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Mark Muschett and Mikael Hagén offer an in-depth review of Aureal's SQ2500 optimized Vortex 2 based sound board |
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Aureal Vortex SQ2500 - Mark Muschett and Mikael Hagén - Last updated February 12, 2001
Introduction Update: The designer and driver developer for the Vortex2, the chip this card uses, Aureal, has ceased to exist. Creative Technology announced on September 21, 2000 that they would buy substantially all of the assets of Aureal Semiconductor, Inc., including patents, trademarks and other intellectual property. Creative Labs Craig McHugh last year said in an interview done by MaximumPC made it clear that Creative only bought the intellectual property not the liability. That is they will not sell, support or develop drivers for Aureal products. Quite similar to the deal between Nvidia and 3dfx. Craig also said that Aureal has retained contractors to finish a set of drivers for Aureal based cards. However several months has now passed without seen any new driver release which makes us believe their won't be any more driver release for this chip. VideoLogic also late last year issued the following statement on their website
As VideoLogic says the current Win9x drivers works well with most games that support DS3D or A3D. However the EAX 1.0 support is limited (only works well with some games) and there is no support for EAX 2.0. It's also doubtful how it will work with DS3D games in the future when MS adds new features. The last version DirectX8 doesn't include any new features for DS3D that require driver changes but future versions may. The Windows 2000 WDM drivers are beta form and cause problem on many systems but at least on some systems they work fairly well for DS3D and A3D 1.0 games while A3D 2.0 support is more limited. The drivers also lacks EAX 1.0 support. If you use WindowsME we suggest you try the VXD drivers and not the WDM drivers. It's currently uncertain if the next version of Windows will work with the WDM drivers but we do know that WindowsME is the last release where VXD drivers will be supported. We still think this card is an interesting option thanks to being the only card that can take full advantage of the wavetracing that some A3D 2.0 games offers but we don't recommend anyone to buy a Vortex2 based card as their only soundcard at this point. End of update
On Monday September 13th, Aureal announced two new sound cards along with a major shift in their business strategy in entering the retail market! First the strategy. If you have been following the recent trends in the computer industry Aureal's announcement should come as no surprise. 3dfx recently merged with STB, a move designed to strengthen their position in the market. Even more recently Diamond and S3 announced their merger. Both of these moves create entities with more control of things like product timing, marketing, price and shelf life. Those of us following the sound card industry raised a few eyebrows when Diamond and S3 announced their merger, especially given that S3 had once ventured into the audio market only to later drop that side of its business. Until recently, we had no idea what that merger might mean to Diamond Multimedia’s future in the sound card market. When Aureal first shared the news of their move to the retail market a few weeks ago we speculated that it was one more sign that Diamond was getting out of the sound card market. We also speculated that this would have played a large part in Aureal’s decision enter the retail market, given that Diamond is currently the major retail presence for Aureal, at least in North America. For this reason, as well as the other benefits noted above, it makes sense for them to shore up their market, as any setback in retail presence could be disastrous in the cut throat PC audio market. Well, it’s the chicken and egg situation here. Perhaps DiamondMM could not commit to staying in the sound card market when Aureal needed a commitment or perhaps Aureal wanted more control of their products. We likely will never know what initially precipitated this shift in the market. What we do know is Diamond is staying in the sound card market. Hot on the heels of Aureal’s official announcement was an announcement from ESS that they had entered into a partnership with DiamondMM! Through the strategic alliance agreement between Diamond Multimedia and ESS Technology, Diamond Multimedia becomes the exclusive retail provider of ESS-based audio solutions in the Western Hemisphere. The announcement notes that "this partnership will be a key component in enabling Diamond to provide top-of-the-line, high-quality 3D audio solutions under its Monster Sound and Sonic Impact brands". We are quite sure that this leaves no room in Diamond's audio line for new chips or boards from Aureal, at least for the foreseeable future. We checked with Aureal’s Public Relations Manager, Michael Arrington for a reaction to the DiamondMM/ESS partnership and he had the following to offer: "We welcome competition in the marketplace. It drives innovation and leads to improved products for users. We do, however, feel that we are still and will remain the technology leaders within this space. Diamond initially became a force, and was able to compete against Creative, within this marketplace due to the edge that our technology gave them over the existing 2D, ISA audio players. We are continuing to innovate within this space and feel that we will be able to maintain that technological edge as we introduce new technologies and products." Another unknown is just what this move means to the still growing list of Vortex 1 and Vortex 2 partners. Aureal has not announced any changes relative to their current partners. We also know that they are currently exploring opportunities in Europe and started some initial discussion at ECTS. With new Vortex 2 partners still coming onboard one would think there is room for more than one player if they focus on different markets. We have also been following up with some of the major players and while we don’t want to violate their trust we can share with you the range of comments we received. No one said Aureal should take a long walk off a short pier. The comments ranged from "no comment" (from a company that typically has no comment so don’t read into that) to noting that there are different markets to access and that what happens in Europe and the US are sometimes different. We have not heard from Diamond, but no one has indicated that Aureal’s announcement will have any short or medium term impact on their relationship with Aureal. The bottom line is that at least for now, its business as usual. So what about these two new products? They hail by the names Vortex SQ1500 the Vortex2 SQ2500. Both of these products will be Aureal-branded and on shelves in major retail outlets including CompUSA and Electronics Boutique. The new products will be exclusively marketed under the Aureal name by I/OMagic Corporation, a leading marketer of peripheral PC products. The Vortex SQ1500 is based on their AU8810 chip and will also include a coaxial S/PDIF as well as quad speaker output. Included with the card are several audio applications, including their new Aureal Vortex Player, Techland Software’s Future Beat 3D as well as a full version of Drakan and carry a MSRP $69.95. We will have a full review of this card next month. In this review we will take an in depth look at the SQ2500.
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