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Skip Mcllvain From Aureal
Semiconductor
Interviewed : Skip McIlvaine / Aureal
Interviewed by : Mark Muschett
Date : July 20th 1998
Skip McIlvaine, at Aureal Semiconductor, has been
kind enough to answer a few questions which relate to th e Vortex2 board and why specific
manufacturers are being selected to support the vortex2 chipset.
3DSS: Thanks for
the taking the time to answers these questions Skip. As a little preface, I just want to
indicate that for the most part I am going to do my best to stay away from the questions
that have been "debated" over the past few weeks. However, there are a couple of
questions that are just burning to get out and they are competing API and hardware
related. Anyway, enough of the preamble. Can you take a few moments to tell our readers a
little about Aureal?
McIlvaine: Sure, my pleasure.
3DSS: Was hardware (i.e Vortex/Vortex 2) in the original business plan for
Aureal or was licensing of the API the independent hardware vendors the original
direction? In that same line, how much influence did the success of the original Monster
Sound have on the decision to proceed with the Vortex chip?
McIlvaine: Vortex was in the plan from the very beginning, but we found
that we were in a "chicken and egg" situation. PCI audio hadn't taken off yet
and we needed something specific to justify the added bandwidth and processing power of
the PCI bus, and to differentiate our offering from the other players in the market (i.e.
A3D). We knew that gamers (and computer buyers in general) don't buy hardware just for the
sake of having the best hardware, but instead buy hardware that is going to add something
special to their software experience (i.e. A3D).
While we were putting the finishing touches on the Vortex chip we thought we should get
started with creating awareness in the market for A3D and Aureal so we packaged A3D in a
"licensable" form and sold it to Diamond, Oak, Cirrus Logic, etc. The
success of the Monster Sound not only gave us confidence in A3D and PCI, but had helped to
create demand for the API and the hardware that could support it.
No developers wanted to support A3D if there wasn't any hardware, and no hardware guys
wanted A3D if no games supported it. This was our "chicken and egg"
situation in brief. Diamond and Aureal actively worked with LucasArts, GT Interactive and
others to create the first A3D titles before the original Monster Sound shipped in April
of 97. Since then it has been my job to advertise the benefits of A3D to developers
and support them in their implementation of A3D.
Aureal is an audio company. We produce products beyond APIs, algorithms, and
silicon. We are into "raising the bar" in all aspects of audio, whether it
be for PCs, home theatres, or music and sound recording. We knew right off the bat that we
couldn't push A3D without dedicated hardware and couldn't have developed A3D without our
patents and unique knowledge of psycho-acoustics. Understanding the whole picture
will benefit the end-user in each market, as will our dedicated organizational groups (we
have a dedicated PC audio group, home theatre group, etc.).
3DSS: Skip, perhaps this is a
little to contentious a question, but do you care to speculate as to why Creative was so
slow to move into the PCI sound card market and as a follow up, would you agree that if
Creative had been at the front of the line in terms of PCI sound card development that
there would have been no room in the market for a company like Aureal, given Creative's
established name and huge marketing muscle?
McIlvaine: Creative's strength definitely seems to be in sales and marketing.
Aureal's strength is in technology. We are very confident that our core PCI audio
architecture and technology is superior to anything else in the market. Therefore, we
think that our products will be successful, independent of how quickly or slowly Creative
gets their products out. That said, we recognize that the transition to DirectSound,
positional 3D audio, and PCI have put Creative back at "Square 1" with the rest
of the audio players. This has helped level the playing field and allowed us to move
fast and get great exposure, while others have been slower to recognize new
opportunities. As a result we are in a great position today: great, leading edge,
second generation technology and key strategic partners like Diamond, Dell and Compaq who
can easily match Creative with brand name recognition and marketing muscle (see our latest release )
3DSS: Keeping in my Creative line of questioning for a moment
longer (sorry!), the specs for the SoundBlaster Live! show that the card will deliver
roughly 1,000 MIPS of audio processing power, support for up to 8 speakers, support 131
audio channels with 64 dedicated to output with two Live! cards possible on the PCI bus
with one card dedicated for sound effects and the other for DirectSound.
Now aside from the idea of the two cards on the PCI bus (given that anyone who would
go that far would likely be running 2 voodoo 2 boards making the PCI bus too valuable
commodity to run two sound cards), this sounds pretty impressive to me.
As such, I have a few questions about Aureal based technology using the Sound Blaster
Live! as a backdrop.
First, given the current limitations of A3D 1.2 in terms of 3D channels and recent
comments from Mark Rein of Epic regarding Unreal needing 16 3D sound channels how does the
existing crop of Vortex based cards and licensees such as the Monster Sound line compare
to the upcoming SB Live with respect to usable 3D output?
McIlvaine: Comparing Vortex 1 to SB Live is a bit of "apples and
oranges." Current Vortex cards have been shipping for many months and are
available for $69 or less. SB Live was announced in November '97, but isn't shipping yet,
so all we know are marketing specs and a rumored price of around $200, which puts it into
an entirely different category than Vortex 1. A better comparison to Vortex 1 are probably
the Creative/Ensoniq PCI64 cards priced at around $79-99. We think, that at that end
of the market, Vortex 1 offers a much better value. For example, Vortex 1 based
solutions offer 48 audio processing channels across the PCI bus compared to 3 channels on
the Creative PCI64 (the PCI 64 processes all audio on the host and uses the sound card for
final output only). Unlike the PCI64, Vortex 1 also doesn't require 4 speakers to get
3D audio.
Now, the more obvious comparison to SB Live will be Vortex 2 based products. And trust me,
Vortex 2 will blow right past the performance specs that you mention. For example (using
the same method as Creative to count channels), we support 192 audio channels, 96
dedicated to output.
SB Live and Vortex 2 will be available around the same time this fall. Vortex 2 is a
high-end gamer's solution while SB Live seems to be more aimed at MIDI
musicians. Vortex 2 will be more affordable than SB Live, especially if you consider
that SB Live will require 4 speakers to do decent 3D audio (which adds to the overall cost
and hassle).
Vortex 2 will support more playback environments better (headphones and 2 speakers) and
will support more than 4 speakers (up to 8 as of the latest Vortex spec). Vortex 2
and A3D 2.0 are also the only products that truly understand geometry based acoustics in a
game (SB Live's thing is just preset reverbs) and will be the only way to experience true
Wavetracing. Vortex 2 and A3D 2.0 will also benefit from better title support and the
added reliability and stability of a second-generation device.
About MIPS: this has been used too often as a marketing ploy and is indicative of some
companies' obsession with often meaningless marketing numbers. MIPS is not a good
indicator of performance because no two MIPS are alike. For example, Vortex 2 has the
equivalent of over 2000 Pentium MIPS, but we don't quote it that way because all MIPS are
not created equal. What matters are the useable features and meaningful stats.
3DSS: Why,
unlike Diamond, did Aureal chose to go with only 2 speaker support on the Vortex reference
design?
McIlvaine: Vortex was originally designed as an OEM part. That is, it was
intended for motherboards and add-in cards that the large PC-OEMs like Dell and Compaq
shipped so many of. These manufacturers required an AC'97 compliant CODEC. Currently
there are no AC'97 compliant CODECs that support 4 speaker output. Vortex and A3D by
definition support 2 or 4 speakers, but in the current AC'97 based Vortex offerings this
feature is not supported.
Aureal also understood that most gamers were not going to run out and buy 4 speakers
(whether because of price, setup hassles, or other reasons) and A3D sounds just great in 2
speakers or headphones. Vortex was designed to give the highest performance to the
largest segment of the market, and 4 speaker support was not necessary, as the Diamond
Monster Sound was already there to satisfy those hard-core gamers that wanted this
feature.
By the time Vortex 2 ships, 4 channel AC'97 CODECs will be available, so the Vortex 2
reference design will have 4 speaker support.
3DSS: Now the moment I have
been waiting for (and likely you too after all this pressure from the competition that I
have been throwing at you) What can you tell us about the Vortex 2 in terms of new
features? Will issues with Unreal be resolved by the Vortex 2 (including CPU resource
usage performance issues as pointed out by Mark Rein or Tim Sweeny)?
McIlvaine:Vortex 2 will be officially announced very very soon. You will
have to wait until then to get all the juicy bits, but I can confirm much of what you have
probably already heard:
Vortex 2 features a 100% hardware A3D algorithm. This implementation is undeniably
faster than the current Vortex A3D software implementation and considerably faster than
the current DSP hardware A3D implementations (Monster Sound, Xitel Storm 3D, etc.).
This new algorithm is not coded for general-purpose DSPs like the Analog Devices 2181 (on
the Monster Sound) or the Oak OTI-611 (on the Xitel Storm 3D), but instead it is a
hard-wired algorithm burned into the chip in specific hardware blocks. The Vortex 2 A3D
implementation also benefits from longer HRTFs (for even better A3D positional quality)
and more concurrent A3D sources (at least 16) all rendered in hardware. All current and
future A3D titles run faster and sound more convincing, while surrounding the listener in
more sounds, and at a higher output rate of 48Khz.
Other features of Vortex 2 include a 96 stream PCI interface (96 output channels, 32 input
channels, and 64 effects processing channels), full support of A3D 2.0 and Aureal
Wavetracing features, headphone, 2-speaker, 4-speaker, and more than 4-speaker support,
DirectSound and DS3D acceleration, hardware wavetable, hardware 10-band graphic eq for
better tone control, accelerated gameport, near 100% SBPro legacy support in true DOS,
S/PDIF support, DLS and DirectMusic support, support for many operating systems (DOS,
Win31, Win95, Win98, WinNT4, WinNT5, OS/2, etc.), etc.
Aside from the beefier stats and performance of Vortex 2, Aureal's Wavetracing technology
is the most exciting. This puts sound on the PC way ahead of graphics in terms of
realism and immersion. Developers can add support for Wavetracing and A3D 2.0 very
quickly through easy to use tools, and they also have complete control over every aspect
of the aural environment, if they so desire. Of course, they can approach A3D
2.0implementation all along this scale, providing the best mix of ease and realism for
their particular project.
Vortex 2 is also planned to support the "enumeration" of audio devices. You will
be able to chain multiple Vortex sound cards together and benefit from all the additional
sources. It's just like SLI for graphics.
Finally, Unreal promises to run much faster on Vortex 2 than anything else out
there. Now that everything is done completely in hardware, Unreal can off-load all
sound processing to Vortex 2 and free up CPU cycles to chew on all those gorgeous
graphics, and believe me: it sounds AWESOME on Vortex 2! In Unreal, you can turn on
all the audio bells and whistles and set the quality as high as possible on Vortex 2
without hurting performance and frame-rate one bit. In preliminary testing we're
actually seeing 10-20% frame rate increases in A3D/Vortex 2 mode compared to standard ISA
based stereo rendering! So Vortex 2 will not only sound incredible, but also speed
up Unreal at the same time.
3DSS: What about A3D
2.0? Will we have to wait for the Vortex 2 release to hear A3D 2.0 in action? Will A3D 2.0
on its own address any of the performance issues around Unreal?
McIlvaine:A3D 2.0 will appear first in the first retail release of a Vortex 2
sound card (to be announced very very soon) and next on a PC based on Vortex 2 (also to be
announced soon). Shortly thereafter we will make drivers available to current Vortex and
Monster Sound customers. These drivers will support some of the new A3D 2.0 features
(occlusions, A2D, etc.) but for full A3D 2.0 Wavetracing (true geometry-based reflections
and occlusions) and additional A3D sources at higher quality, and for the additional
hardware acceleration, you will need a Vortex 2-based product. Much more detailed
information will be available after Vortex 2 is announced, but in the meantime you can
find a lot of stuff about A3D 2.0 at http://www.Aureal.com/tech/A3D2_0tech.html.
Although I am still not convinced that there are specific A3D performance issues in Unreal
(we tested on machines with A3D on and off and noticed very little difference). I
suspect there are other things at play here because although there were performance
problems on earlier A3D drivers, these have been cleared up. Unreal just pushes audio
to the edge and performance will suffer on all sound cards that can't keep up, A3D or
not. If Epic update Unreal with A3D 2.0 there is a very good chance optimizations can
be made for current hardware to improve performance through A3D 2.0's improved resource
management and the A2D soft emulation engine.
3DSS: Changing topic
again here Skip, there are alot of parallels we at 3DsoundSuge see between 3dfx and Aureal
in terms at equal stages of development. More specifically, in terms of developer support,
proprietary APIs (Glide and A3D), superior performance (at least today!) and customer
service. My question relates to customer service. Do you see Aureal ever offering their
own news server like 3dfx to allow users of Aureal based hardware to obtain and share
information?
McIlvaine:We noticed the similarity between Aureal and 3Dfx early on,
kinda by accident, and there are certainly areas in which we hope to provide the same
satisfaction that gamers and developers derive from 3Dfx products and services. The
optimizations of 3Dfx and A3D products help gamers appreciate the most features and best
performance out of the games available, and the APIs offer developers a broader choice to
enhance the end-user experience.
In terms of customer service, we are sincerely dedicated to providing the best support to
end-users, customers, and developers. Much is happening at Aureal to ensure, that as
we grow, programs are in place to take care of the people who are responsible for our
success, namely: the customers who hold the greatest influence, the sound card and PC
manufacturers who create the products that the end-users may have questions concerning,
and the software developers who hope to provide the most bullet-proof and enjoyable
support for our technology to the end-users.
As for Vortex and A3D newsgroups, I may be wrong, but I believe the public needs to voice
a desire for such a service. If you (or anyone out there) can inform me of the
procedure to get this going, I will get started today. I think that this is a great idea,
but I am just not as informed as I should be. ;)
Where we differ from 3Dfx and Glide is in the fact that developers don't have to choose
A3D instead of some other technology, or to code to 2 completely different APIs as a
fall-back solution. A3D 1.x sits on top of DS3D and consists of just a few simple
changes to this API. A3D 2.0 is an all-in-one API that provides the most functionality and
the best possible performance on A3D hardware, but that also completely wraps and supports
DS and DS3D. As a result, The A3D 2.0 API and engine can scale from ISA sound cards,
DirectSound accelerators, DS3D accelerators, specific accelerators (Monster Sound / A3D
1.x and SB Live / EAX), to fully enhanced A3D 2.0 (Vortex 2) sound cards. Glide does
not provide this sort of scalability and benefit across all platforms.
3DSS: Well that raps it up for now! Thanks again
Skip for taking the time to answer these questions. We at 3DsoundSurge and our readers
appreciated your time and responses.
McIlvaine:Great, thanks!
Known Specs or Features on the Vortex2
At this time of date
Vortex 2 include a 96 stream PCI interface (96 output
channels, 32 input channels, and 64 effects processing channels)
Full support of A3D 2.0 Aureal Wavetracing features
Headphone
2-speaker
4-speaker
More than 4-speaker support (up to 8 as of the latest Vortex spec)
DirectSound and DS3D acceleration
Hardware wavetable
Hardware 10-band graphic eq for better tone control
Accelerated gameport
Near 100% SBPro legacy support in true DOS
S/PDIF support
DLS and DirectMusic support,
Operating System Supports: (DOS, Win31, Win95, Win98, WinNT4, WinNT5, OS/2, etc.), etc.
Note: Some ( Vortex2 based
) cards may vary these features. |
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