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The Week in
Review: April 22-28, 2002
Last week's features at
3DsoundSurge
Last week's sound news
Drivers and bugs
- New Santa Cruz WHQL drivers
Turtle Beach has released new drivers (4161s) for
its Santa Cruz. It appears to offer no new features compared to the last beta release
(4161), only difference is it's now not beta and WHQL certified. Thanks to Jeff Faulkner
from The Drunken Forums and
Dan88 for the pointer. Jeff Faulkner also adds that they work just fine on his Windows XP
Pro SMP enabled system.
New games, demos, patches and bugs
Reviews of soundcards, speakers, headphones and MP3
players.
- Logitech Z-540 4.1 Speakers
Avault has posted a review of
Logitech Z-540 4.1 Speakers. As other reviews I've seen this is very positive
especially when it comes to gaming and doubt you will be able to find a better system for
less (SRP $80). When it comes to the M3D vs Sensaura comments I'm not really sure what
they are talking about. The Sensaura engine used by many cards including the Hercules
Fortissimo is true 3D audio using headphones, 2 or 4-speakers. It's not correct IMO to
describe that as similar technology to M3D.
- Samsung MR-A02B DVD-RAM / DVD-R Writer Preview
FutureLooks has true to it's name posted a preview of an upcoming DVD-RAM/DVD-R drive
from Samsung, the MR-A02B. The drive will be able to write to DVD-RAM/DVD-R discs but
not the competing DVD+R/RW discs or CD-R/RW ones, however according to the preview it will
be able to read all the mentioned formats. FutureLooks found it to perform well and be an
interesting option but due to the tests being done on a protype and final pricing not yet
determined they could of course not offer any buy recommendations.
Other sound news
- Creative Technology Reports Q3 Results
Creative Technology has announced financial results for the third quarter of fiscal year
2002, ended March 31, 2002. All financial results are stated in U.S. dollars. Creative reported third quarter sales of $193.4 million, at the top end of
the company's expectations for the period. Sales for the third quarter of the previous
year were $262.0 million. Third quarter net income of $15.1 million was more than triple
the previous year's Q3 operating results which were net income of $4.6 million.
In the press release you will find more financial details as well as recent
Editorial Awards. Perhaps more interesting is the following bit about future products
As we look forward to the next quarter and beyond, we will
reinforce our leadership in digital audio with a new and exciting family of NOMAD
hard-disk and flash-based digital audio players with unique form factors to address
different lifestyle segments of the market. We will also be announcing, later this week,
an exciting and revolutionary new product that will bring a new dimension to music
entertainment, which I call interactive music entertainment. This product will also
complement the superior audio quality of the Sound Blaster Audigy and Extigy
- IBM NetVista Systems to Feature SoundMAX Audio
Analog Devices has announced that its SoundMAX personal computer audio subsystem is now
available in the IBM NetVista A and M series of desktop computer systems. For all the
details you can check
out the full press release.
- Altec Lansing(R) Announces Professional Audio
Division
Altec Lansing® Technologies has announced that it has formed a new division, Altec
Lansing Professional, to pursue the professional audio market. Altec Lansing Technologies is inaugurating its new professional division at
NSCA Systems Integration Expo 2002 with a new line of ceiling speakers for airports,
ballrooms, office buildings, houses of worship, and other public locales. The full-range,
high performance speakers are available in sizes from 4-inches to 12-inches in diameter
and feature efficiency, intelligibility and high fidelity sound reproduction. Altec
Lansing Professional expects shipping of the ceiling speaker line to begin in May 2002.
You can find more details
in the full press release
- SRS Labs Establishes New Licensing Relationship
With JVC
SRS Labs has announced that it has added yet another significant consumer electronics
company in Japan to its family of licensees. Victor Company of Japan, Ltd. (``JVC'') has
licensed SRS Headphone(TM) and SRS WOW(TM) technologies for home theater headphone
products to be first introduced in the Japanese marketplace. This agreement marks the
first use of SRS audio technologies by JVC, one of the world's leading developers and
manufacturers of sophisticated audio and video products. You can find more details in the press release
- SRS Labs Reports Improved 2002 Q1 Results
SRS Labs has reported revenue of $3,555,380 and a net loss of $690,733 for the first
quarter ended March 31, 2002. Revenue for the comparable prior year quarter was $4,330,881
with a net loss of $1,565,534. Excluding revenue from the component distribution business
which the company is strategically exiting, revenue increased 46.5 percent in Q1 2002
versus the Q1 2001. You can find more details in the full press release
- ESS Ship DVD and VCD Chips Supporting Windows
Media Audio
ESS Technology has announced that it will distribute Microsoft Windows Media Technology.
ESS Technology will add support for Windows Media Audio (WMA) to customers of its
Vibratto(TM) DVD single-chip multimedia processors and the Visba and Visba2 family of VCD
processors, and has licensed Windows Media Video (WMV) and Network Read Technology (NRT)
for future distribution. ESS plans to ship WMA-enabled DVD and VCD devices to several of
its OEM customers this quarter. You can find more details in the full press release
- Zachary Quarles (Soldier of Fortune 2 Sound
Designer) Interview
Planet Soldier of Fortune has posted an interview
with Sound Designer for Soldier of Fortune 2, Zachary Quarles. The main topic is why
he decided to leave Raven and what he plans to do in the future but it also covers sound
design in general and Soldier of Fortune 2. Here's a some Q&A:
Now that the process is nearly over and SoF2 is getting ready to
go gold, is there anything you would have done differently? I've heard that you're quite
the perfectionist - do you have anything you wish you'd had more time or resources to work
with?
Yeah, I'm a big perfectionist. I probably could have easily spent another year on just
playing around with the sounds we currently have in the game, but there comes a time when
someone has to just let go. :-)
One thing that I do wish we had more time with was work with the Quake sound code. It's
incredibly dated and has several limitations to it.
Was it hard being one single man with a mere two hands being
responsible for every sound in SoF2? How many sounds and songs are there, anyway?
It was certainly a challenge. When I got here they basically said, "Go for it
Quarles!" and that was it. I took a deep breath and dove in headfirst!
Now that the project is finished, we have over 3,100 sound effects and about an hour's
worth of original music!
Whew! I need a nap!
What was your favorite\least favorite thing about working at Raven
on a high-profile project like SoF2?
Well of course my favorite part was creating sound effects and composing music!! There's
nothing quite like sitting down and just channeling all of your creativity into something
like music. Music can provoke so many different emotional responses; it's a very unique
artform.
Again, the most frustrating part was the number of limitations of the dated Quake Sound
Code, it didn't allow for the highest quality of sounds and there was an issue with sounds
that occured way off in the distance. The attenuation would cut off at a short distance.
It could be a little annoying, but I feel we learned to work around the limitations to
achieve what we believe to be the best aural experience possible with the code we were
given. Mr. Ste Cork did wonders with having support for MP3 formats and creating the
dynamic music system.
Props, shout-outs, acknowledgements, etc?
Brian & Steve Raffel, Mike Crowns, and Kevin Schilder for being the coolest bosses
ever. Liam and Dan at Creative Labs for putting up with my stupid questions about EAX. All
the programmers for putting up with my stupid questions in general. All of my friends and
family for supporting me in my new venture as a freelance music composer and sound
designer.
- TimeSplitters 2 Composer interview
Music For Games sent news about an interview they conducted sometime
ago with Free Radical Design's composer/sound designer Graeme Norgate about TimeSplitters
2.
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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