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The Week in
Review: October 14-20, 2002
Last week's features at
3DsoundSurge
Last week's sound news
Drivers and bugs New Santa Cruz beta drivers for
Windows98SE
Turtle Beach has updated the beta Windows98SE only drivers for its Santa Cruz to 4167.
The date is still listed as May 20 but according to Ian Lee who tried them it's a new
release (the previous was version 4164).
New
games, demos, patches and bugs
EQ Planes of Power Gold
The EQ Live Website reports
that the Planes of Power add-on for EverQuest has gone gold and will be in stores October
21, that is tomorrow. For some details on this you can check out
GameSpyDaily interview with Robert Pfister.
- Lee Jackson (Music/Sound Director at 3D Realms)
Interview
In Gaming has posted an
interview with composer /sound designer Lee Jackson, Music and Sound Director for 3D
Realms, as the second part in their Music In Games series. Here's an interesting snip:
InGaming: How do you see the role of music in game titles? Are
there any specific genres where it plays a larger role in those than it does in others?
Lee: Game music is currently in a state of flux. It's being given
less and less priority from what I see. Ambiences are the current "in thing,"
and I believe they will take more and more precedence over music. The exceptions are games
where ambiences are less important, such as non-first-person-shooters where you're not
quite so immersed in an environment. Music actually creates the environment in those
titles.
InGaming: For future releases, do you see music tracks playing as an
important part as the game's actual content? Do you think that as the quality increases, a
sound track or in-house band will be a major selling point?
Lee: I don't see music making much headway in the near future,
especially in my line of games. There will be "environmental" and "special
event" music, but beyond that the emphasis will continue to be on making the
atmosphere as realistically immersive as possible. As for a band and/or soundtrack album,
you might make a few extra bucks on the game by adding one of these, but beyond that
there's usually little need for such a thing. A band and/or soundtrack will never make or
break a game considering the way things are going now.
InGaming: How do you see sound in games evolving in the future? What
new hardware and quality improvements can we expect to see and how will these affect the
immersive value of the product?
Lee: I would still like to see sounds be hardware accelerated,
similar to hardware acceleration of graphics. Right now we're stuck with sharing system
RAM and CPU time with everything else. We need as much RAM and DSP on a sound card as
there is RAM and GPU power on a video card, and we need a uniform API that uses these to
their fullest. We don't need proprietary extensions anymore - we need something that every
developer can guarantee will be out there on every machine. The most we can count on
nowadays is an AC97 codec.
If we can ever get something like this going, we might be able to
see more complicated adaptive audio environments than we have now. We could load more and
longer loops and more spot sounds into the sound card hardware (imagine how much you'd be
able to shove into 128 MB), and let the onboard processor handle the
decompression/decoding, playback, reverb, and other effects. This would leave the CPU and
system RAM available for use in speeding up frame rate.
Reviews
of soundcards, speakers, headphones and MP3 players.
- PURE Digital ZXR-500 5.1 Speaker System
Hardware Zone has posted a mixed review
of the PURE Digital ZXR-500 5.1 Speaker System with their main complaints being that
the soundstage is relatively narrow for most of their tests and the quality can sound a
bit too bright and sharp.
- Sub $200 5.1 Speaker Roundup
ExtremeTech has posted a round-up review that looks at seven 5.1
speaker systems costing $199.99 or less. The systems covered are the Altec-Lansing
5100, Creative Inspire 5300, Logitech Z-640, Monsoon MH-505, Philips MMS 306, Polk Audio
MR-130 and Yamaha TSS-1.
- Akasa PaxMate Sound Dampening Mats
BurnOutPC has posted a review of the Akasa
PaxMate Sound Dampening Mats. The review is overall positive, noting that it did
somewhat reduce sound and quite down vibrations. The main complaint was the mats smell for
a few weeks. For details check out the full review.
Other sound news
- Lake Announces New Surround Sound Speaker
Technology
A new Lake-developed, Dolby-branded Virtual Speaker Technology called Dolby Virtual
Speaker (DVS) was launched today in Japan at the World PC Expo in Tokyo. DVS was created
by Lake Technology in conjunction with Dolby’s R&D team and is a surround-sound
virtualizer, which they say provides listeners with the surround-sound experience of a
multi-speaker system from as few as two speakers. As you may know there are several DVD 2
speaker virtualization technologies on the market already but this one has a marketing
advantage of being branded by Dolby. Sony has already announced the availability of the
new feature in their flagship PC’s and DVS is also being integrated into software DVD
players from Cyberlink and InterVideo. For more details you can check out the
full press release.
- First Ever Mobile Phone Featuring SRS WOW
Available in Japan
SRS Labs has announced that Sharp Corporation has just released the world's first mobile
phone to feature SRS Labs' patented WOW technology. The phones are manufactured for
Japan's third largest cellular carrier, J-PHONE's PDC wireless network. The new J-SH52
phone has already started shipping in Japan and includes a digital audio player with WOW
audio enhancement for MP3 audio. For additional details you can check out the full
press release.
- Analog Devices SoundMAX On New ASUS Retail
Motherboards
Analog Devices has announced that its SoundMAX® Digital Audio System (SoundMAX) is now
available on two new high-performance motherboards from ASUS. It is featured on the ASUS®
P4PE and P4GE-V motherboards, which support the latest Pentium® 4 processors. For
additional details you can check out the full press release. Creative
Announces Inspire 6.1 6700Creative has
announced the Creative Inspire 6.1 6700, a 6.1 PC speaker system that has five satellites,
each at 8 Watts RMS, and a front centre speaker at 20 Watts RMS. According to the
announcement the Creative Inspire 6.1 6700 has a dynamic frequency response from 40Hz to
20kHz and delivers a total 82 Watts RMS system power. For lots more details you can check out the full
press release.
- Altec Lansing's Speaker Systems Receive Top
Awards at the 2002 Latin Channels Event
Altec Lansing Technologies has announced its gaming speaker systems were awarded top
honors at LatinChannels IX. At the show, held in Orlando in August, Altec Lansing received
two major awards, including Best Computer Peripheral and Best Consumer Electronic for the
region. The company also was selected as a finalist for Best of Show. Featured at the show
were Altec Lansing's XA series and 200 series, both of which received rave reviews from
the distribution/retail channel and the PR community for their ability to provide
exceptional sound offerings for a wide range of audio users. Additionally, the company
secured agreements with key distribution and retail partners, which will dramatically
expand Altec Lansing's Latin American presence during the next year. For more details the
systems presented at the show you can check out the full
press release.
- Creative Launches Its NOMAD Jukebox Zen
Creative today announced the NOMAD Jukebox Zen, the first pocket-sized hard drive MP3
player with both USB and 1394 (FireWire) connectivity. This pocket sized, 20GB MP3 player
is clearly targeted against Apple's iPod with Creative stating that it's price 40% less
that the iPod in addition to offering features not found on the iPod (notably USB
connectivity (iPod requires a FireWire connection) and WMA support (iPod is MP3 only)). In the release Creative explains that the WMA support of the NOMAD Jukebox
Zen allows for greater music storage capability than the iPod. Whether this turns out to
be true for you will mostly depend on if you agree with Microsoft and Creative that the
WMA format offers better quality at higher compression rates than MP3. If MP3 files at the
same compression rate are used then the two units are offering the same 20 GB storage
capability and as such would hold the same number of songs.
The NOMAD Jukebox Zen is now shipping at only US$299 after a $50
mail-in rebate. For additional details on the NOMAD Jukebox Zen you can check out the full
press release. You can also check out a bit more on the competing iPod line in a July 2002 press
release from Apple.
- Creative Announces USB 2.0 capable NOMAD Jukebox
2
Creative Technology has announced the NOMAD® Jukebox 2, its first MP3 player with
ultra-fast USB 2.0 connectivity. The NOMAD Jukebox 2 features a 10GB storage capacity to
hold over 2,000 MP3 songs or 4,000 WMA songs and incredible battery life with 16 hours of
playtime away from the PC from a single charge—4 to 6 hours more than other hard
drive MP3 players. The NOMAD Jukebox 2 is now shipping at an estimated street price of
US$249.99 (£249.99inc VAT in the UK). For details you can check out the full
press release.
- Pioneer Announces New 4X DVD-R/2X DVD-RW Drive
Pioneer Electronics has announced the new DVR-A05 DVD-R/RW and CD-R/RW combination drive.
Pioneer's fifth generation drive doubles writing performance across the board with 4X
DVD-R, 2X DVD-RW, 16X CD-R and 8X CD-RW capabilities. The new 4X DVD-R recording speed
translates into approximately 15 minutes to fully record a high-speed 4.7 GB DVD-R disc.
Pioneer will offer the DVR-A05 in November with a manufacturer's suggested retail price of
$299. For additional details you can check out the full
press release.
- DVD Sales Outpace Last Year's Growth Rate
DVD industry experienced double digit growth in the third quarter, outpacing 2001's record
sales. According to the DVD Entertainment Group (DEG), in the third quarter 2002, 153.3
million DVD software units shipped to retail, more than double what shipped in the same
period last year. Hardware is also on track for a record
year. In the third quarter 2002, 5.4 million DVD players shipped to retail, a 31 percent
increase over the same period last year, according to the DEG. The total players shipped
since the format's launch has reached 45.4 million. The DEG estimates that the industry is
on track to ship more than 20 million DVD players this year alone.
For more details including additional figures you can check out the full
press release.
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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