Cheap surround sound?
Written: Jan 30 '01 (Updated Jan 30 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Cheap, various 3d sound format support, 4 speaker and digital out
Cons: Lacking Win2K support, driver updates slow
The Bottom Line: It's a decent sound card, but not outstanding. There are better cards for the price (or a little more).
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| clicq's Full Review: Guillemot Maxi Sound Fortissimo |
I bought this sound card when I built a new computer. I picked it mainly for its price and 4 speaker and digital output support. I paid about $50 about 6 months ago.
Hardware
This card is based on Yamaha's YMF7xx chipset (if you care). It has DirectSound/DirectMusic/DirectSound3D support and supports something like 32 streams (don't quite remember). Surround sound support is supplied through Sensura technology, which is capable of emulating A3D and EAX with full support for DirectSound3d.
Enough about the card. Onto my experience...
Installing the card wasn't too hard. It's a pretty short PCI card, so finding room for it shouldn't be a problem. I installed the driver with no problems in Windows 98. The card installs a separate control panel for it, through which you can specify things like to enable 4 speaker output or digital output or to enable/disable 3d acceleration. However, under Win2k, I had to download a driver off the web, and the driver is not as fully featured as it is under Win98. For example, there's no 4 speaker output! Also, this card is support in Linux through the ALSA driver.
As for quality, contrary to other opinions, I did not notice a quality difference between this card and my other sound card, a Turtle Beach Montego A3Dxstream. And I have some big speakers (I feed the output into a stereo system). I don't detect any distortion turning the volume up, but then again, I'm not an audiophile. One thing I did notice is the volume on this card is noticeably lower than on other cards (I have to turn volume sliders pretty high.)
Gaming on the other hand, is slightly more disappointing. The 3d sound support slows my computer down too much to be used (but my PC is a little underpowered - 266mhz). Plus, it make enough of a difference when playing games to justify the drop in framerate. But then again, that's the case with most cards :).
I have not yet used the digital output, so I can't comment on that yet.
As for the software, I didn't use anything that came with the card.
I would like to mention the driver updates, or lack thereof. I am using drivers that are nearly 9 months old (from around last August). It wouldn't bother me if all the features were implemented, but I'm still waiting for my 4 speaker support in Win2k! (The Win98 driver is fine though.)
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 50
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Epinions.com ID:
clicq
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Reviews written: 54
Trusted by: 4 members
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