alexaugot's Full Review: Rio Diamond Monster Sound MX300
Diamond Multimedia rocks, plain and simple. They build the best graphics, sound and modem products in the world. Unfortunately, they have been bought out by S3, which is known for making sucky OEM, half-assed products that can't hold a candle to the old Diamond products. Because Diamond is now owned by S3, they will only be using S3 technology which means no more A3D for the Monster line. Too bad to, because A3D is a great gaming API, and the Monster MX300 is a great board. Ah well, there is always Creative.
To begin with, let me say that the MX300 is no longer the best board on the market. The Sound Blaster Live Platinum holds that rank. But the SBLive Platinum is also 200 bucks. The MX300 is only 100 retail, and as low as 60 if you do a little searching. It's still a great card, but it lacks the cool frills, such as digital inputs/outputs and less CPU utilization, of the SBLive.
The MX300 has 2 output lines, 1 mic line, 1 input line and one joystick port. All the input/output/mic ports are gold lined for extra conductivity with less distortion. Each of the 2 output lines are used for 2 speakers. The MX300 handles 4 speaker setup's great, and fully supports the A3D 2.0 API for gaming, so sounds really do seem to come from where they should be. The MX300 comes with Diamonds A3D control panel, which allows you to run the A3D tests, and set up speaker configurations. The Diamond drivers are pretty good, but I prefer the Aureal reference drivers. They are a hefty 15 meg download, for those of us without high speed connections ( I hate Mediaone ), but well worth if for the stability they provide.
The MX300 is great with music, providing crisp, clear sounds on my Cambridge Soundworks PCworks speakers, and on my Sennheiser RS-8 wireless headphones ( Great headphones, go read my review of them ), but where the MX300 really shines is in games. As I said before, the MX300 uses the A3D 2.0 API by Aureal. What is A3D 2.0 you ask? A3D is a tool developers use to simulate 3d sounds in games and other products. Its basically a set of mathematics equations that add depth, echo, treble and bass to sounds to make them sound like they are coming from a distance, or behind you. Its not TRUE 3d sound, but it emulates it pretty damn well. When I bought the thing, the first thing I did was boot up Half Life. Half Life is the best reason to own an A3D 2.0 card. The difference is amazing. Before I got the MX300 I was using an old AWE 64 that could handle a massive 64 voices at once, with no A3D support. Half Life sounded ok with the AWE 64. With the MX300 it sounds like a movie. Sounds come from the left and the right, and behind. Its very freaky to hear gun fire from behind you, when before all you would hear is gun fire. It adds a new dimension to the game.
The MX300, being a PCI sound card, needs to be installed. Meaning you have to take apart your computer to do it. If you know a little about computers, no problem. If you're a newbie, this could pose some trouble, especially if you're a newbie who purchased as pre-built Compaq, Gateway or whatever. The reason those things are so cheap, is because they use cheap parts. The sound card and video card are usually soldered on to the motherboard, which means you need to jumper it. That means that you need to get out your motherboard manual, and look for the sound peg, and disable it. It's a pain if you don't know much about computers to begin with. If you don't know much, ask a friend who does to guide you though it or do it for you. It's not worth paying the store to install if for you.
The MX300 does come with a software bundle, but its not much. It comes with Half Life - Day One, which is basically about 4 levels of Half Life, with no multiplayer, and Recoil, which is a kinda cool tank game that I never got into. Its not that good, and its no where near as good as the SBLive X-Gamer bundle. It also comes with some other useless demo software that's not even worth mentioning.
Overall, the MX300 is a great sound card, but its getting a little old. If I was going to buy one right now, and I wanted to spend a 100 bucks, I'd get the Sound Blaster X-Gamer pack which uses the tried and true EAX chip, and comes with a cool game bundle. If you don't care about the bundle, and you NEED an A3D 2.0 card, also take a lookie at the Xitel Vortex based board, which is as good as the Mx300 but also comes with a Digital TOS link, which is great for making MiniDisc's and other digital recordings, but is about 30 bucks more expensive.
Audio Input:
Microphone Input
Stereo Line Input
Internal CD/Modem/Aux. Input
Connectors:
MPU-401 MIDI/Game Port
Wavetable Header
MPC (CD, Modem, Aux)
Diamond MX-Link for Daughtercard upgrade
API Support:
Aureal A3D 1.0, 2.0, Microsoft DirectSound3D, Microsoft DirectSound, Microsoft DirectInput®
Operating System Support: Microsoft Windows 95/98, Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, Microsoft DOS
Minimum System Configuration:
Windows 95/98 or Windows NT 4.0
One available PCI 2.1 compliant slot
Pentium 90MHz or higher
8 MB system memory (16MB or higher recommended)
16MB free hard disk space
Powered speakers or headphones
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