3DsoundSurge Special Feature

Aureal vs Qsound - The Great Debate

Qsound: Scott Willing 

Aureal: Toni Shneider 

Date Started: June 22, 1998  Date Ended: July 8, 1998

The Show Must End Sometime...

Given the tone of Scott's last message, I'm not sure that this debate is beneficial for anyone. 
I'm not into a flame war. This might be the last installment from my end...

Toni.

Scott,

You are now weaving insults into your posts and using this forum to spread pieces 
of misinformation about us.  I'd prefer not to debate on that level.

You started this debate with two claims: that developers are now using DirectSound3D 
universally, and that Aureal is somehow trying to impede the growth of the 3D audio industry.
I responded by asking for a list of DS3D games and by explaining that we are not impeding,
but indeed leading and accelerating the growth of 3D audio. You've written 5,000 words in
response without substantiating your initial statements. Telling people to call developers on
their own to ask them  what audio APIs they will  support is a cop-out.

Before we end this debate, I will have to insist that you clear up at  least one point: 

You have claimed that "Aureal discourages ISVs from  supporting competing hardware". 
This is a serious and totally untrue accusation and you have not backed it up. 
 In light of our own A3D 2.0 API running in free and automatic emulation mode on other 
people's  hardware, I'd say your statement doesn't even make sense.
I think a retraction is in order.

As I said before, we like DS3D titles a whole lot, because they use our  3D hardware. 
 What we don't like are your attempts at pitting DS3D against A3D. 
 I'll re-iterate that both DS3D and A3D APIs have their usefulness and both are advancing the
cause and content for 3D audio.   

That's why we support both APIs (if I remember correctly, we were the first company to 
support DS3D:   

http://www.aureal.com/press/pr032797-dsound5.html).   DS3D serves baseline features 
and A3D serves advanced features. A3D happens to enjoy significantly wider title support
for a variety of reasons.  I'm sure anyone can see why that bothers Qsound. This trend is
accelerating by  the way.  We have more A3D and A3D 2.0 titles coming than ever before.

Regards,

Toni Schneider.

PS: attached are a few clarifications on points from your last post
 (I  kept to the ones that had major errors in them...):

Who's Zoomin' Who?
================

You wrote: "I have personally heard this pitch given by Aureal staff at a  developer seminar. 
The company repeatedly recommended to a roomful of developers that they did not use 
DS3D at all if A3D hardware was not found on the user's system."

You are misquoting us.  Our A3D 1.x drivers look for A3D hardware, if it  isn't there, 
the developer has to decide what to do: fall back to DS3D host emulation or fall back to stereo.  
Of the two we recommend falling back to stereo because it will sound
about the same and use substantially less CPU (BTW, you also fall back to stereo in 
your API, so you can  hardly fault us for making the same recommendation).   
This is a host  based emulation and CPU usage argument and has nothing to do with 
other people's hardware.  Finally, none of this matters in A3D 2.0, since we  completely wrap 
DS3D and fall back to our own host emulation (if the developer chooses to do that).

What is the Standard?
=================

You wrote: "A3D sound cards are already a market minority by a wide margin"

Are we talking about the same market?  Who else has 15 shipping sound  cards with their 
3D technology on it, over 10,000 units shipping every day, including the world's two biggest 
PC makers, and users that are actively taking  advantage of the technology?
I know it isn't Qsound.  I  expect you'll want to count sound cards such as the Creative/Ensoniq
 cards that support host CPU based 4 speaker panning.  
I'll say this: just  because someone has such a sound card doesn't mean  that they have 
4 speakers  hooked up.  As a matter of fact, our research indicates that the  number of 
people using4 speakers  is tiny (and we've been shipping 4  speaker support for over a year 
with Diamond,  so our indicators are pretty good).  Therefore, I think it is misleading to quote 
standard 3D  audio installed base from sound cards that could produce some form of 3D 
audio if the user  had 4 speakers hooked up.  More importantly, if you want to count anything
that responds  to a 3D API and produces some kind  of effect, than both DS3D and
A3D 2.0 have an installed base of several   hundreds of millions of PCs, since they both 
will run in host emulation mode on any system.

Marketing vs Reality
================



I don't need to prove to you that great 3D audio is possible from 2  speakers or headphones. 
There are dozens of independent reviewers who  have thoroughly tested our product and 
they all come to the same conclusion: 
A3D is the first product to deliver on the promise of 3D audio, it is an incredible new feature 
and stands head and shoulders above anything else in its category.  
You can verify these statements for  yourself. 
 Please go to: http://home.earthlink.net/~fmah/a3d.html, or  http://3daudio.pair.com/reviews.  
There are dozens of A3D reviews listed  on those pages. 
Those are independent reviewers that have no reason to say anything good or bad about 
A3D other than their personal experience  with testing the technology.  
Here are just a few quotes from reviewers:

Computer Gaming World: "Aureal's A3D is easily the best positional 3D  audio I've heard."

PC Games Magazine: 
"If you play Jedi Knight without A3D, you're really  missing out on how much more immersive 
the game can be. With the list of  A3D-supported games growing, it looks like the Monster 3D
will  significantly change the way we hear and enjoy games."

Gamecenter: "...the Monster Sound proved how cool 3D positional audio could be."

Computer Heaven: "All I can say is wow.  I was hearing where [the enemies] were lurking.
 It was like learning to walk all over again, the  experience was thrilling."

PC Multimedia & Entertainment: "Even with just two speakers, an A3D game like Heavy Gear
really comes to life.  It's almost like watching a movie  on a color TV for the first time, 
after watching it in B&W... All of the A3D games were breathtaking and exhilarating 
experiences."

PC Gaming:

"I was shocked at just how well the [Monster Sound] card fooled my senses into thinking the objects actually were driving or flying around me..."

PC Games Magazine:

"Jedi, running on my P200 with a 3Dfx card and the Monster Sound card for 3D audio
- volume real loud - is hands-down the greatest PC gaming experience I've ever had. (The neighbors weren't as pleased, however.)"

Adrenaline Vault:

"I'll never forget the excitement I felt the first time that spinning 3Dfx logo appeared on my monitor. "Oh boy," I thought, "This is going to be good!" Now, I get equally giddy whenever I see the red and white Aureal A3D symbol."

Games Domain:

"The good news is that it does seem at last that the "forgotten" issue of 3D sound is finally
coming to the fore, and Aureal A3D system is striding into the lead." "It looks like A3D will be to sound what 3Dfx is to graphics."

Multimedia Week:

"Aureal has a secret weapon that could make its chip-based A3D audio technology the standard for next-generation audio."

Home PC:

"Some things need to be experienced to be believed-like Aureal A3D audio technology."

All-Platform Support
================

You wrote: "Does this mean that A3D 2.0 will inherently support an Ensoniq or Yamaha sound card?" Yes (for the third time). A game written to the A3D 2.0 API will run automatically on those platforms  with no additional work for the developer. Obviously, the user will not get the benefit of full A3D 2.0, because those platforms don't support all features of A3D 2.0, but the game will run as best as it can.

You wrote: "And BTW, Toni punted on my question about the Voice Manager."Wrong. First thing I  ever wrote: "Aureal's goal with respect to APIs remains consistent: we support all important industry  standards as well as our own API for advanced, next generation features." The Voice Manager  property set is not a standard (yet), so we don't support it (yet). It doesn't run standard on all platforms,  we haven't seen any implementations of it and we haven't received a single developer request for it.  If this feature becomes part of DS3D or if a significant number of developers start to request it, we'll obviously support it.

Writing Code
==========

You wrote: "My point--made for the benefit of end-users--was that there is a significant difference between a developer actively seeking and chosing a solution for a needed feature and a vendor seeking them out and putting it in for them... I certainly can't fault a developer for taking a freebie, either! In itself, though, it's hardly a glowing endorsement of the technology, is it? I'd call it a paid advertisement." Scott, you are definitely crossing the line here and spreading misinformation. Your implications are almost laughable. Please look at the list of glowing endorsements below. Are you really willing to say that we have somehow paid off these people in the form of freebies? Or even just a single one of them? These are top people in the game business. These are their own words. I think these people would not look kindly on your implications of having been paid off somehow by Aureal to say these things:

Brady Bell, Associate Producer, Trespasser: Jurassic Park, DreamWorks Interactive: "Hands down the most convincing technology I've experienced. Who needs headphones?" and in 3D Sound Surge Interview (trespasser.htm): "By next year, I don't think you'll be able to purchase a new PCwithout 3D video accelerator (as if you could today) & some audio board using an Aureal chip. A3D is absolutely great. a first class technology & company. Undoubtedly, anything we do will have 3D audio...it's too cool not to support."

David Coy, Executive Producer, Interplay OEM: "Aureal's technology not only blows away the competition but also has an installed base of sound cards that is continuing to grow. Aureal seems to be on a roll, they're signing deals left and right."

Chacko Sonny, Producer for Heavy Gear, Activision: "The reason we picked A3D is it's really the only game in town for 3D hardware-accelerated sound. From a development standpoint we always want to support the cutting edge. The effect [of A3D] is in fact, very, very cool. You'll be able to hear where an explosion occurs or where a gunshot is coming from. It adds an additional degree of depth to the game."

Bobby Prince, Audio Producer (Doom, Duke Nukem 3D), Bobby Prince Music: "Aureal's A3D is the first audio technology to come around in years that will allow me to create a game soundtrack that will be scarier, more intense, immersive and convincing than the work we did for Doom!"

Mary Bihr, Director of Sales and Marketing, LucasArts Entertainment: "The ability to make the player believe that they have actually become part of the game is something every game developer strives to achieve. Given that positional 3D audio provides such an impressive impact on the 3D gaming experience, we see both game developers and consumers turning toward advanced audio solutions, such as Diamond's Monster Sound."

Richard Jacques, Producer, Sega Digital Studio: "Once I heard Aureal's A3D I was stunned. I had never heard such immersive audio technology."

Dave Taylor, President, Crack dot Com: "Bombs falling overhead in our upcoming Golgotha title will completely freak you out on sound cards with the A3D Interactive technology."

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