There was once a time when Creative and their Sound Blaster audio cards were the thing as far as multimedia was concerned. Back in the days of yore, not to mention 486SX processors, getting your hands on a Sound Blaster Pro made you the instant king of the computing world.

Nowadays every two bit Taiwanese manufacturer like Asound as a whole line of cards just waiting to snork up your dollar. Of course, the old mantra of you get what you pay for holds true with just about every bargain bin sound card on the market. Most budget sound cards are horrible. They're adequate for the crummy speakers that are invariably attached to them, but if you want real audio output you'll need something of a slightly higher caliber. You could drop major bucks on a top-of-the-line card with built in optical ports and A3D technology and a host of other things most people don't need, or you could go with something more modest from a company that has proven itself as a maker of high quality gear.

Creative's AWE64, for instance.

The AWE64 is a very good sound card. It provides static and distortion free sound output, a moderate stack of inputs, excellent MIDI performance with three sample sets, and a gameport for less than twenty bucks. Well, that's what I paid for mine, at least. I opted for the OEM model of the card, which comes with the hardware itself and a driver CD only. Being the nerd that I am I find little need for such trivial things as packaging and documentation.

Installation is simple enough for anyone who's ever opened the case of a PC before. Take out the screw on the expansion slot door, drop in the card, put the screw back in. Windows is smart enough to find the card and set it up straight off the bat (for once) without any drivers or fuss. You only need what's on the CD if you plan on using any advanced features of the card in DOS or you want to play with the software gizmoes.

Speaking of which, the AWE64 comes with four: The Creative Multimedia Decks, a set of applications that play MIDI files and CD audio; Sound'ole, a small and efficient recording utility; Wave Studio, a waveform recorder and editor that is simple and serviceable; And the Creative Mixer, which just looks cooler than the built in Windows one.

So how does it sound? Pretty good, actually. The card provides a moderate amount of on-board amplification for nonpowered speakers, and can take them to a nice volume without making them distort or fuzz out. The line out jack sends a nice line level signal to whatever recording or secondary audio device you have in mind without mangling your sound, and the line in and microphone jacks behave exactly as you'd want them to. The card also features hardware level 3D sound simulation, which applies some manner of DSP voodoo to your audio output to make a plain stereo pair of speakers sound more like a surround system. It does a fairly good job of this, and is more than adequate for most situations. The gameport is a gameport, no strings attached, and does what you'd expect it to quite nicely.

The MIDI capability of the AWE64 is also superb. It is rivaled and bested only by multi hundred dollar professional MIDI rigs. I've yet to see a standard sound card, bargain or top-of-the-line, with a better sounding MIDI output. Unfortunately, MIDI seems to be a dying technology in this day and age, but oldschool DOS gamers will be very happy with the AWE64's performance towards that end. You even get three different synthesis methods to pick from.

I currently have seven (count them, seven) speakers attached to my AWE64, and it drives them all wonderfully. The thing's flexible- It will drive your crummy five dollar speakers with the one inch cones or it will drive your hundred dollar set of Monsoons. It'll run your ancient Harmon Kardon tuner with the 30 watt per channel output and big nasty three foot high speakers, too (as mine has been known to do).

Does it have TOSLINK optical outputs to connect to your home theatre system? No. Does it have a big enough amp on it to run your bass guitar speaker? No. Does it do a wonderful job of allowing your computer to express itself acoustically? Yes.

So there's a catch, right? Of course there is. The AWE64 is ISA only. ISA is the older flavor of internal PC expansion, and ISA slots are conspicuously absent from a majority of modern motherboards. The AWE64 may be just the card for you, but only if your motherboard supports it.

All in all the AEW64 is a good and inexpensive standalone soundcard or replacement to your PC's onboard audio hardware. Recommended.

(As always, feel free to ask me anything about this product via email or the comments box on the right.)


Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 20