3DsoundSurge Special Feature: Early Impressions of I/O Magic's Canyon3D2 based Hurricane Extreme


	A quick look at I/O Magic's Canyon3D2 based Hurricane Extreme

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I/O Magic's Canyon3D2 based Hurricane Extreme - Initial Review

Published: October 25, 2001 - Mikael Hagén

Introduction

ESS has been a major player in the PC audio chip market for several years but for the most part their success has been in the OEM market. In the retail market they early on had great success when PCI soundcards first hit the market, but by the fall of 1998 they didn’t have a chip that could really compete with Aureal’s Vortex2 and Creative Labs’ Emu10k1. This was all supposed to change with the launch of the original Canyon3D chip in 1999. It didn’t take long until the first advertised as high performing board arrived using this chip via the introduction of Terratec’s $200 DMX Sound System. Unfortunately lacking drivers prevented this board from ever becoming a good gaming card. The situation improved significantly when Diamond/S3 released the MX400 later that year. While the drivers were still far from perfect it definitely could have become a strong challenger to the Live and Vortex2 cards if Diamond/S3 put more effort in promotion and driver development. As you probably know the reason why this never happened is S3/Diamond (now SonicBlue) not long after decided to leave the soundcard and graphics market to focus on faster growing markets like MP3 players and cable/DLS modems.

A year later when we started to see some major competition to the Live, and with Aureal now out of the market all the high-end retail cards competing with Creative Labs are using chips from Cirrus Logic or Philips. With ESS focusing more on markets outside of the PC market like DVD players we all started to doubt that ESS would once again release a high performing PC audio chip. However that’s exactly what happened this year with the release of the Canyon3DII. To correct perhaps the most important flaw with the original Canyon3D chip, ESS has already launched a Cayon3DII website where they offer reference drivers. This should reduce the risk of the lacking driver development that occurred with the Canyon3D based cards.

I/O Magic is so far the only company that has announced products using this chip. Their line-up includes 3 cards: Storm Surge, Hurricane Extreme and Typhoon Theatre. All three use Sensaura as the reverb and 3D sound engine which includes support for A3D 1.0, DS3D, EAX 1.0, EAX 2.0 and I3DL2 (similar to EAX 2.0 but not used in many games today). Here’s a short summary of the unique feature set for each card from the press release:

The I/OMagic ``Storm Surge'' is an entry level, multi-channel PCI sound card. It is a four-speaker solution and features up to 48 DirectSound3D hardware accelerated streams. Other highlights include front and surround analog outputs, up to 48 kHz playback/record. MSRP is $39.99 for the ``Storm Surge.''

The I/OMagic ``Hurricane Extreme'' is a premium audio solution for four-speaker applications and features up to 64 DirectSound3D hardware accelerated streams. It includes award winning PowerDVD playback software with Dolby digital decoding of DVD on four speakers and Dolby headphone technology. The Hurricane Extreme also includes a five-band hardware equalizer, S/PDIF-Out and is bundled with music and games. MSRP is $49.99.

And finally, the ``Typhoon Theatre'' is a 5.1 Channel PCI sound card that is a first-class audio solution for six-speaker applications such as DVD home theater. This multi-channel card has up to 96 DirectSound3D accelerated streams and also packs the award-winning PowerDVD software, featuring Dolby digital decoding of DVD on six speakers and Dolby headphone technology. The Typhoon Theatre also includes S/PDIF digital output for Dolby digital AC-3 via a universal RCA connector and is bundled with music and games. MSRP is $69.99.

In this initial review we will cover the Hurricane Extreme and how it compares to some of the other popular cards on the market. All my impressions mentioned below unless I specifically state otherwise are based on using the WDM driver version 5017, which at the time of this writing the latest driver release on the official Canyon3DII website. They should work on all Canyon3DII based soundcards and will work with Windows 98SE/ME as well as Windows 2000 but not Windows 95. You can also install them in the original Windows 98 but you will then get no hardware acceleration, hence no support for A3D, DS3D or EAX. Drivers of the same version number for WindowsXP are currently considered beta. When it comes to the VXD drivers using the original Windows 98 as well as Windows 98SE we ran into significant problems. That is the only the 2 speaker mode was available and the S/PDIF out can’t be enabled. Several other features were also lacking which make this card with current drivers a poor buy if you don’t have Windows 98SE or later.

All my testing was done on a Duron 750/VIA KT133a based motherboard running Windows98SE and Windows 2000 with SP2, in both cases with DirectX 8.0a installed.

General performance and feature set

In/out

When you open the box you will first notice the fairly limited number of internal connections on the board, that is there is only an analog CD-in (of two types) and a TAD-in with the Aux-in that most other board offers the notable lacking input. On the bracket you will find a SPDIF output of Coaxial RCA type in addition to the standard mic-in, Line-in, midi/game port, stereo analog and rear output.

Digital out functionality

Just like all other current cards other than the Live and Audigy, the S/PDIF output can only be used to output stereo/Dolby Prologic, except when playing DVD movies when it can also pass-thru AC3 and DTS encoded tracks. For 4-speaker gaming you can only use it for the front channels and have to use the analog rear output for the surround channels. Several 4-speaker systems like Altec Lansing’s ACS56 and Polk Audio AMR-150 support this digital / analog mode.

A nice feature is that you can set the SPDIF output to MD, which I assume refers to 44.1 kHz. This means it should work with all MiniDisc recorders offering a S/PDIF coaxial input. Worth noting that most MiniDisc recorders use an optical input and most can now also accept 48 kHz input. As such it’s not a feature most will find useful.

Analog functionality

Moving on to the analog outputs they for the most part works like other 4-speaker soundcards but with one major difference. When in wave mode only the front speakers work. If the application use Directsound all 4-speakers are used even for stereo content. Future drivers may change this. To tweak the output you have a fader control, a balance control as well as a speaker test feature. Useful to see if you got the correct balance as well as check you connected the speakers correctly. You can also select between 2 and 4-speaker output. Oddly enough no headphone output mode but ESS promised this will be added in future drivers.

Audio quality

I found the quality to be quite good similar to most other new soundcards but not quite the level with the Audigy or SantaCruz / GameTheaterXP. Objective testing using a loop back cable show a clear roll off bass after 50 Hz in an otherwise close to perfect frequency response graph.

When it comes to tweaking the sound the card features a 5 band equalizer. You access it from the volume control and the points you can modify are 110 Hz, 330 Hz, 990 Hz, 3 kHz and 9 kHz. It effect both the front and rear analog output as well as the SPDIF output. However it seems to only work in Directsound mode and even then not with all games.

There are no other options like stereo expansion or reverb presets available, features several other cards offer.

Bundled Software

The bundled software includes PowerDVD 3.0 (more about this below), Free trial version of Rune, Terra Battle For Mars (30 day trial), Click Radio, Gamespy Arcade, AtomixMP3, PCDJ, Cosmi Games and Yamaha SoftSynthesizer S-YXG50. The most important here are clearly PowerDVD 3.0 and the Yamaha SoftSynthesizer S-YXG50. The Rune trial version will expire after 7 days after you install it and you can only play it 7 times. If you wish to continue you play it you can unlock the game for $19.

DVD

The bundled PowerDVD 3.0 is supposed to feature 2 and 4-speaker output, Dolby Headphone output and DTS/AC3 pass-thru according to the press release as well as the box. However I got no option to select either 4-speaker output or Dolby Headphone output. The good news is that DTS/AC3 pass-thru works just fine in both Windows98SE and Windows2000. I also tried it with another copy of PowerDVD and WinDVD 3.0. In both cases AC3/DTS pass-thru and 4-speaker output worked fine so doesn’t appear to be any driver flaws that prevent the bundled PowerDVD 3.0 from working as advertised. We currently don’t know if our review copies by mistake got a more limited PowerDVD edition, if the info on the box is incorrect, or if it some other software conflict that causes this.

Games

Stability

I found the drivers fairly unstable in both Windows 2000 and Windows 98 when playing games. In Windows 2000 I also had issues with the sound just disappearing and only a reboot would bring it back. Based on some conversation I had with the guys at 3DAI my issues may be specific to my system.

3D Sound and EAX

The Canyon3D II uses the Sensaura 3D sound and reverb engine. This is the same as many other cards including Hercules GameTheater XP, Fortissimo II, Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and VideoLogic’s Sonic Fury. The version of the engine in the current driver release is the same as the v2.0 WDM drivers for GameTheaterXP (not yet checked GameTheaterXP v3.0 that was released October 24). This also means the 3D positioning and EAX performance are basically the same unless there are specific bugs in the basic drivers that prevent it from working properly.

In general we find the Sensaura 3D sound engine to be very good, especially for 2-speaker and headphones where we find it to be the best one available. The reverb engine is also good but I would still put it behind the Live and Audigy reverb engines. The major difference is not quality, rather the Audigy/Live reverb provides more prominent reverb effects (especially in EAX 1.0 games) and more importantly offer better consistency. We have also so found the later versions of Sensaura reverb engine (available in drivers released in the summer and fall of this year) to offer less prominent reverb than earlier versions. For more details on these general impressions you can check out our recent review of the GameTheaterXP.

One significant issue with the current driver release is it lacks a headphone output setting. This will be added in a future driver release though. One other more minor issue is unlike some of the other Sensaura cards (mostly more expensive ones) it doesn’t include the Virtual EAR technology that allow you to optimize the 3D sound engine for your ears. I say minor since I haven’t found it to make much if any difference for me but your mileage may vary.

Benchmarks

In the synthetic Audio WinBenchmark I got 11.8% CPU usage with 32 2D streams and 16% with 32 3D streams. Not excellent result but still one of the better performing cards considering it’s when using WDM drivers in Windows 2000. In comparison the Live use 42% of the CPU resources on the same system with 32 3D streams. The Audigy performs clearly better though, with only 10% CPU usage in the same test. Creative Labs indicated performance will be better in WindowsXP than in Windows 2000. The same may be true for the Canyon3D II.

In actual games I got 66.0 in Half-Life and 24.8 in Unreal Tournament demo benchmark with 3D sound enabled. This compares to 68.1 and 29.5 respectively when 3D sound is disabled. This is very good performance considering it’s quite close to the Audigy, which achieves 69 and 25.9 respectively.

A3D 1.0

In Windows 98SE A3D 1.0 compatibility worked just fine in Jedi Knight and Outlaws. Unfortunately the A3D.dll file required for A3D 1.0 compatibility is not installed when using Windows 2000. A bit odd considering it’s the same exact driver I install in both cases. Lack of A3D 1.0 compatibility in Windows 2000 is only an issue if you want to play older games.

A3D 2/3

No direct support just like every other non Aureal card but A3D 2/3 games can pass on the positional commands to any DS3D supporting driver.

For testing A3D 2.0/3.0 compatibility I tried Star Wars Episode 1 Racer and Quake 3. In the latter case you need to install the A2D files separately while in the former it’s included out of the box. In Episode 1 racer I found it to work very well while in Quake 3 I got a bit of odd echo effect that I haven’t noticed on other soundcards. Still, it’s a lot better than many other soundcards where I experience massive loss of sound effects in Quake3. Worth noting the later patches for Quake3 removed the A3D 2.0 support.

EAX 1.0

For testing I used Aliens Versus Predator, Drakan, Half-Life, Unreal and Thief.

Unreal, Drakan and Thief worked well in both Windows 98SE and Windows 2000 except in case of Thief the reverb effects are significantly more prominent when using the Live or Audigy. In Drakan it’s much better while in Unreal I found them rather subtle with both the Live and Canyon3DII.

Aliens versus Predator work fine in Windows 98 SE but fails in Windows 2000 (no reverb or 3D sound) just like it does with every other card I tried. It’s most likely due to a bug in Windows 2000 that may be fixed in WindowsXP and perhaps also in the upcoming SP3 for Windows 2000.

In Half-Life with the v1.0.0.9 patch installed I got about a second delay between visuals and my weapon sound effects when 3D sound and EAX was enabled. This occurred in both Windows 98SE and Windows 2000. However once I installed the last patch the problem disappeared and the reverb effects are of pretty good quality, although I would prefer if it was more prominent. The difference is quite significant not only compared to the Audigy/Live (which I consider too strong in this game unless you reduce the reverb levels) but also the built in reverb engine included in the game for non EAX cards. The quality of Sensaura’s reverb engine is clearly of better quality than the still quite good one Valve software provides for non EAX cards.

EAX 2.0

For testing EAX 2.0 compatibility and performance I used Descent 3, Thief 2, MDK2, Soldier of Fortune 2 with Creative’s EAX 2.0 enhancements installed, MotoCross Madness 2 and Unreal Tournament with Creative’s EAX 2.0 enhancements installed..

I found Rogue Spear, MotoCross Madness 2 and Thief 2 to work fine except for my general stability complaint mentioned above. In case of Descent 3 the 3D sound worked well but the reverb effects compared to the Live/Audigy are significantly less prominent, similar to how it works in many EAX 1.0 games. In Unreal Tournament it was a bit of mixed bag with some levels offering good reverb levels while in others it was hardly noticeable. For the other games mentioned it’s also less prominent than the Audigy/Live but close enough that it more comes down to taste. In Descent 3 and some levels of Unreal Tournament it’s closer to the Audigy with EAX disabled than with it enabled.

In MDK2 I was unable to notice any EAX effect, an issue I have had with every other WDM driver I tried. In Soldier of Fortune the game crashed every time in both Windows 98 and Windows 2000 complaining about a bug in the Canyon3D II driver. In case of Windows 2000 it even brought down the entire system.

Conclusion

The Canyon3DII looks like any interesting entry to the market with good price/performance ratio. The major competition for the Hurricane will probably be the slightly more expensive Fortissimo II, which also bundles PowerDVD and uses Sensaura. To be able to offer a major challenge to the Fortissimo II future drivers have to include the headphone 3D sound algorithms and offer better stability in games. As mentioned ESS has promised the headphone algorithms will be included in future drivers. For the DVD enthusiasts, the bundled PowerDVD also needs to work as advertised but as said it’s likely just a mistake the copy we got didn’t.

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