The week in review: June 7-13

Last week's features at 3DsoundSurge

• Encore 6X review
  I took a look at Creative's Encore6X kit. A very good DVD drive and the Dxr3 hardware is also excellent but the drivers are lacking. For more details about this and how you can overcome the problems by using the Hollywood Plus drivers check out the review.

• Weapons Factory Interview
  We posted our interview with Matthew Hanson-Weller who is better known as <Anvil.Chorus>.  Matthew (or "Anvil" for short) is the current head soundman on the Weapons Factory Staff for the Quake 2 release and the soon to be released Quake 3!  Weapons Factory, for those of you who do not know, is a really cool multi-player, team oriented mod for Quake 2. It builds on the standard capture the flag (CTF) game patch from id Software, incorporating features from the popular Quake I mod Team Fortress and its own unique features. As noted, the team is also working on Weapons Factory Arena for Quake III! In the interview we talk about all the cool audio features already in Weapons Factory and look ahead to what's in store for the audio in Weapons Factory Arena!

• A3D 2.0 CD Player!
  Markus Brunner sent us a nice a little program for Vortex 2 owners called A3DVCD. This program is a virtual cd player which captures the analog cd sound and plays it through A3D 2.0 wavetracing engine in virtual rooms! Its only 154K so why not download it and give it a try then let Markus or us know what you think.

Last week's sound news

Drivers and bugs

• No new drivers but for those waiting for new Vortex 2 drivers the following Q&A from "Ask Aureal" is promising.
  Question:Travis asks: Unreal engine based games (Unreal & Klingon Honor Guard) and a few others, like Thief: The Dark Project, still crash after long use when Aureal A3D is enabled. Does Aureal know about this problem and will it be fixed soon ?
  Answer:From Aureal Staff: It took us a while to track this down and reproduce the problem. We now know what it is and plan to release a fix in the next Vortex 2 driver, shortly after the end of this month.
  Ask Aureal is a section in Aureal's new webzine Wavetracings.

New games, demo and patches

• Heavy Gear II released. Note that EAR's IAS engine is the exclusive audio solution for HG2; however the IAS engine does support A3D natively (as well as all Creative Labs' PCI cards, Diamond's Monster series, etc. and is also supposed to support EAX.
• Might and Magic VII Shipping: Might and Magic® VII For Blood and Honor is the next installment in the worldwide best-selling role-playing series for PC developed by New World Computing®. This new title is on both Creative's and Aureal's game lists so it should support DS3D with EAX and A3D 1.x.
• Black Isle Studios available on DVD. The role-playing game (RPG) division of Interplay Entertainment Corp. has announced the release of the digital video disk (DVD) version of Baldur's Gate(TM). The DVD game will include the original version of ``Baldur's Gate'' developed by BioWare Corp., previously only available on five PC CD-ROM disks! That title support EAX and Dolby Surround.
• MechWarrior 3 doesn't support 3D sound. It's on Aureal's A3D list but for some reason it got dropped. Not even Aureal knows why and the developer, Zipper Interactive, website is now gone/down so it's uncertain if an A3D patch will ever happen. The stereo sound is also broken on several (all?) PCI soundcards unless you choose the lower quality sound. The publisher is aware of that problem and hopefully a patch will at least fix the stereo sound. We'll try to find out next week if any 3D sound patch is planned.
• Star Wars: Episode 1 The Phantom Menace Demo released. This adventure game and the demo supports A3D 1.x and DS3D with EAX. You can grab it from 3Dfiles.
• Star Wars: Episode 1 Racer Demo now released. The sound engine for the full version is provided by the A3D 2.0 API with full scalability form DS3D to A3D 2.0 depending on your sound card and the same is true for the demo. Note that according to Aureal's Skip McIlvaine neither the demo nor the retail game supports Wavetracing. Once again, grab it from 3Dfiles.
• Starsiege 1.003 Patch released for the A3D 1.x, DS3D big bot game Starsiege. No audio changes but many other enhancements like mission editor and full support for Voodoo 3. You can grab the patch from 3Dfiles.
• Starsiege TRIBES 1.5.0 Patch out. New in this patch includes some general gameplay fixes, and security bugs from 1.41 fixed. No impact on audio. You can grab it from 3Dfiles.
• Unreal: No new patch yet but according to Tim Sweeney A3D 2 and EAX will be working when they release the "Next version, in a few weeks".

Reviews of soundcards and speakers

• Benwin’s BW2000 Flat Panel Speakers review at AnandTech and they come to generally the same conclusions that Mark did when he tested them out a couple of weeks ago. That is good satellites but poor subwoofer. For a little different perspective you can read Tech-Reviews review of the system, also posted this week.
• Labtec 2632 review at the Upgrade Center
• Labtec LCS-2414 review at Tech-Review.
• Cambridge Soundworks FPS2000 speaker system review at 3D Audio Immersion and a second one at AbsolutePC. Mark is working on our own FPS2000 review right now, so stay tuned.
• Guillemot's MaxiDVD Theater review from 3DHardware. It's a DVD/hardware decoder combo just like Creative's Encore 6X DVD solution.
• Creative Optical I/O Card Review posted on AGN hardware. This card (if you can get it) provides digital connectors found in professional audio systems and Mini-Disc and it also enables SB Live! Value owners to hook up Creative's FPS 2000 speakers through the Digital DIN connection. I mention the "if you can get it part" as there is only stock left in North America. If you have an interest in seeing this card go back into production then you need to let Creative Labs know at one of the addresses on page 2 of our Live!Ware 2.0 review.
• Boston Acoustic's excellent Media Theater speaker system review posted by The HardwarePros. You can also check out our own review of the Media Theater system for a second (positive) opinion.
• TB Montego II Quadzilla was reviewed by SimRacing Online. They gave it a very positive review. I also see that the reviewer identifies the "latest release Papyrus' NASCAR 2000 supporting A3D 2.0".  According to our source at SimRacing  NASCAR 2000 is now in beta build and according to Aureal's Skip McIlvaine it will include wavetracing support.  Look for our own Quadzilla review in a week or so.

Other sound news

• Beta Test Prince of Persia 3D: SSI Beta Test Central has announced that there is a new beta test for their game, Prince of Persia 3D.  They are expecting beta testing of the game to begin later this month or in early July. Given that its supposed to support both A3D and DS3D with EAX, it would be nice to get some sound fans on the beta test to keep the audio guys on their toes!
• The new Flatland Spotnik 3DML point-and-click editor is now up at: spotnik.flatland.com.
  Aureal has also added a freeware audio library in the Flatland 3DML area on A3D.com. You can link to these audio files to easily place sounds in 3D space within your 3DML world using Spotnik.
• Microsoft license EAX: MS announced a licensing agreement with Creative Technology Ltd. for a number of recording-studio-quality audio effects found in Creative's Environmental Audio Extensions (EAX). The licensed effects include flange, chorus, EQ and environmental reverberation. Microsoft plans to incorporate these EAX effects into its next  DirectX 8.
• DirectX Audio Improvements: I snagged the following from Microsoft's recent press release on DirectX 7:
  Audio effects have also been improved with new software algorithms for 3-D sound and greater flexibility for managing hardware mixing capabilities. DirectX 7.0 provides hardware acceleration for the DirectMusic® application programming interface on supporting sound cards, allowing users to create richer, more complex musical soundtracks. In addition, the new version runs about 20 percent faster than version 6.1, improving overall game performance.

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

Upcoming features at 3DsoundSurge

Reviews that we are currently working on and when we expected to finish them

• Expendable
• Alien vs Predator: Next week
• Aztech's 368DSP soundcard: Next week
• Videologic's Vortex2 soundcard
• Yamaha192 Digital: This week
• Turtle Beach's Montego II and Montego II Quadzilla
• BSG's Intensor LX
• Blood2
• Sin
• Cambridge Soundworks FPS 2000: Next week
• Xitel's Vortex2 card
• Xitel's force feedback headphones
• Tribes
• Starsiege
• Thief
• Heretic II
• Trident's 4DWave-NX chip
• Terratec's DMX soundcard

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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