extreme Audio Reality has posted a very nice walk-thru for the IAS Config control panel.

New games, demos, patches and bugs

• X demo and retail Patch: Ego soft released a German retail patch for X as well as updated the DX6 optimized executable for the English playable demo.  You can grab the patches from 3Dfiles.
• Heavy Gear II:Extreme Audio Reality (EAR) has updated their Heavy Gear II Audio Troubleshooting Page to include all of the new things they have learned last week. They are also looking for help, Here is the plea:

  If anybody who is experiencing the "CD Insert Error" in Heavy Gear II also owns Civilization: Call To Power, please contact us; we want to know if you are experiencing any problems with CTP similar to the ones reported with HG2 involving the copy protection.

• DXHexen Beta has been released and using DirectSound3D, supports a fully 3D sound environment. This is especially effective for those with 4-speaker setups, but also works nicely with two. You can get more info from the DXHexen homepage
• Yamaha YST-M50: Computer Games Online has posted a review of the Yamaha YST-M50 speaker system. We would like to check these out for you but can't get units from Yamaha (they say they refuse to ship any speakers for review for online sites)
• Canyon 3D Reference Board: RivaExtreme has posted a review of this chip from ESS. In the review the test the board in a wide array of speaker configurations and uses and come to a positive conclusion.
• New Version of A3DVCD: This program captures the analog audio of your CD-ROM drive and separate the to stereo channels in digital audio streams. These digital audio streams are placed in a virtual room with the use of Aureal A3D 2.0 API
  

Reviews of soundcards and speakers

• Quadzilla reviews last week: ExtremeHardware (a very thorough review), the Hive and Hardware Central
• Labtec's APX4620 speaker system review posted over at Tech-Review
• Benwin's BW2000 Flat Panel speakers reviewed by UGN3D and 3D Rage.
• Logitech's SoundMan X2 three-piece speaker system: Extreme Hardware has been using the X2 speakers for over a week now and have written up a full review.
• Sound API Performance: Full On 3D has used Descent3 by Interplay™ to compare the performance and quality of the different sound API’s currently available. I think the score are very strange, especially the performance hit for just enabling stereo sound. I tried to ask the programmer at Outrage about it but he hasn't replied.
• Aztech 368 DSP: AGNHardware has posted a review of this card. I completely disagree with some of comments made in this review, especially the one about the software MIDI being crap. I should be able to complete my review of this card sometime this month.
• FPS2000 Review done by Wicked PC.

Other sound news

• Direct X Meltdown
  You can now view any or all of the almost 30 slide show presentations from the three-day Meltdown '99 event. From the big picture on “DirectX 7 and Beyond” to specifics on graphics and audio, these Meltdown presentations are an incredible source for information on DirectX and the future of multimedia.
• Market Research: Forward Concepts has announced the publication of its newest market research report that covers the market for audio integrated circuits. In the pressrelease they also mention that in the PC audio market, Cirrus Logic ranks first, followed by ESS Technology, Creative Labs and Yamaha. When it comes to 3D audio Cirrus Logic, ESS and Yamaha all uses Sensaura at the moment.
• Tweak your sound: Dan "Tweak Monkey" Kennedy over at Tweak 3D has updated his Sound Card/Speakers Tweak Guide
• Updated A3D 2.0 SDK For you developers out there Aureal's A3D 2.0 SDK Release 2 is now available for download. It adds support for Property Set extensibility and many other things. New optimized drivers will be included in the SDK, along with an enhanced geometry DebugViewer.
• Thief Postmortem
  Gamasutra has posted a postmortem of Looking Glass's Thief: The Dark Project. According to the intro, Thief: The Dark Project is one of those games that almost wasn't. Tom Leonard, chief programmer on the project, talks about what went right and what went wrong when Looking Glass Studios set out to create a totally different first-person gaming experience. The article includes a big section on "Sound as a game design focus". Thanks to Voodoo Extreme for the original pointer.
• So, How's Your Audio Demo Reel? : That's the title of yet another article over on Gamasutra. If you think you have what it takes to get into the industry as a sound designer then this article offers helpful tips on what to do, and not do while putting together a great demo reel that critical in making a great first impression.
• Ear on Games has posted an audio review of Heretic 2. Here is a snip from the review to wet your appetite:

  If only one word could describe Heretic2 best, it would certainly be "fantastic"- fantastic in its imaginative conception, its graphics, its integrity, and of course its audio. Heretic2, like Raven's other masterpiece, Hexen2, has been criticized for being ahead of its time and under appreciated. I wouldn't agree with being ahead of its time, but under appreciated - absolutely. The audio in Heretic2 is definitely on par with Half Life, and measures up well to the high standard set by Valve

For more news from last week check out our news archive.

Upcoming features at 3DsoundSurge

Reviews that we are currently working on. From now on we are only giving dates we are almost dead certain we will make

• Expendable : Not certain it will ever happen, depends on Ragesoftware.
• Alien vs Predator:This week
• Aztech's 368DSP soundcard: This month
• Videologic's Vortex2 soundcard
• BSG's Intensor LX
• Terratec XLerate Pro
• Xitel's Vortex2 card
• Xitel's force feedback headphones
• Trident's 4DWave-NX chip: This month
• Terratec's DMX soundcard: This week

Other features we are working on:

• An improved gamelist that will replace our soundwaves.
• An brief overview how the A3D2 SDK works
• An article about EAX 2, 3 and the new I3DL2

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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