The Yamaha Waveforce 192d comes bundled with the following software:

YSTATION 32 (for Windows 95/98/NT)

A quality multimedia player that lets you play an audio CD or MIDI file or

WAV sound files and also mix different kinds of audio sources to play together. You can even record such a mix into a WAV file. Like most integrated players, it does not offer an option for MP3 playback or recording.

 Classic 100 (for Windows 95/98)

With this software, you can play famous classical compositions using an XG sound module on the soundcard. Since this software gives a description of the composition during playing, you can gain some knowledge about the music.

XGworks lite (for Windows 95/98)

Use this MIDI sequence software to make your own music using an XG sound module on the soundcard or external sound module.

Relaxation Music (for Windows 95/98)

Relaxation Music is a virtual resort that allows you to enjoy environmental sounds such as surf, bird songs and rain, together with background music.

S-YXG50 (for Windows 95/98/NT)

Besides 64 polyphonic sounds from the XG sound module on the soundcard, this XG SoftSynthesizer offers 128 additional polyphonic sounds, with a total of 192 polyphony—origination of the name, WAVEFORCE 192XG/192Digital. The SoftSynthesizer offers 676 voices plus 21 different drum kits along with 3 kinds of effects, reverb, chorus and variation.

S-YXG100 (for Windows 95/98/NT)

MIDPLUG (for Windows 95/98)

This Netscape plug-in software adds MIDI playback functionality to the browser. If you like to visit a MIDI-oriented Internet site, it will be quite useful.

Yamaha Wave Editor TWE (for Windows 95/98)

TWE is an audio wave form editor. It can edit various formats of AIFF or WAV files for pre- and post-editing audio. As it can record an external audio into a WAV file, you can fully capture the high-quality sounds from the WAVEFORCE soundcard.

SoundVQ (for Windows 95/98/NT)

Based on "TwinVQ" audio compression technology developed by Nippon Telegram and Telephone Corporation (http://www.ntt.co.jp/), this audio codec (encoder/decoder) applications are developed to transfer high-quality audio via Internet in a possibly less traffic. SoundVQ consists of its encoding software, SoundVQ Encoder, and decoding software, SoundVQ Player. If you are interested in delivery of hi-quality audio from a web site then these applications may be useful.

Demos: DemonStar, Jedi Knight: Pathways to the Force and Final Fantasy VII (for Windows 95/98)

Both the Demon Star and Final Fantasy VII demo feature sound enhancement by an XG sound module on the soundcard. The Jedi Knight demo, aside from being a cool game may have been bundled to show off the Sensaura drivers ability to translate A3D 1.x calls back to DS3D ensuring API compatibility of the card. The Pathways to the Force demo includes the first three levels of the full version of Jedi Knight and does not have the later enhancements like dynamic lighting that were added via the Mysteries of the Seth mission pack.

Installation:

The card ships with a reasonable printed manual that is easy to read and follow. I know that the early drivers were a bit of a nightmare to install prompting more than one reviewer to trash the card. Fortunately, Yamaha has cleaned up any installation problems that may have been there and the card installed into my system with out any issues using the shipping CD. I immediately updated the drivers using the 1031 update from Yamaha’s web site in order to get EAX support. For two speaker testing purposes I hooked the card up to Boston Acoustics’ Media Theater system and for headphones testing I used a set of Sennheiser HD525s

Configuration:

Just two setting that need to be set when installing the card in windows 98. One is to select the output mode under DirectSound3D in the Waveforce DS XG Audio Configuration Panel which you find in the Windows control panel. . There are three choices. Headphone, 2 speakers and Application. Application lets DirectX control the output. I always feel much safer setting this myself, that way I am sure its in the right mode. If you are a Window 98 user then the second setting that needs to be changed is the multimedia properties where you will again select your output device. Some sound cards recognize this as the application setting and some don’t. Again, I feel better knowing that everything is saying the right thing and so I set it in both locations. Windows 95 users don’t have this panel to configure. All that done and you are ready to roll and can either get right down to gaming or install any or all of the bundled software noted above.

Gaming Impressions:

For me, this turned out to be a mixed bag. I tested the Yamaha Waveforce 192 digital with a variety of Direct Sound (DS), Direct Sound 3D (DS3D), DS3D with EAX and A3D 1.x titles and have come to the following conclusions.

Direct Sound support is very good. The Yamaha Waveforce 192 digital produces nice clean crisp audio in titles such as Quake II, Grim Fandango and NHL 98.

Direct Sound 3D support was also very good where 3d streams are limited to 8 or less. However, with games that utilize more the 8 3d sound streams there can be instances of dropped sounds or changes in the sound quality as the sound is rendered in software. For example, I noticed this to be the case in Unreal. All you need to do this is spin and fire off a bunch of rounds with the automag and you will notice the how the sound is different when it's done in hardware vs software. As you will see below, Mikael found the same thing in Shogo. DS3D titles tested included Motorhead and Thief before the 1.33 patch

A3D 1.x support was also good as illustrated by the included Jedi Knight: Pathways to the Force demo, the Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace demo, full versions of Battlezone and on Mikael’s machine the full versions of Outlaws and Jedi Knight. Incoming exhibited pops and clicks but its known to do that on sound cards with official A3D support so this was not a big surprise.

Titles with EAX support are a bit different as we were not finding consistent performance across titles. First off, the EAX reverb produced by the Yamaha 192d under any circumstances is not  as good as the Sound Blaster Live line of cards. The best EAX performers for this card were Half-Life where it sounded quite good to both of us and Unreal but while my Unreal EAX test worked fine and sounded good, Mikael’s crashed as soon as he started to play. I also found the audio in Unreal to be not nearly as crisp as with the SB Live (with EAX) or the MX300 (without EAX). Using Thief: The Dark Project with the 1.33 patch that enables EAX, I found the EAX pretty good except that it seems to lag behind the odd time. 3D sound was good on the Waveforce, even with EAX enabled.

According to Mikael, EAX in Shogo was ok but is less noticeable than the Live’s EAX implementation. He also indicated that 3D sound worked great including Doppler effects, etc. except you run out of 3D sound streams when the action gets going and then the software kicks with a noticeable difference in sound effects. To avoid the different sounding effects its possible to disabling software 3D sound but this means losing the sound effects.

Back to my machine, in Motorhead not only does the EAX not work, it drops sounds that were produced faithfully in DS3D mode and the sounds that do play are muffled. Ultimate Race Pro which with the 1.5 patch has very distinctive EAX in tunnels and underpass when using the Sound Blaster Live does not exhibit those same distinct EAX levels using the 192d but the 3D audio is effective. For the demo of Powerslide EAX is not noticeable nor is 3D audio. The predator version of the Aliens vs. Predator demo crashes in load-up and the demo of Drakan for some reason does not offer the same number of 3D sound and EAX options with the 192d as it does with the Live.

On Mikael’s machine he tested the full version of Aliens vs. Predator. It didn't crash but most sound effects were dropped making it unplayable, at least with the EAX installation. However, A vs P appears to be problematic on many other sound cards with the Live being the one consistent exception.

The worst part about the EAX problems is there is currently no way to disable EAX support in the drivers, so if a game has problems with EAX implementation and has no option to turn it off in the game then you are stuck with the problem which could range from making the game less enjoyable to totally unplayable unless you can disable 3d sound. Note that this problem is not unique to the Waveforce 192 digital. For example, the Sound Blaster Live also does not allow you to disable EAX but cards using QSound's QEM such as the Aztec 368 DSP do offer the option to enable or disable QEM (and hence EAX) support.   In terms of in game 3D audio, both headphone and two speaker modes with DS3D and A3d titles exhibit Sensaura’s strong 3D technology with good front/rear in both modes and good up/down in headphone modes. We both found headphone modes to be somewhere in the same realm of the Vortex 2 and Live ( using Live!Ware 2.0). We also both found two speaker support to be as good as on the Vortex 2 and ahead of the Live in those circumstances that it was not obscured by EAX issues.   Sensaura told  us they are working on improved EAX support so some if not all of the issues we identified will hopefully be addressed in a future driver release from Yamaha. We may also do a follow-up testing unreleased drivers at a later date.