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The Week in
Review: February 10-16, 2003
Last week's features at
3DsoundSurge
Analog Devices SoundMAX SPX Review on
3DsoundSurge
In our latest review we check out Analog Devices SoundMAX SPX. This integrated digital
audio system uses Analog Devices AD1885 AC’97 audio CODEC to provide full-featured
soundcard functionality. SoundMAX takes advantage of today’s advanced CPUs and
motherboards to implement high-quality audio synthesis/rendering and 3D sound positioning
using the host (CPU) processing power rather than an integrated DSP. Features include full
EAX 1 and 2 support using Sensaura’s reverb engine, a range of 3D audio output
options from headphones to 6 channel analog outputs all using technology from Sensaura,
including the first commercial implementation of Sensaura's MultiDrive 5.1 engine. The
product also has Virtual Ear support, Downloadable Sounds – Level 2 MIDI music
synthesizer support with a 4MB General MIDI wavetable sound set and, support for an
optical digital output. For all the details on how it performs relative to some popular
PCI sound card alternative you can check out the full review.
Last week's sound news
Drivers and bugs
- Audigy 2 Driver Updates
Creative Labs has posted a series of updates for Sound Blaster Audigy 2 users that are
dated February 11, 2003. These are Creative Surround Mixer version 3.00.57, Creative
DVD-Audio Player version 1.00.60 and Creative MediaSource version 1.00.57. They have also
posted an updated Audigy 2 DriverPack (WDM Drivers). Note that the updates require that
you have installed the Audigy 2 Driver Pack web update that is dated 20 Dec 2002. For more
details and download links you can visit Creative Americas site. From the ASIA site
you can also download Creative Speaker Settings version 1.00.56. It's possible this update
is available using the auto update from the Americas site but currently not listed using
the manual download.
New
games, demos, patches and bugs
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield Goes
Gold
Ubi Soft Entertainment has announced that the EAX Advanced HD supporting Tom Clancy's
Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield has gone gold and is expected in stores on March 18. You can find more
details in the press release. Several previous Tom
Clancy's features very good use for EAX and 3D sound but it's worth noting this one is
based on the latest Unreal technology which is not exactly offering the best use of 3D
sound (using OpenAL) or EAX AdvancedHD to say the least. In particular those who played
Unreal 2 using an Audigy 1/2 card have not exactly been impressed (no reverb and poor or
rather incorrect use of positional audio). Hopefully Raven Shield fixed these issues, to
find out you can grab the demo from 3D Gamers.
New Splinter Cell demo and Raven Shield Update
An updated demo for
EAX Advanced HD Supporting Splinter Cell has been released. Splinter Cell use the same audio code as Raven Shield which unlike I
yesterday incorrectly guessed (see below) is not using the same audio code as the latest
Unreal engine but one named the DARE Audio system. It's not even using OpenAL but the
traditional DS3D. Another interesting difference is the EAX support is not exclusively EAX
AdvancedHD but features backwards compatibility with EAX 1.0/2.0 cards.
Thanks to Anders Albrechtsen for the correction. He also reports
that the 3D sound as well as the reverb works just fine in both the Raven Shield MP demo
and the Splinter Cell SP demo using his Audigy 2 card.
UT2003 Patch
A new (v2199) patch for UT2003 has been released. You can grab it from 3D Gamers.
- Billy Martin (composer) interview
Gamer's Pulse has conducted an interview with Award-winning Film and Game composer Billy
Martin who was recently elected to the Board of Directors of the Society of Composers
and Lyricists. Here's some interesting bits:
GP: For those unaware, what are some of your most notable
achievements in the entertainment industry (including gaming, movies, TV, etc)?
I’ve written music for several TV shows, including the theme
music for “Entertainers”, which is currently airing in syndication. I wrote
music for two award winning short films: “A Song For Jade” (Black Filmmakers
Hall of Fame Award) and “Requiem” (Cine Golden Eagle Award). As far as games, I
recently scored Treasure Planet Training Academy, The Book of Pooh, and a Disney/Pixar
Buzz Lighyear game. Last year two games that I scored were nominated for awards by the
Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences: “Tarzan Untamed” (Console Children’s
Game of the Year), and “Disney’s Phonics Quest” (Computer Educational Title
of the Year).
[snip]
GP: Please explain, what is Audio Gang (http://www.audiogang.org)?
How and why did it become what it is?
G.A.N.G came into being because there was no organization devoted to
excellence in gaming audio. Composers of music for games are now eligible for membership
in the SCL, but historically the orientation of the SCL has been Film/TV. The members of
G.A.N.G. are not only composers, but sound designers, engineers, developers, and anyone
interested in taking audio in games to its highest level. The first annual G.A.N.G Awards
will be presented soon-- I believe they will be recognized as the leading game audio
awards because the nominees are selected and voted on by their peers in the industry.
GP: Currently, making music for games isn't really the way to fame
like it would be in the recording industry, but do you think that over time we may see
more media covering game music?
Without a doubt. Record companies are starting to realize that
people are buying music because they heard it in a game first. Game companies are starting
to look at the game soundtrack as a wonderful promotional tool to help sell their game
(and possibly make more money at the same time). Increased media coverage is inevitable as
more games are made into movies, and more movies and TV shows are made into games.
- Bill Brown Interview
A new interview
with composer Bill Brown has been posted on Homelanfed. Here's some interesting bits:
HomeLAN - Music and sound in PC and video games have
sometimes not received as much attention as other aspects of a game. Why do you think that
has happened in some cases?
Bill Brown - I feel it has been simply a matter of the bottom
line for most publishers in the past, but that is changing. Basically, developers have
been doing the best they can with what they have. Many developers, producers and
publishers are beginning to understand that without great music and sound; their product
is no longer competitive in today's market, and that's the good news. That wasn't the case
ten years ago. I think gaming is still a fairly young medium. We're just beginning to see
more realistic environments and movement and the technology is just getting to the point
where the graphics really merit the music and sound we are creating for them. (In my
humble opinion) :). I'm excited about where we are today and where we are going tomorrow.
We have been mixing our game soundtracks in 5.1 Dolby surround now for the past three
years and now with the advent of the X-Box and PS/2, we are creating dynamic, real-time
soundtracks in 5.1 as well. This is exciting! And with the streaming technology that
exists within new platform architecture our options are almost unlimited. I can have a
live orchestra literally react to real-time non-linear action; that is the next wave and
it is already being implemented. So, where music and sound have been ignored in the past,
their time has come in gaming!
HomeLAN - Where do you see the future of music in game
soundtracks going in the next few years?
Bill Brown - I see more artists using games to promote
themselves, and in turn I see a burgeoning game soundtrack market - which will be great
for game composers and publishers alike, not only for the additional revenue but also as a
promotional tool for the games. I imagine there will be more sophisticated use of score in
games, both in linear and non-linear forms. I hope to see much more use of music and sound
in a subtextual way in games as opposed to "what you see is what you hear" I
feel that might be the next somewhat uncharted territory for in-game sound. I would like
to see more immersive narrative in games myself. I'd like to see publishers really support
composers in creating great works for games, as opposed to just getting the job done.
Until someone steps up to the plate and says, "I am going to support a development
team in making something truly great", not just for profit, then we'll be headed
towards creating lasting art. I look at the risks that Spielberg and Lucas made at the
beginnings of their careers. No one thought that E.T. was going to be successful. But they
believed in creating something meaningful and lasting.
HomeLAN - What games and other music projects are you
currently working on?
Bill Brown - I just finished up Rainbow Six: Raven Shield,
Command & Conquer: Generals, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Island Thunder, and some new
cinematics for the PS/2 version of Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I'm currently working on
Lineage II: The Chaotic Chronical for NCSoft and I have several other projects lined up
that are still "those that shall not be named", including a couple of films
later this year. ;)
- News from Bill Brown Composer
Several of Bill's music tracks from the recently released Command &
Conquer: Generals are now available for download. Bill Browns website also mentions
that you will hear his music in Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield, a new Gatorade
"Propel" television commercial spot which will be airing in a few weeks and that
Bill Brown will be speaking on two panels during GDC. For more details head over to his site.
Reviews
of soundcards, speakers, headphones and MP3 players.
- Logitech Z-680
Another review of Logitech's well featured 5.1 system, the Z-680, has been posted
on Maximum3D. As any other review I've seen of this system it's very positive saying
it's for certain the best PC speakers available. They then factor in not only quality but
also the feature set and price. The review doesn't mention what other speakers system they
compared it to except that it offers better bass control than its predecessor, Logitech's
Z-560.
Other sound news
- VIA Audio Interview
VTR-Hardware has conducted an interview with Keith Kowal, Marketing Manager of VIA's Audio
division. Here's a couple game focus Q&A:
VTR-Hardware Having said that, from a musician's point of
‘view', the cards using the Envy24HT should be the right tools, given the fact that
the Envy24 line of cards was and still is very famous. But from a gamers point of view,
things are different: usually they use top level 3D video cards to ensure the best picture
quality and the greatest frame rates, they also want to get a great multi-channel
experience to be completely immersed in their favourite game. This can of course be done
with the sound hardware that VIA Audio and its partner provide but with great 3D drivers
and algorithms too. M-Audio and Terratec are offering the market sound standards such as
DirectSound, DirectSound3D, EAX, A3D or Sensaura3D, but one of the competitors, Creative,
has made a step further with the EAX AdvancedHD technology which provides real
improvements in games. Unfortunately after Aureal's death there isn't any outsider with
new algorithms and audio signal processing, I think there is room for that, what is VIA
Audio's politics about 3D sound in games?
Keith Kowal VIA has recently signed our own licensing deal
with Sensaura, utilizing their technology to enhance both our Audio Controller and AC'97
codec technology. I think for ourselves, as well as our partners like M-Audio and
Terratec, Sensaura technology offers an excellent solution to support a wide range of 3D
formats, plus positional audio technologies.
Looking at 3D sound technologies, we have to give a lot of credit to
Creative for establishing and promoting technologies like EAX. However, I feel they are
really going down the wrong path with the EAX Advanced HD format, which only they are
allowed to support. History has taught us time and time that users in the long term reject
proprietary formats that necessitate buying only one company's hardware.
The real innovators for future sound technologies will come from the
game developers as they begin taking a more proactive stance in this area. A good example
of this would be the OpenAL effort. Even in the last 6 months we have seen rapid
development of audio technology for games, as increasingly games are being developed with
discrete 4.1 and 5.1 soundtracks that are not so reliant on Directsound extensions.
Moreover many other audio techniques are being accomplished through games software
solutions, therefore not requiring hardware support.
VTR-Hardware On the VIA Audio website, the focus seems to be
more on the audio quality and connectivity, which are of course the most important product
keys. The chip supports theatre quality with up to 8 outputs at 192 kHz, but some
specifications are lacking: there seems not to have any audio DSP inside (for hardware
DirectSound3D voices for example) and most importantly what is the size of the mixer to
enjoy full resolution when playing multi-track songs for example?
Keith Kowal Hardware acceleration currently is an interesting
issue in the audio business that is surrounded by a lot of misinformation and confusion.
VIA's view is that Hardware Acceleration is quickly becoming a legacy feature that will
add little real benefit for the vast majority of users, so therefore we chose to not
include this feature in the Envy24HT and Envy24PT Audio controllers.
I have spent quite a bit of time doing benchmarking on this topic
and found that in most instances with a modern PC system, using an Envy controller as
compared to our competitors has little to no noticeable effect on gaming performance in
terms of game play or frame rates. Obviously a lot of this has to do with the fact that
Directsound Acceleration was a technology devised when PC architectures were quite a bit
slower and offloading tasks from the CPU really did boost performance. However, today with
multi-gigahertz processors and advanced GPUs, the computer can easily handle processing
the audio streams with no real performance hit for the user.
I think, however, there is another important aspect of game
performance that is often overlooked and that is how the audio in the game actually
sounds. Many of the people who have looked at cards based on the Envy line of controllers
have been very impressed with the quality of the gaming audio in terms of the crispness
and clearness of the sounds. The best example I can think for this is a user once
commented to me that when playing Jedi Knights with an Envy based soundcard the rifle
sounded much more like it did in the movie as compared to his previous card, which is what
I feel the game sound designer would have wanted. For many people I feel that this benefit
is worth the tradeoff for a few FPS they probably won't even notice.
Its also important to note that Doom III (and all the games
following with this engine), will as far as we know NOT use hardware acceleration, and I
think this is a trend we will definitely continue to see.
As for the mixer, the VIA Envy24 integrates a full 20 channel,
36-bit wide digital mixer which sees widespread use for more professional applications.
However, for the Envy24HT we removed this feature, as after discussions with our partners,
it was felt that for most consumer applications the mixing capabilities done in software
met these users requirements, making a hardware solution redundant.
In the interview they also discuss audio quality, differences
between VIA's chips, the need for 7.1 and 24/96, DVD-Audio, SACD and more.
- QSound Labs Reports Fourth Quarter Results
QSound Labs reported revenues for the three months ended December 31, 2002 of $1,290,000
as compared to $597,000 for the same period in FY2001. The operating profit for the
quarter was $625,000 as compared to an operating loss of $(164,000) for the same period
last year. Including non-cash items such as depreciation and amortization, net income for
the period was $453,000 as compared to a loss of $(298,000) for the same period in FY2001.
Revenues for the year ended December 31, 2002 were $4,224,000
compared to $3,026,000 in FY2001. The operating profit was $1,617,000 in FY2002 and
$37,000 in FY2001. Net income for FY2002 was $1,129,000 as compared to a loss of
$(733,000) in FY2001.
The increase in revenues was derived primarily from their audio
algorithm licensing business. In a statement QSound CEO said "FY2003 will see QSound
transition to an audio solutions provider as opposed to a provider of audio algorithms.
Revenue from existing algorithm licenses will diminish and management is focussed on
replacing such revenue streams from its new product lines." You can find more details in the press
release.
- 3DMark03 featuring 3D audio benchmark Released
Futuremark® Corporation, a leading provider of PC performance analysis software and
services, has released 3DMark®03, a major enhancement to its popular 3DMark® suite of
benchmark solutions originally launched in 1998. It's mostly used for testing gaming
performance for 3D graphics cards but this time it also feature 3D audio benchmark. You
can find more
details in the full press release. You can also check
out a review/overview of it on BurnoutPC. Here's what they said about the 3D audio
test:
3DMark03 features an exciting new addition - a benchmark of your
PC performance when running a 3D scene with multiple 3D sound sources. Game test 1 is
processed over 3 runs. First with no sound sources at all (as a reference point), then
with 24 sound sources and finally with 60 sources.
Each source is accurately modelled to incorporate 3-dimensional
positioning, Doppler effects, and attenuation. This test uses the FMOD music and sound
effects system.
The test result is shown as the average number of frames per second
(fps).
The interesting measurement in this test is the difference between
the reference run without sounds, and the 24 and 60 sound runs. A smaller difference in
frames per second is better.
Note: a sound test run will be skipped if there is no hardware
support for the amount of 3D sound sources required.
- STMicroelectronics and SRS Labs Partner for Sales
and Marketing of SRS TruSurround(R) for Digital Set-Top Box Applications
STMicroelectronics and SRS Labs have announced that they have entered into a licensing and
co-marketing agreement for SRS Labs' patented virtual surround sound technologies,
TruSurround® and TruSurround XT(TM) (TSXT). Building on an existing licensing agreement
between the companies, ST has become a worldwide bundled chip provider of TruSurround and
TSXT for digital set-top box applications. Under the terms of
the agreement, ST will deploy either TruSurround or TSXT in its OMEGA range of digital
set-top box decoder ICs, including the newest member of the family, the STi5516. You can find more details in
the full press release.
Cambridge SoundWorks Introduces the Outdoor
All-Weather Speakers
For those who want a great way to bring music out to the patio, the pool or the backyard
this summer, Cambridge SoundWorks® has introduced a new line of outdoor speakers -- The
Outdoor® 42, 52 and 62.
The Outdoor All-Weather Speakers combine the styling and performance
of Cambridge SoundWorks high-end Newton Series(TM) loudspeaker line with the rugged
durability of a well-designed outdoor speaker. This means they can be placed anywhere
outside without being damaged by the elements. The Outdoor series of speakers range in
price from $199.99 to $299.99. You can find more details in
the full press release.
- Klipsch Announces New Distribution Strategy and
Retail Partner
Klipsch Audio Technologies has announced a new distribution strategy that includes ending
relationships with two key dealers and adding a major new retail partner. As of Tuesday,
Klipsch has discontinued its relationships with Magnolia Hi-Fi and the Tweeter Home
Entertainment Group and its subsidiaries. Additionally, Klipsch will begin selling a
limited line of its award-winning Synergy Series loudspeakers, excluding installed and
outdoor models, at Best Buy stores across the country on Memorial Day weekend this May. According to Paul Jacobs, chief operating officer of the Klipsch Worldwide
Products Group, Klipsch has been selling its ProMedia® line of computer speakers through
Best Buy for two years, and it has been successful as a brand strategy to increase demand
for high-performance home theater systems. He expects the changes announced today will
have an even greater positive impact on the Klipsch brand. You can find more details in
the full press release.
- Level 9 Sound Designs Announces A Strategic
Alliance With CAD Co.
Level 9 Sound Designs has announced a significant new OEM sales initiative that will
increase its penetration of the rapidly growing mid and high-end branded speaker market.
The plan calls for CAD Co., a veteran sales and engineering team based in Toronto, to
provide key loudspeaker brands with valuable access to a unique umbrella of technology,
purchasing power, credibility and expertise in full solution systems engineering. The
goal: to allow a loudspeaker-based brand to develop customized, turnkey integrated home
theater systems emphasizing, but not limited to, the benefits of Level 9's award-winning
flat panel transducers. In so doing, these brands will have a far more affordable and
credible point-of-entry to the expanding Home Theater product segments, including HTIB and
others. For more details on the plan and on CAD Co. you can check out the
full press release. Multimedia audio fan will be familiar with Level 9's popular
Monsoon series that utilized Planar Focus Technology.
- Guide to MP3 Ripping
3D Audio Immersion has posted a brief Guide to MP3 Ripping. For a second more lengthy look at the topic you
can also check out our Newbie
Guide to MP3s.
For more news from last week check out our news archive.
Upcoming features at 3DsoundSurgeReviews that we are currently working on:
Updated Santa Cruz/Sonic Fury and GameTheaterXP reviews
Hercules Fortissimo II
Terratec DMX Xfire 1024
CMedia CM8738 Reference Review
Full Audigy Review
Full Philips MMS305 Review
There are several other hardware reviews in the pipeline
including, but not limited to the following:
Guillemot Maxi Sound MUSE
Terratec m3po
DigMedia MusicStore
Philips Seismic Edge
Lots of other stuff on the go in including several guides and major site revisions that we
will soon be releasing more details on.
As always if you have any ideas for products we should review or features we should do,
please let us know.
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