Monster Sound

Last updated: February 12, 2001

Mark Muschett

Reviewers Note:

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.

Yes, another review of the now venerable Monster Sound XL from Diamond Multimedia.  However, given that we are new kids on the block and despite the fact that there are already several excellent reviews already on the web, we have to do one too!   This is more of an overview than a full blown, pick it apart review.  For one of those, look out for an unclose and personal of the Ensoniq/Creative Audio PCI as well as the miroMedia Surround.   But despite that preamble, what the hell, between Frank and I,  we might even come up with a rating for the Monster Sound! 

First Impressions:

 When the granddaddy of  accelerated PCI sound cards showed up on my door step I ripped open the Fedex package and did what all hardware junkies do, I picked up the board and looked it over.    This beast accelerates  the direct sound, direct sound 3d and A3D APIs (among others) relieving the CPU of those duties.  Next I had a quick flip though the bundled software. The bundle IMHO was a little dated from a graphical perspective, with the best of the pack ins being the western with the award winning soundtrack, Outlaws from Lucas Arts.   To be honest, Outlaws was the only one of the pack ins that resided on my hard drive for more than 10 minutes.  But I was buying a sound card not software. 

Installation:

Next I looked for the manual and not finding anything resembling a manual (while I could say "who reads em anyway" something a little more substantial would be nice).  I  proceed to pop open my case and pull out the Ensoniq Audio PCI that I had been using for 6 months. 

As customary, I had already  prepared for the installation by downloading the latest drivers from Diamond.  As a late adopter, I was going to avoid the digital joystick woes of early owners by jumping right to the latest drivers which allowed my Microsoft Sidewinder 3D Pro to function as a digital stick. 

The card fit into my free PCI slot without a problem and the drivers and utilities and patch update all installed  without a hitch. 

Contrary to some publicity from Creative, the Ensoniq Audio PCI has four speaker support so I was already setup in terms of speaker.  My computer speaker setup is somewhat unique as I have two older amplifiers powering the front and rear bookshelf  style speakers.  The this setup is only now being matched by some of the fine multimedia speakers on the market and allows me some unique flexibility's that I will cover in my review of the miroMedia Surround...but I digress. 

Configuration: 

Double clicking on the music note on the task bar then selecting "config" brings up the following screen. 

I adjusted the two outputs to external speakers, set the 4 channel mode to Quad then hit the  begin test button.   This sets a circling helicopter into action that has to be heard!  Letting the chopper rotate, I adjusted my two amplifiers to get equal volume and moved on to my next test. 

Jedi Knight 

Here  I ran into some problems with my Space Orb 360. To make a long story short (I will expand on it in our upcoming tech support page) it was a registry problem with multiple game ports and a residual axis configuration setting (despite a complete uninstall/control panel remove of the existing ports) and contrary to some other published reports the Space Orb 360 works perfectly with the Monster Sound. 

In Jedi Knight (which I had already  half completed listening to its immersive audio under it's Dolby Pro Logic sound ((via a miroMedia Surround Card ))  I had thought I was experiencing good surround sound. 

The difference between the Pro Logic sound and the A3D was night and day.  While Dolby put sounds behind me the rear channel is mono.  The A3D supporting Monster Sound let me tell exactly where the storm troopers were coming from though four discrete channels.  A truly immersive experience! 

Drivers:

The drivers have steadily improved to a very stable version 1.06.10.  Aureal has also been very prompt in releasing driver updates for the A3D portion of the card with the latest drives that fix the A3D sound problems in Unreal being version 1.2.11.   

 
 The latest drivers from Diamond  have a slider to adjust the hardware acceleration addressing some compatibility issues in games like Origin's Wing Commander Prophecy with out rebooting.   Under the older drivers it was necessary to reboot or use the excellent utility "Direct Control".  The latest drivers also improves compatibility with digital devices. 

Sound Quality: 
 
 So all the above is all very nice, but how does it sound?  Well I hinted at it in the installation section.  It sounds fantastic.  Signal to noise ratio is good with no audible hiss on my system.  MIDI is ok.  Those of you who are MIDI fans will be happy to know that the existing 32-voice hardware wave table can be removed and replaced with your favorite daughter card.  The 4 meg Roland approved MIDI daughter board shipping on the new MX200 is getting great reviews and rumor has it that Diamond will be offering an upgrade path to existing Monster Sound owners. 

Now for the meat.  DS3D and A3D.  This is not a shot a DS3D but right now the only thing I can test the DS3D on is the rolling demo of X by Ergosoft or UBI's F1 Racing Simulation.  X is all I have...not really a fair test as it is a work in progress.  Suffice to say that the DS3D support in X adds to the experience.  Can wait to see what they do with that game. 

Where the Monster Sound shines is in Jedi Knight and Unreal.  What can I say in a text review of  the A3D experience in Jedi and Unreal to convey the message.  Nothing more than it is fantastic!  Kinda like when the early adopters of 3dfx cards were trying to tell their doubting friends what GLQuake and Tomb Raider looked like.  They had to see it to believe it.  Well you have to hear it to believe it. 

"Two vs Four Speakers" 

The A3D two speaker is amazing, but you need to use headphones or stay in the "sweet spot" between your two speakers for optimum effect.  I lean heavily to four speaker mode which leaves no doubt when you are about to be plugged up the ass :). 
 

Performance:

This card is a PCI slot sound card, PCI helps the sound card 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 every time you want to hear 2 wav at once (you know, one for each ear!) 

We are going to do a real world bench test in the near future giving actual real worked performance benefits for switching to PCI, but the bottom line is do it!  A good PCI card like the Monster Sound will help you seek out a few more FPS or in a game like Unreal, add immensely to the immersive experience without having a significant impact on performance. 

Compatibility:

Not a DOS card.  It can emulate sound blaster compatibility in a dos window but this is a resource hog.  If you are upgrading and have DOS games you still like keep your old ISA card for perfect backwards compatibility via a pass through cable ala 3dfx's Voodoo line. 

If you are like me and have lost all your DOS games then who cares about backwards compatibility.   IMHO in 1998 this is not a negative against the Monster. 
 
As I noted earlier this is the first of the Monster Sound line and is being phased out in favor of the 2 speaker M80 and the 4 speaker (with better MIDI) MX200, but if you can still find it, I would take it over the M80 as you get a little more software and  the card can be found for under $100.   Have a look at Price Watch and a deal can be found while supplies last.  As I write this review I see one for $88.   At this price you get four speaker support for less that the price of the M80 which only supports two speakers.. 

Summary:

I simply give this card our "Surge of Approval" but I will go out on a limb and offer a rating of  8.0  Why not higher?  Not the old DOS compatibility issue but I need to leave room for improvements in the MX200 and other yet to be announced technologies.

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Reviewed: June 12, 98

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