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April 2001VDMSound Alpha 3 VDMSound enables MPU-401 and SB16 emulation in DOS boxes so that sound in DOS games work. The latest version is out, with a new installer making setups easy.
Napster has put up more stringent filters in an effort to include more variatons of song titles, causing users to complain of "overblocking", The company has apologized to users for its actions, but that doesn't change anything. If it continues like this, the Napster user base will disappear very soon. More at ZDNet News: Article 1 | Article 2
In fear of DCMA threats from the SDMI folks, the team at Princeton have backed down at the last minute and decided not to present their findings. However, they have released their findings online and it is mirrored in many places. More: The Register
Once again, Microsoft Monopoly(tm) shows its power by requiring users to buy Windows XP for Media Player 8. Users of other versions of Windows only get Media Player 7. This comes close to the "bundling of IE with Windows" issue that brought it to the US courts. Fortunately, video & audio codecs can be upgraded in the older versions of Media Player, so the latest Windows Media 8 technologies (or any subsequent versions that are in the pipeline) will still install and work on older versions. What's missing are the bells and whistles in Media Player 8. Unless of course, Microsoft decides to allow only new Media Players to work with new codecs. I think that's pretty likely, no? More: CNET News
Apple has debuted the latest version of QuickTime. Let's hope this version performs better than QuickTime 4 on the Windows platform.
Here's an informative article from MotleyFool.com on the success of Creative to its current predicament in the current market downturn.
Matt Uelmen, the composer behind the eerie and atmospheric music of Diablo and Diablo II talks to Gamesmania about what else, game music!
After a sharp write-down of $101 million in Q3, Creative is estimating Q4 sales to total $260 million, based on a gross margin of 27%, similar in Q3. More: Yahoo! Finance | Americas PR | Asia PR
Intel's IDE Forum also has some posts from people who are also experiencing data corruption with non-VIA/686B motherboards! Realworldtech has been exploring this issue further. In this report of the tests that have been done, they clearly hint that the Sound Blaster Live! may be the primary factor that gives rise to the data corruption problems. Here's a short quote: So what did I find out? That if I used a Creative SoundBlaster Live Value on this Motherboard and two ATA/100 HDDs, the system was unstable and had disk errors. As long as the SBLV was removed there were no errors and the system was stable. Even under Win98…. Not just Win2K as some have suggested. Not even if connected to different ports.
Creative's gross margins are dropping due to price cuts to boost product sales. The dotcom slump has also caused them to write-down some of their Internet investments. Costs incurred from the recent restructuring have also added to the loss. More: Press Release at Yahoo! Finance
CyberLink announced that PowerDVD received WHQL certification for for the DirectX Video Acceleration Application Programmers Interface (DxVA). More: CyberLink Press Release
Not for sound cards, but for PCMCIA credit-card-sized modems. Other companies like Motorola and 3Com are already paying licence fees for using technology under the patents. More: Yahoo!
No, not flat panel speakers! A South Korean Lab is aiming for paper-thin portable speakers which can be folded and carried around. More: ABCNEWS
VoodooExtreme has an interview with Raven on Soldier of Fortune 2. It will use the Quake 3 engine, more sophisticated AI, a better skeletal rendering system, and of course, support EAX.
CNET and ZDNet are reporting that Napster is looking at other technologies such as "audio fingerprinting" to identify copyrighted material in a bid to fight the threats of a court-ordered shutdown.
This is interesting. The Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) issues a challenge to the public to hack their music protection technologies, expecting to use this as a publicity stunt to show the world that their technologies are not hackable. However the folks at Princeton University manages to crack it and are going to publish their findings, earning the ire of SDMI who cites the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) in a bid to prevent the researchers from publishing their work. Check it out at slashdot. The letter from SDMI and the publication can be found here.
New BIOSes for motherboards with the 686B southbrodge are slowly being released by manufacturers. Check your motherboard manufacturer's web site to get them. wildandyc.co.uk has mirrored a beta BIOS which fixes the ATA1000 & SBLive! data corruption in the EPoX 8KTA3/+ motherboard.
Tons of reviews from our friends at 3DsoundSurge. Check 'em out!
Finally, Creative has put up the 5.1 drivers for download. Visit the driver page for more information. After installing them, do let us know if the drivers solved any of the sound quality problems, or exhibited any new bugs. Were any of the utilities improved? How does EAX sound?
The latest version of Winamp has been released. Go to the Winamp site to get it.
A news report at ZDNet News says that Microsoft & Real plan to ambush MP3 by limiting the MP3 abilities of their commonly used media players. The Register also points out that Microsoft plans to limit MP3 support in Windows XP by allowing only low bitrate MP3 files. Another article at WinInfo shows that Real and Windows Media are gaining ground.
ZDNet News has an article exploring the music industry's efforts to sell music on the web, just as their litigation against Napster continues. RealNetworks inks a deal with AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann and EMI Group to offer a "subscription service" (ie. you pay for your music) called MusicNet. ZDNet News has a commentary on this issue. ZDNet News is reporting that Napster may be nearing an agreement with record labels with its subscription service, if Bertelsmann manages to convince the other labels.
SimHQ has a speaker roundup that includes the Altec Lansing ADA890, Boston Acoustics Digital BA7500 and Klipsch ProMedia v.2-400.
James Woo dropped a note on his site for music in Singapore: S.O.F.T. is a website dedicated to music making in Singapore. We have links to musicians, studios, dealers and where to find 'live' music on this little island.
As the recording industry continures its legal proceedings against Napster, there are wide and varied opinions. Check out these from Audio Ideas, ZDNet, The Register and CNET News.
Close shave. Technology standard-makers voted against adding anti-piracy support known as Content Protection for Recordable Media (CPRM) directly into computer hardware like hard drives. Wouldn't it be scary if your sound card refused to play a music file if you have not paid for it?
Napster's efforts to block out copyright material was not enough, says the judge. This news article at The Register also mentions Napster's plan to acquire Gigabeat, which provides filename & song matching technology.
Speedy3D also has a review of the FrontX Multimedia Ports that puts all the jacks at the back of the soundcard in a 5.25" drive bay device.
Just as I thought my e-mail account woes were over, my PC died, and it took the source files for ALive! with it. It took me a few days to get a machine up and running when a cranky ATA100 controller card corrupted the hard drive, and all my efforts in rebuilding my PC went to waste for a second time. Everything seems to be working fine now. I hope nothing else decides to pop up and disrupt my work again. I would like to apologize for the lack of updates. I'm working to clear up the backlog. I've added some news items that summarises some of the issues of the past 2 weeks, especially the Napster debacle. Meanwhile I'd appreciate if you come across any interesting news for SBLive! users to send them to me using the form at the bottom of this page.
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