Product: Creative Labs SoundBlaster AWE64 Gold
From: Creative Labs (http://www.soundblaster.com)
Price: about $250 (full version; "value" edition is available for about $100)
Drivers for: Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, Linux (partial support), etc.
Pros: Easy installation; unsurpassed games and multimedia compatibility.
Cons: 32 of the unit's 64 voices are "faked"; S/N ratio is only fair. Some plug-and-play issues under Win98 may require manual configuration.
Summary: Simplicity is the watchword with this card. It automatically plugs-and-plays. 3D audio enhancement is available simply by clicking the "3D" box in the Advanced tab of the Mixer panel (which you can access by double-clicking the speaker icon in the Taskbar.) To our ears, it sounds great -- although professionals or those who judge audio on spectrum analyses rather than with their ears may wish to invest in a higher-fidelity card such as the Turtle Beach Multisound Pinnacle or the TerraTec EWS64XL.
The Gold version of the AWE64 card includes several enhancements over the Value Edition: 4MB of onboard RAM instead of 512K; bundled games and additional utilities; an S/PDIF interface (a slot-cover panel is included), MIDI cables, and more. In both cases, you can add RAM to be able to access enhanced banks of "SoundFonts." The 8MB General MIDI bank is highly regarded. Without this optional expansion, though, we found the onboard ROM-based General MIDI instruments provided by the card to be a little lacklustre; the card's reverb and echo effects improved them a little, but made some sounds muddier than we like. The "WaveGuide" software synth sounds (which are not, by the way, compatible with Steinberg's Cubase VST sequencer) are quite impressive, though.
We encountered some minor complications while testing the AWE64 under Windows 98. Like many other users in the Win98 newsgroups, we noticed intermittent sound interruptions that caused, for example, our startup and shutdown sounds to not play correctly, although game audio and certain other sounds played normally. We traced the problem to the system's automatic configuration of our card's IRQ, memory and DMA defaults. Strangely, the Windows 98 Device Manager did not exhibit any evidence of conflicts, and all devices were depicted as working correctly. However, our ears told us otherwise, when WAV files played intermittently and some (but not all!) other sounds wouldn't play. By manually configuring the AWE64 to use IRQ5, DMA1, DMA5 and the memory addresses beginning at 220 and 330, we solved all problems. We also found that the card could be set to auto-configure correctly by reserving IRQ9 for it and restarting.
Thus, compatibility proved to be good with Windows 95, Win98 and Windows 2000, although not all features are currently available under NT, and the WDM drivers we tested under Win98 were troublesome on some systems. However, using the latest Creative Labs drivers, this is the card we recommend to people looking for the best choice in a "low hassle" ISA-based audio card for the PC.
Product: Audiotrix 3D XG sound card
From: Mediatrix Peripherals Inc., www.mediatrix.com; 819-829-8749
Summary: Sound Blaster Pro compatible ISA sound card features Yamaha XG soundset, multiple DSP effects.
This card is compatible with Windows 95, OS/2, and Windows NT 4.0. Unfortunately, we installed it on a system running Windows 98, which the driver we tested did NOT support. (The company says a Win98 driver will be made available later.)
We did note, however, that it lacks digital inputs or outputs -- this is an analog audio card only. MIDI in/out cables with a joystick passthru and inexpensive speakers are included.
Glossary
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