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August 1999 and EarlierNew Review - Hoontech Digital Amp If you're on a quest for better sound quality, check out our review of Hoontech's Digital Amp. With 4 channels of digital-to-analog conversion at 24-bit 96kHz, this is one mean DAC!
One of the guys in charge of LAVA! have posted some of his thoughts in the LAVA! forum. It seems they have a really complex audio analysis engine to be able to go for a patent! Hey all, Just wanted to let you know that those of us behind the scenes of LAVA are listening. First of all, I want to say thanks to all of you who've expressed appreciation for the software. We had and are still having a great time writing it. It's actually a global project -- we have people coding in Boston, Santa Cruz, and Singapore. I can give you a little history of the software. The first ideas for LAVA were conceived in a computer graphics class at MIT that I took two years ago. I worked on a class project creating animations synchronized to music in non-realtime. The following summer I worked at the Creative EMU Tech Center and was encouraged to pursue a realtime application. That's when LAVA was born. Myself and another Tech Center employee, Alan Peevers, are responsible for the audio analysis, graphics engine, and scene designs. We also received help from Rob Sussman and Tyler Brown at the Tech Center. A team of Singaporean engineers took our code, put an incredible UI around it, and added the MV3 functionality. Many thanks go out to Chang Yew Nan, Henry Tan, Lim Yew Hwee, Roslind Yip, and all the people involved in testing the software. As for the accusations of mind-altered coding practices, I can neither confirm nor deny that. A few people have asked questions about how the software works. I'm not sure how much I can say at the moment -- we just filed a patent on the audio analysis engine. I will say that our area of expertise is audio signal processing (I'm working on a Ph.D. in the field), so a lot of time was spent on this part. I'll check on giving out more details. For those of you having problems, we're definitely working on addressing them. Our first priority has, of course, been to test with the graphics chipsets that Creative supports. The code we wrote, however, does not inherently favor Creative graphics cards. It's all standard OpenGL. We know a lot of you have Voodoo3 cards, and I was suprised to learn that it runs better using the old OpenGL driver designed for the Voodoo2. From the way the Voodoo3 was advertised, I was under the impression that it would support windowed OpenGL acceleration, just like the TNT. I just got my hands on a Voodoo3, so I'll do a little testing of my own. We look forward to hearing more of your comments and suggestions. This is just the beginning ... there's a lot more in store.
Creative has released the EAX 2.0 SDK for game developers. New features exposed in EAX 2.0:
What does this mean for us? More realistic 3D sound! Download the SDK | EAX 2.0 Information
If you are doing music and would like to be featured, sign up at the LAVA! website.
Want to consider an alternative Vortex based sound card? Check out 3DsoundSurge's review.
Saw over at BetaNews that someone has found a way to get the gameport of the SBLive! working under Win2000.
Though off-topic, this is such interesting news, I just had to get you guys to take a look at this baby! Think 5 3D chipsets (TNT2 and G400 included), SLI and 256MB RAM! Check it out!
Gosh! Its been 2 weeks since the site was updated. The servers were down and we were blocked from accessing the account. Now that everything's back online, we've upped a brand new review of Creative's latest LAVA! LAVA! is available for Sound Blaster Live! users only. A version which works with all other sound cards will be made available in October. Check back here for the updates!
I've just placed a button link to the ALive! forum. Check it out! There are lots of discussions going on right now. Jackson Ng sends us news that the Live!Ware 2.1 CD is now available. Order Live!Ware 2.1 CD from Creative
So as you can see, the Live! is geared more towards non gamers, despite its large support of EAX and good support of the 4 speaker setup. The Live! lacks real 3D sound support, and its EAX support (although amazingly fast) does not give the gamer the same feel that A3D does. EAX's "hacked" approach to 3D sound gives a "Opera House" feel to most games, and just ends up making sounds seem to bounce around more and seem farther away. The spatial positioning through EAX is quite weak, and does not seem to drive the right amount of power to each separate speaker, so spatial sound seems "choppy". But despite these 3D gaming flaws, it does have some redeeming points. The Live! has excellent CD music sound quality and boasts an overall higher sound quality than the Vortex2. Also included in the gold version of the Live! is an excellent I/O card trimmed with gold plating for high quality sound and many input and output ports for the professional sound user. (Editors note: we will have an article on professional sound later this week) And finally, in the price category, the Live! is quite a bit more expensive than the Vortex2 and in the gold version, weighs in at almost $100 more. Read the full article at PC Paradox
Also, if I understand correctly, the article says that the spatial positioning from Live! is weak in a environment....this reflects reality where detecting of the positioning cues is hard in enclosed environment due to the many reflections that occur in that environment ( eg cave ) Also, the author doesn't seem to know that there is already a Value version on the market which cause about the same than the Vortex2 .
Another competitor for the SBLive? For more details you can check out the press release.
Another review for your reading pleasure!
Despite cards from Creative and Aureal being at the front-end of the soundcard market, Cirrus Logic has a huge market share of the general PC audio market by providing sound chipsets. Check out what's up from their next generation DSP chipsets.
Finally! After a long wait for ALive! readers, we're back! This is a brand new site which combines the best of ALive! and the Sound Blaster Live! Discussion List. Many sections are pretty bare at this point in time. We would appreciate any comments and suggestions you may have!
AGN Hardware has posted the first review of Creative's latest 5.1 speakers for DVD fanatics! And boy did they like it! And for those of you looking for the high-end range of multimedia speakers from Cambridge SoundWorks, check out their MicroWorks review. AGN Hardware: DTT2500 Review | MicroWorks Review
Its been nearly a year, but the reviews are still coming! Check out these 3 if you're still contemplating a purchase. 3D Unlimited | ActionXtreme | Ingava
At US$99.99, these speakers are really affordable. What's more, the sound quality seems to be near the FPS2000 which costs twice as much!
Creative has released this affordable sound card which uses the EMU10K1 found on the SBLive! and SBLive! Value, and it still has 4 speaker support! What's more it costs only US$60. A real bargain if you can't afford the full blown versions of the SBLive!
New drivers for Linux!
This release fixes several bugs found in 2.0.
Seems like EAX is going to be the industry standard reverb specification. Microsoft has announced that they would be incorporating EAX into the upcoming DirectX 8. SBLive! owners take heart though - the quality of the reverb still depends very much on the chip on the sound card which is doing the EAX. f Microsoft opts to implement EAX in software, it will not sound as good as effects which are processed in hardware. But if it does, then I guess frame rates would take a hit.
All the satellite speakers are using the SoundWorks type, similar to those in the FPS2000. The woofer also looks like the one from the FPS2000, so expect similar performance. A Digital DIN was added, like the FPS2000, and it has built in 24-bit DACs! If you want better bass and power than the current Desktop Theater 5.1 based on the FPS1000, then these are the speakers to watch out for!
In a press release, Creative highlights their plans to improve the next iteration of the EAX specification to include more features which enhance realism. The SDK will be released to developers on 17-18 May 1999 during Creative's Developer Conference.
In another press release, Creative has helped to define the DLS2 standard, which is mainly based on SoundFont 2.0. This will be incorporated in DirectMusic and MPEG-4 in future.
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Creative has just popped up news on a brand new speakers. The full product name is (taking a deep breath!) - Cambridge SoundWorks Desktop Theater 5.1 DTT2500 Digital.