Monster Sound Original

Last updated: February 12, 2001

Frank Benfari

First Impressions:   

Update : The lack of EAX support and only 8 3D Streams make this card a poor choice for anyone that cares about 3D sound in games.

When I took this baby out of the box I was'nt too jumpy do to the fact I didnt know what capabilities A3D had at that time...I basically got it for the   *4 speaker out* support which i must say is one of the coolest options for soundcards. I plugged it in to my PCI slot and revved up my computer ... black screen , autoconfig, windows splash screen loading,etc... windows screen.... System has found new Hardware (Plug And Play) give me an O'  hell yea!!. It seems your computer detects this card with ease. I thought thats it? it saids to put in the drivers from the manufacter ( Cdrom included ). Did that and thats all, I was done, i couldnt believe that this card would take a couple of minutes to install.

This is not a Dos based card at all. You could get dos sound by emulating it which monster sound prompts at setup. By emulating dos sound, you must set your soundcard to irqs in the control panel system folder.But they most likely have it set for you as the original default irqs.  NOTE: You wont get sound if your in In real Dos.The 4 speaker support is fantastic. I have 4 speakers hooked up 2-front 2-back (obviously) When you enable your Monster SoundTask bar icon to set speakers on Quad mode ( output 1 and 2 are independent) *you will not hear midi on one set of speakers do to the fact they are independent outputs<-- this feature is best used for quad speaks on A3D DirectX games. If   enable Stereo2X mode (output 1 and 2 are identical ) - all your midi will come out both sets and wav etc...

Configuration: 

Now I must point out before I end this section that I originally had my Sound Blaster 16 card in, and i was experiencing  problems with direct sound and dos games. So my advice is to take out your old ISA sound card ( which eventually will go extinct as all future multimedia devices will abandon the ISA slots in the near future ) and replace it with the MonsterSound. This is my advice to guys if they have problems when they hook up the sound card. Since i didnt want the Midi board that was on the Monster Sound, I took my old board out and switched them, This badboy lets you put on other Wavetables. Its simple, you just pull it off  and push the other wavetable in.

Performance:

This card is a PCI slot soundcard, PCI helps the soundcard by improving data transfers which are slower on ISA slots. Performance is great on this card. Picture playing multiple wave streams at once. Meaning you can have an MP3 playing while you listen to wav files. You can listen to multiple wav files at once , no more ( there is a another application running ) sign coming up everytime you want to hear 2 wav at once .  If your on aol and your listening to an MP3 while your playing a windows pinball game and all of a sudden an instant message comes.youll hear it. But this just isnt a windows based sound card. No oh no ive tried out jedi knights and let me tell you, dont sound is no joke... nut lets leave that on the gameplay section. Now A3D takes off a load off the CPU's horsepower. If games are designed for A3D or DirectSound3D the card  will do its job and astound you.

Bundle:

Not too delighted from its software package. If you think about it, back when this card came out, there wasnt that many A3D games written. MonsterSound comes with the following A3D games: Outlaws TigerShark and Sim Copter.Not to good and not too bad. As long as i had somethin to test out my card it was fine with me, Outlaws is pretty good. Its a doom based game were your back in the western days shooting cowboys etc.. Tigershark is good, i liked it on the playstation too. Simcopter is bad for the reason that the game runs choppy and it wont let you use 3dfx or Direct3d.When they came out with this card the software that they poped in couldve been better but like as I staited not many A3D games were written back then. These are only Oem versions. The Monster also comes with Midi,Cdplayer,Wav programs you can view them seperatly or you can view them together for a nice recording system. convert CD tracks to Wavs (better be ready to handle some hard drive eatage) or record midi to wav which is pretty cool if you wanna show a friend your ass kicking wavetable sound. Looks like an old Win3.11 application player, where is the WIN 95?!

View rack Image Here

And just to test out your Wavetable board you can fool around with a cool program they put in that's called Presto Arranger, its a piano program were you can hear your wavetable as you punch away the keys and listen to the cool samples.

Compatibility:

I'll rate the gameplay compatibility on one of the best A3D games out there.JEDI KNIGHT. JediKnight is probably the best game to test this card on. I played it before and after, and when I heard the A3Dsound it got me even more hooked to the game. 2 speakers cranks out streams of voices etc..all around you that couldnt be heard before on stereo mode.This is were the card is worth its money. There is no reason not to buy the card, do to the fact that by the end of this year A3D will most likely be a standard 3daudio gaming hardware.When you play Jedi, you hear sounds on top of your head from rear to front to side, its sounds real! I'll give it a 8.5

Summary:

The only thing that is killing this Card and all others is the A3D support. A3D support right now is a not to good, But if you drive yourself into the links section you'll see how many games are in development. A3D is just starting to get bigger. From what I have experienced, the card is good without the A3D (its pci 4-speaker support and a custimizable Daughterboard. Not to many lows but a big low in A3d support and software.This card is not for dos games.You must emulate dos sound.

The price for this card is extremely cheap! for 150$ and all its features, and along with that you get a 50$ mail in rebate and a free Jedi knight:Pathways to the force CD.more pros at the bottom by features.

Bottom Line....get the card , the first Diamond A3d card and possibly the best .Features say it all. We gave it a 8.5 Earning it the first *Surge Of Approval* award.

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Reviewed: May 24, 98

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