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The Week in
Review: May 12-18, 2003
Last week's features at
3DsoundSurge
Last week's sound news
Drivers and bugs
- New Santa Cruz Beta Drivers
Turtle Beach has released new beta WDM drivers for their Santa Cruz sound card. Here's the
change log:
What's New?
===========
- Optimized Installer. Removes old driver and installs new one
without having to run the install twice. Also installs in 98SE/ME/2K/XP.
- MP9 5.1 support under XP. Now you can play multi-channel WMA
files!
- SRS CSII Virtual 5.1 plugin for MP9 works with this driver.
- AC3 digital over SPDIF working in 98SE (with MS QFE
269601USA8.EXE)
- Fixed game port conflict with MPX motherboards.
- Enhanced MIDI playback with better timing and fixed region
exclusive (hihats)
- Fixed DSound volume scaling. Now distant sounds in games are more
audible.
- Fixed Center/Sub volumes to better match front/rear output
levels.
- Fixed distortion/intermittent noise playing multiple channels at
various sample rates.
- Synced up the windows speaker modes with Santa Cruz Control
Panel.
- Optimized boot time and resume from standby times.
Known Issues in this Beta:
==========================
- XP ONLY: Santa Cruz effects do not work while in 6 speaker mode. Win
2k/me/98se are fine.
- You may have to restore the default settings in the Santa Cruz
Control Panel to see the default speaker setting you selected during the install.
- If the Santa Cruz tray icon (blue speaker) does not appear, simply
run the Santa Cruz Control Panel from the Start Menu or Windows Control Panel and then
right click on it and select the 'Load System Tray' from the context menu.
- Switching to headphone versajack works fine but once you launch any
game, the driver automatically switches back to headphones front. All you need to do is
minimize the game, open the Santa Cruz Control Panel and switch back to the headphone
versajack.
You can grab the drivers from Turtle Beach .
New
games, demos, patches and bugs
Raven Shield Patch
A new patch for Tom Clancy's Rainbow
Six 3: Raven Shield has been released.
- delaydots.com grand update
delaydots.com has updated their
suite of plugins. Here are the highlighted changes to the new versions: Spectral plugins pack v1.5
Sound Designers plugins pack v2.4
Phat Pro DX v3.2
- Fixed denormals on some Intel Pentium 4 and AMD Athlon based
systems.
- zero processing guard: detecting mode when plug-in processing nothing, i.e. zeros are
coming to input)
(works much faster / stabile in streaming hosts like Cubase SX, Sonar, Nuendo, Logic Audio
and others).
- Sound Designer's plugins VST version GUI improved.
- fixed GUI crash in Logic Audio and some other hosts.
- improved mixing routine in Phat Pro DX and Spectral Morpher DX plug-ins.
- cometic optimizations and fixes.
PitchWorks DX v1.1
- fixed crash in N-Tracks
- cosmetic fixes
For more details you can check out the full
press release.
Reviews of soundcards, speakers, headphones and MP3
players.
Other sound news
- QSound Labs Reports First Quarter Results
QSound Labs has reported revenues for the three months ended March 31, 2003 of $831,000 as
compared to $755,000 for the same period in FY2002. The operating profit for the quarter
was $178,000 as compared to $168,000 for the same period last year. Including non-cash
items such as depreciation, net income for the period was $88,000 as compared to $88,000
for the same period in FY2002. "For the most part, the
quarter's financial performance was as expected," stated David Gallagher, President
and CEO of QSound Labs. "Royalties from consumer electronics and PC audio licensees
were lower than expected, resulting in a slightly lower than expected net income. Revenues
from RealNetworks sales of iQfx®3 remained steady. The North American portion of our
license with Starkey Labs expired at the end of February so royalties were lower than the
previous quarter." You can find more details in the full press release.
- Spatializer Audio Laboratories Reports First
Quarter Results
Spatializer Audio Laboratories has announced financial results for the first quarter ended
March 31, 2003. Revenues for the three months ended March 31,
2003 were $332,000, compared to revenues of $440,000 in the comparable period last year, a
decrease of 25%.
The Company reported a net loss for the quarter of $74,000, ($0.00)
basic per share, compared with net income of $21,000 ($0.00) basic and fully diluted per
share in the comparable period last year.
The decrease in revenues resulted primarily from the wind down and
expiration of a license agreement with a major account and further reductions from a
second account which began outsourcing manufacturing to third parties. These reductions
were partially offset by increases in royalties from licensees added over the past several
months, including a third party manufacturer of an existing customer. You can find more info in the
full press release.
- SRS Labs and Samsung Sign Global Technology
Licensing Agreement
SRS Labs and ASIC technology solutions have announced that it has signed a technology
licensing agreement with Samsung, the number one electronics manufacturer in Korea. The
new collaboration includes the license of SRS Labs' patented WOW(TM) audio technology
across multiple Samsung product lines and divisions. The first product line to feature WOW
is yepp(TM), Samsung's flagship, flash- based, digital audio players. WOW creates a
natural and expansive audio experience with rich, deep bass over smaller speakers or
headphones, such as those found in portable digital audio players. You can find more details in
the press release.
- SRS Labs Reports First Quarter Results
SRS Labs has reported improved financial results for its first quarter ended March 31,
2003. For the three months ended March 31, 2003, the company reported consolidated revenue
of $4,470,374, a 26 percent increase over revenue for the same period last year, and a net
income of $42,534, or breakeven EPS, compared to a net loss of $690,733 for the same
period last year. You can find more details in the press release.
- Modern Audio Technologies in Games
Digit-Life has posted an interesting and detailed article entitled "Modern
Audio Technologies in Games". One point worth noting as it does not come across
from reading the article and that is NVIDIA uses the Sensaura audio engine for 3D audio
and supports EAX 2 using their own engine.
- Deaf Woman Earns Master's in Music
Tammy Willis, who lost all hearing when she was beaten by a robber, received a master's
degree in music composition Saturday from Virginia Commonwealth University, becoming the
first deaf student ever to earn a music degree from the school. Willis taught herself to play a variety of percussion and string instruments
after losing her hearing and composed a four-movement, 12-person percussion ensemble piece
as part of her master's program.
For the full story you can check
out the article at CNN.
For more news from last week check out our news archive.
Upcoming features at 3DsoundSurgeReviews 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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