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The Week in
Review: January 27 - February 2, 2003
Last week's features at
3DsoundSurge
Last week's sound news
Drivers and bugs
New
games, demos, patches and bugs
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell for the PC Has Gone
Gold
The EAX Advanced HD supporting Tom Clancy's
Splinter Cell for the PC Has Gone Gold.
- Interview with Music Composer Billy Martin
Bolt Games has posted an interview
with composer Billy Martin. He was recently as the first game composer elected to the
Board of Directors for the Society of Composers and Lyricists. Here's a couple interesting
snips:
Have you ever heard a game soundtrack that just blew you away?
I thought that Jeremy Soule’s score for Harry Potter and the
Chamber of Secrets was very well done. I suspect he may be winning some awards for that
one this year.
[snip]
What do you think about the gaming industry?
I’m in favor of it! (Laughs) It’s still in its infancy, it
will continue to grow at a phenomenal pace. For a while I was trying to focus my career
toward doing more Film/TV work, but now I feel lucky to have established credits in the
game business which is “the next big thing”.
Do you think game music needs to improve?
It has been improving, and will continue to do so. Now that the
sound quality is on a par with Film/TV, people will start to tune in to the possibilities
that are available in games. Music is a huge element in telling a story. To quote Steven
Spielberg, "Sound and music make up more than half of communicating a story, greater
even than what you're seeing..."
Reviews
of soundcards, speakers, headphones and MP3 players.
- iRock! BLiNG MP3/CD/FM Player
A new review of the iRock! BLiNG MP3/CD/FM Player has been posted on
ViperLair. The review is very positive concluding you are unlikely to find a better player
in this price range or even $100 above it.
- Sony MDR-V300 Headphones
Mikhailtech has done a review of Sony MDR-V300 Headphones. They found it to offer "outstanding
performance" considering the price ($50), especially in DVD movies thanks to
very strong (or perhaps exaggerated?) and deep bass.
- Samsung SM-332 Combo Drive
Neoseeker has posted a Samsung SM-332 Combo Drive Review, which offers 32X12X40X
(write, rewrite, read) functionality as a CD-RW drive, and also reads DVDs as a 12X
DVD-ROM. They found it to perform very well and well worth the $80-90USD street price.
Other sound news
- Creative Technology Reports Second Quarter
Results
Creative Technology has announced financial results for the second quarter of fiscal year
2003, ended December 31, 2002. Sales for the second quarter
were $230.9 million, in line with the Company's guidance. This compares to sales of $249.5
million for the same quarter of last year. Creative achieved net income for the second
quarter of $18.9 million. Excluding the effects of the 3Dlabs acquisition, Creative
achieved second quarter net income of $23.3 million. This compares to last year's second
quarter net income of $26.3 million.
Commenting on the quarter, Craig McHugh, president of Creative Labs,
Inc. noted, "Our strategy to leverage the Creative brand with a broadening range of
products outside of the PC played an important part in our success during the holiday
quarter. We saw strong demand in the quarter for some of our newest products including our
NOMAD MuVo and NOMAD Zen, which helped us to achieve our revenue, margin and profit goals
in what proved to be a difficult quarter for many retailers and the tech industry as a
whole. Approximately 50% of our revenues in the second quarter came from products outside
the PC, including our NOMAD digital audio players, Cambridge SoundWorks and Creative
branded speakers, and our family of WebCams. Revenues from our NOMAD family of digital
audio players, including the MuVo and NOMAD Zen, were up over 100% year-over-year; and we
also generated the highest-ever revenue contribution from our speaker business during the
quarter. As we continue to broaden our product offerings, we believe we can appeal to an
even broader base of mass market consumers, beyond our traditional PC market."
For all the financial details check out the press
release.
- VIA Launches True24™ Initiative
VIA Technologies has announced the True24™ Initiative. "With audio becoming an
increasingly important element of the PC, the True24 Initiative is an excellent way to
forward our goal of the PC taking on a central role as the home entertainment
center," commented Richard Brown, Director of Marketing at VIA Technologies, Inc.
"The True24 Initiative will also be an effective way for VIA to take a leadership
role in educating consumers about audio performance, and to deliver our latest audio ideas
and solutions." Along with VIA's drive for higher
standards, the True24 Initiative also aims to set out a clear standard for 24-bit
performance, to help reduce current consumer confusion about what constitutes a true
24-bit solution. You can find more details in the full press release.
- SRS Labs' Circle Surround 5.1 to Be Utilized
During Coverage of Winter X Games VII
SRS Labs has announced that Circle Surround® ("CS") 5.1 technology will be
utilized by ESPN during coverage of Winter X Games VII from Aspen, Colorado. The Games
will be televised Jan 30 - Feb 4 on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC Sports. SRS Circle Surround had
previously been featured during ESPN's NFL and NBA telecasts, and similar to those events,
the Circle Surround logo will be displayed before and after each CS-encoded Winter X Games
telecast. You can find
more details in the press release.
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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