3DsoundSurge Review: Trident's 4DWave-NX reference board

4dwavenx.jpg (4295 bytes)

Important Info:

Sound Card By : Trident
Price : No price given for a reference board but expect a lot less than $50 for boards using this chip
API Support : DirectSound, DS3D, EAX 1.0 and A3D 1.0 (by translating to DS3D calls, works with most but not all titles)
S/N Ratio : > 90 dB

Minimum System Requirements:

Not provided

Reviewers PC:

Mikael
- Win98
- Celeron 300a o/c 450
- 128MB PC100 ram
- Creative TNT
- 6.4 GB Quantum SE
- For four speaker testing purpose I hooked the card up to Videologic's Digi Theatre speaker system using the analog inputs and later in testing I also tried Altec Lansing's ACS54. For two speaker testing purposes I used the same speaker systems but only connecting to the front channels and for headphones testing I used a set of Sennheiser HD5570

Mark
- Win98
- Celeron 333a o/c 416
- 64MB PC100 ram
- Creative TNT
- Creative Voodoo Blaster 12 M
- 6.1 GIG EIDE HD
- For four speaker testing purpose I hooked the card up to Klipsch ProMedia v.2-400 speaker system using the analog inputs. For two speaker testing purposes I used the same system with the rear inputs removed and for AC3 output I tested with Cambridge Soundworks' DTT2500. For headphones testing I used a set of Sennheiser HD525s

Specifications

Advanced PCI DirectSound™ Accelerator
• PCI 2.1-compliant with Bus Mastering optimized for
multiple stream operation
• On-chip per voice FIFO minimizes PCI bandwidth
• Up to 20X improvement over ISA DMA on PCI bus bandwidth utilization
• Hardware multi-channel digital mixer

Advanced Wavetable Synthesizer
• 64-voices polyphony wavetable synthesizer supports all combinations of stereo/mono, 8-/16-   bits, and signed/unsigned samples
• Per channel volume and envelope control, pitch shift, left/right pan, tremolo, and vibrato
• Per channel effect processing and effect volume control for reverb, chorus, and echo
• Microsoft® DirectMusic™ support (upcoming) with unlimited downloadable samples in   system memory
• DLS1-compliant Downloadable Samples support

Full Legacy Compatibility
• Legacy game audio support with SoundBlaster™ Pro/16
  compatibility on the PCI bus
• Legacy DMA support on PCI Bus through DDMA, PC/PCI, SB-Link, or proprietary DMA   scheme.
• VirtualFM™ enhances audio experience through real-time
   FM-towavetable conversion
• MPU-401 compatible UART for external or internal synthesis
• VirtualGS™ provides General MIDI/GS command inter-
  pretation for wavetable & effect synthesis

High Quality Audio and AC ’97 Support
• 4-speaker support with Single or Dual AC97 codecs
• CD quality audio with higher than 90dB signal-to-noise ratio using an external high quality   AC ’97 codec
• AC ’97 support with full duplex, independent sample rate converter for audio recording and   playback
• On-chip sample rate converter ensures all internal operation at 48KHz
• High precision internal 26-bit digital mixer with 16- and 20-bit digital audio output

DirectSound™ 3D
• 64-voices DirectSound™ channels
• DirectSound3D™ accelerator with IID, ITD, and Doppler effects on 3D positional audio buffers
• DirectSound accelerator for volume, pan, and pitch shift control on streaming or static buffers
• QSound® QSoft3D™-based interactive 3D positional audio accelerator for DirectX™ 5 & 6

Advanced Desktop Features
• S/PDIF interface to provide high quality playback via digital stereo, compressed AC-3 audio   stream or output to consumer electronics devices. Supports 32, 44.1 and 48KHz sampling   rate
• 4-speaker support for maximum realism
• External EEPROM support for SID, SVID and power management information

Advanced Streaming Architecture
• Microsoft® WDM Streaming architecture compliant and "Re-routable endpoint" support
• Three stereo capture channels
• AC ’97 stereo recording channel through AC-link

Extras
• Fully Plug and Play PCI controller and software
• Digital Enhanced Game port enables analog joystick to emulate digital joystick performance   using the Trident- provided DirectInput™ driver. This eliminates up to 12% CPU overhead   wasted on joystick polling.
• DirectX™ timer for video/audio synchronization
• Forward pin-compatible with next generation PCI audio accelerators

Software Support
• Complete DirectX™ driver suite (DirectSound3D™, DirectSound™, DirectMusic™, and   DirectInput™) for Windows® 95, Windows® 98 and Windows 2000®
• Configuration, installation, and diagnostics under real mode DOS, Win95, and Win98 DOS   box
• Windows® 3.1 / 95 / 98 / 2000 / NT4.0 configuration, installation, and mixer program
• 1, 2, or 6 Mbytes General MIDI (GM)/General Sound (GS) compliant sample Library

Update: We still think this card works fine in most games but it's now quite clear there never will be any support for EAX 2.0 and quite uncertain if there will ever be any full featured WDM drivers. WDM drivers are required for Windows2000 and future versions of Windows (Windows XP). You can find more details on the chance of future drivers on our driver/support page

Trident was founded in 1987 and from its headquarter in Santa Clara, California they have become famous for introducing low priced products for the multimedia market e.g. graphics and sound chips. In this review we will listen to their 4D-Wave-NX reference board which will also be the last dedicated audio board in the PC market from Trident. This decision comes since they think the future in low-end audio solutions will be just software and codec. Trident will continue to sell the 4DWave-NX for the time being and will also release new drivers but don’t expect any significant new features to be added to the drivers. For 3D sound and reverb the 4DWave-NX chip uses QSound’s Q3D 2.0 engine which supports DS3D and EAX 1.0. It also features QSound’s stereo expansion technology, QXpander and 2D-3D. A couple weeks after this review we posted the a review of Hoontech’s 4DWave-NX based product, Digital-NX . Another retail card using this chip is Aztech’s PCI 288-Q3D II.