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The Week in
Review: September 30 - October 6, 2002
Last week's features at
3DsoundSurge
Creative Labs European Press Event in Dublin
On Thursday September 19 to Friday September 20 I attended the Creative Labs press event
in Dublin, where Creative Labs European HQ is located. In addition to presentation and
demonstrations of the new Audigy 2 cards Creative also demonstrated their speaker, MP3
player and Web-Cam line-up. This report covers the Audigy 2 presentations and the new speaker system
presentations in addition to taking a closer look at the features of the new Audigy 2
and offering some brief hands on impressions of some of the speaker systems including the
new THX certified MegaWorks 550 and 250!
Last week's sound news
Drivers and bugs New Live 5.1/Audigy drivers from Compaq
Compaq has again released new Windows XP/2000 drivers for the Live 5.1/Audigy. It's still
the same driver core (5.12.2.252) as the previous release in late August. It's also worth
noting the driver release is slightly earlier version (252 vs 253) than what Creative
offers for the Audigy. In case of the Live 5.1 it's a slightly later version than what
Creative officially offers (252 vs 244, it's possible to use the Audigy drivers on the
Live cards though). The full 154MB package can be downloaded directly from
Compaq's FTP Site. For details on what's new you can check
out the readme first. As you may see it's pretty much identical to the previous
release readme, only fix appear to be a minor file extraction problem. Thanks to Stephen
for the pointer.
New
games, demos, patches and bugs
Hitman 2 goes gold
Eidos announces that Hitman 2 is now gold and will ship later this week for the PC, Xbox,
and PlayStation. The PC version support DS3D with EAX Advanced HD.
- Hitman 2 supports AM:3D DieselPower
In the 11th hour IO Interactive has added native support for AM:3D's DieselPower 3D audio
engine in the recently gone gold "Hitman 2 - Silent Assassin game. The game already
offered DS3D and EAX Advanced HD support. A DieselPower-installer can be downloaded from AM:3D's homepage where you
can read more to see if you are interesting in trying this software engine out. The
DieselPower-installer detects where Hitman 2 is installed and installs itself into the
game directory, after that the game detects DieselPower and offers it as an option in the
"Sound Options" menu under "3D Sound Renderer".
- Interview with Steve Schnur (Worldwide Executive
of Music for EA)
Music For Games caught
up with Steve Schnur, Worldwide Executive of Music for Electronic Arts, to discuss the
formation of EA Trax, a program that partners music labels and artists. Here is an
excerpt:
The idea was conceived in an internal music brainstorm in that
every title released by EA Sports, EA Games and EA Sports Big would become an event for
gaming fans and music fans. EA Trax would forever change the way the game sounded and the
way the game would be played. As our partners, record companies also came to realize that
EA games had the reach and the cultural impact to attain in this century what MTV did in
the last one.
- UT 2003 Music Interview
HomeLan has posted
an interview with composer Kevin Riepl where they discuss his work on UT2003 and
several other game music related topics.
Reviews
of soundcards, speakers, headphones and MP3 players.
- Philips MMS 306/A 3.600 5.1 Speaker System
PC Abusers has posted an overall positive review of
Philips MMS 306/A 3.600 5.1 Speaker System a system that uses a modified version of
NXT's flat panel technology combined with Philips wOOx subwoofer technology. The main
complain about the system in the review was about the subwoofer, which they feel "...still
needs improvement".
- Samsung Yepp-30SH MP3 Player
Envy News has done a
review of Samsung Yepp-30SH MP3 Player. It's a 128MB flash based MP3 player with a
$320 SRP, however according to the review actual street prices are more in the $140-200
range. Features includes equalizer presets, Backlit LCD display, voice recording. The
review is overall positive but with some negatives like the price and only 5 hour battery
life.
- Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox 3
OCPrices has done a
detailed and very positive review of Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox 3. Features includes
SB1394(TM) (IEEE-1394 compatible) and USB 1.1 connectivity to the PC, 20 or 40GB storage
capacity, EAX® environment presets, Anti-skip Protection (up to 7 minutes), Provides
Smart Volume Management, Multi-Channel Effects, Headphone Spatialization, optional infra
red remote, wired remote with FM tuner and more.
- AOpen AX4B-533 Tube Motherboard
Another review of this AOpen AX4B-533 Tube Motherboard, this time from
Hardware Zone. From an audio perspective what's interesting about this product is its use
of a tube based preamplifier stage for the line level output. While the review looks at
the entire motherboard they do cover the audio section in good detail so well worth
checking out if only for the aural impressions. Like most reviews I have read on this they
were pleased with the quality delivered by the tube pre-amp but would have liked to have
seen a better quality codec/sound card back end than the ALC650 AC'97 codec used by AOpen.
- Ahanix Iceberg Watercooler
OCPrices Hardware has posted a mixed but still overall positive review of the Ahanix
Iceberg Watercooler CPU cooling system, a unit that promises basically noiseless
operation! In the review the report that at 1 inch from the fan (which is of course much
closer than real life use) the level was only 33 dB - very impressive.
Other sound news
- Audigy 2 - Now Shipping
Creative Labs Harvey Fong (Technical Marketing Specialist, Audio Products) made the
following post in the Audigy newsgroup on Friday
Audigy 2 started shipping this morning in the Americas region. They
should start appearing on store shelves within the next couple of weeks.
- Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Press Launch
Another Sound
Blaster Audigy 2 Press Launch has appeared on Alive covering the Singapore launch.
- NVIDIA nForce2 Platform Processors Now in
Production
NVIDIA has announced that its second-generation NVIDIA® nForce(TM) platform processors --
nForce2 -- are now in production. The highly anticipated processors have been delivered to
the Company's extensive list of motherboard partners in preparation for the introduction
of nForce2-based solutions into the channel and retail markets. On the audio front there's
no change when it comes to the hardware and the new software will be available for
existing nForce owners. Retail products based on the nForce2 platform processors are
expected to become available later this month. You can find more details in the
press release.
- Spatializer Audio Enhancement Featured in
Products From Sony
Expanding the scope of its technology use by the leading manufacturers of consumer
electronics, Spatializer Audio Laboratories has announced that its audio enhancement
solutions are included for the first time in products from Sony, recognized as the world
leader in consumer electronics. Spatializer N-2-2(TM), the industry leading branded
virtual surround solution, is included in the RDR-A11 DVD Recorder and the SLVD 100
DVD/VCR Combo. Both products are now shipping in commercial quantities. You can find more details in the
press release
- Sharp New "1-Bit Portable MD Player with
Dolby Headphone
We reported about Sharp's new 1-Bit Portable MD Player with Dolby
Headphone technology awhile ago but at the time didn't find Sharp's English press release.
We now managed to find the
English press release where you may find some additional details as well as a nice
image of it. It's currently only available in the Japanese market to the best of my
knowledge. Thanks to David for the pointer.
- SRS Labs to Present New Professional Audio
Technologies
SRS Labs and its subsidiary, SRSWOWcast Technologies, have announced its participation in
one of the audio industry's largest and most significant gatherings, the 113th Annual
Audio Engineering Society (AES) Convention, scheduled for October 5-8, 2002 at the Los
Angeles Convention Center. SRSWOWcast will be highlighting its new professional Circle
Surround® hardware and software products for encoding and decoding up to 6.1 channels of
discrete audio material for distribution over two channel carriers, including CD,
Internet, VHS tape or traditional television, cable and satellite broadcasting. You can find more details in the full
press release.
- Motorola's Symphony Digital Radio Chipset
Delivers Breakthrough AM/FM Reception
Fans of AM/FM radio wanting to enjoy improved sound need not pay for satellite digital
radio or wait for the introduction of land-based digital radio broadcasts if we should
believe Motorola. Motorola has developed a new digital radio technology that enhances
sound quality and improves signal reception for existing AM and FM analog broadcasts. The key to Symphony Digital Radio's performance leap is through frequency
tuning: by software instead of the traditional analog means. Designed from the 24-bit DSP
Symphony Digital Audio architecture, Symphony Digital Radio uses software algorithms to
tune, filter and improve the signal using methods that are impossible to implement via
traditional analog circuits. One can simply download new software to incorporate new radio
features and improvements.
In the feature department it offers decoding of 5.1, or six-channel
decoding, Dolby Digital from DVD sources, as well as support for Dolby ProLogic II and DTS
Neo:6 in order to create multi-channel surround-sound effects from stereo sources. You can
find more details in the
full press release.
- Zoran's Vaddis 5 Powers Toshiba's SD-P2000 Wide
Screen Portable DVD-Video Player
Zoran Corporation has announced that the Vaddis 5 DVD multimedia processor IC powers
Toshiba's new SD2000 wide-screen portable DVD-Video player. The Vaddis enables the
DVD-Audio playback and progressive scan video output on the SD-P2000 DVD-Video player.
Exceptionally brilliant film-like images are viewed on the 8.9-inch wide-screen LCD panel.
Multi-disc playback capability includes DVD-Video, DVD-R, Compact Disc, Video CD, CD-R and
CD-RW. You can find more details in the
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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