The Week in Review: March 31 - April 6, 2003

Last week's features at 3DsoundSurge

Last week's sound news

Drivers and bugs

• New Terratec drivers
  Terratec has released new drivers for its DMX 6fire systems (Version 128), EWS88 MT/D, EWS88 MIC2+/8+ and EWX 24/96. They were released March 28. Also see they released new drivers (5.1.2600.11) for Aureon Sky and Aureon Space in February that I don't think we mentioned before. No mention what's new in the Aureon drivers but here's the text from the 6Fire drivers:

  5.0.2000 Build 128
  ------------------------------
  New: VST - Systemlink Support
  New: Lowest possible ASIO - Buffersize (64 Samples)
  Bugfix: Corrupted Waveplay after using ASIO

  
  5.0.2000 Build 127
  ------------------------------
  New: Final Mic2/8 adjustments
  Bugfix: Master/Slave detection didn'q work properly when Master was not the first or second card

  Thanks to Paul King for the news.

• New NOMAD MuVo Firmware Update
  Creative has released a new firmware update (Version 1.05.106) for its NOMAD MuVo Player.

New games, demos, patches and bugs

• Mafia Patch
  A new patch (v1.1) for Mafia has been released.

• Delta Force - Black Hawk Down Patch
  Owner's of Delta Force - Black Hawk Down now have the option to download the 7.45 MB v.1.1 patch as an alternative to the auto-update feature built into the game. The patch is available from Novalogic. Delta Force - Black Hawk Down is the first confirmed example of a game using its own 3D audio engine to directly access the output channels of sound cards as opposed to using DirectSound3D.

• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield music
  Several of Bill Brown's music tracks from "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield" have been posted on his website.

Reviews of soundcards, speakers, headphones and MP3 players.

• M-Audio's Revolution 7.1 sound card
  Tech-Report has done a review of M-Audio's Envy24 based Revolution 7.1 sound card. They found it to offer excellent sound quality almost on par with Terratec's DMX 6fire 24/96 and overall slightly better than Creative's Audigy2. They were less impressed with its gaming performance (CPU usage and the limit of 16 3D streams) where they consider the Audigy 2 to be the better option. They also complained a bit about limited connectivity.

  A second less detailed review of the Revolution 7.1 has been posted on Lan Addict. It's also very positive and consider it to be an excellent card for gaming. The only major complaint was the lack of game port for those that still need one. The review incorrectly states that it's the only 7.1 card available and that no games takes advantage of 7.1. As mentioned before any game supporting DS3D will support any number of speakers the 3D sound engine of your soundcard support. In this case I believe the 3D sound engine is limited to 4-speakers but that's a limitation of the current drivers and not the games.

• Hercules Digifire 7.1
  Avault has posted a detailed and overall very positive review (4.5 stars out of 5) of Hercules Digifire 7.1 soundcard even though they note the audio reproduction "falls just short of the quality a hardcore audiophile would demand".

• iAudio CW2000
  SubZeroTech has posted a review of the iAudio CW2000 from JetAudio. This unit offers MP3 player, FM tuner, and voice recorder functionality.

• Creative MegaWorks THX 6.1 650
  IGN Gear has posted a review of Creative's $400 MegaWorks THX 6.1 650. They found it to perform very well and gave it an overall score of 9.2 out of 10. When it comes to the complaints of the use of burst power rating (which is basically the same as Klipsch used for its ProMedia series) instead of RMS I think it's worth noting that the burst rating is still RMS it's just not continuos but limited to about 30 seconds. Also worth noting that RMS ratings can be rather misleading, that is two systems with identical RMS number may differ quite a bit in loudness. Thanks to Kuen Foo for the pointer.

• Labtec Spin 50 Speaker
  Extension Tech has done a review of Labtec's 2-piece budget speaker the Spin 50. Extension Tech found them to perform very well considering the price (usually $8 but currently it's free after the mail in rebate according to the review).

• Samsung DVD-V2500 DVD/VCR Combo Unit
  A very positive review of the Samsung DVD-V2500 DVD/VCR Combo Unit has been posted on TweakNews.net.

• Samsung SM-348 CD-RW/DVD
  Another review of Samsung SM-348 CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive has been posted on ExtensionTech. It features specs of 48X CD-ROM, 48X CD-R, 24X CD-RW and 16X DVD-ROM. They found it to perform very well and gave it an overall score of 95%.

• Samsung 32X10X40X12 DVD/CDRW Combo Drive
  GideonTech has posted an overall very positive (score 10 out of 10) review of Samsung $80 32X10X40X12 DVD/CDRW Combo Drive.

Other sound news

Upcoming features at 3DsoundSurge

• Reviews 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.
  

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