New chip promises four times the processing power of the EMU 10K1 processor used in the SB Live
The Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live!, announced back at Fall Comdex 97 in Las Vegas, exploited better than any previous Creative Labs product the audio hardware expertise the company bought when it acquired E-mu Systems Inc., back in February 1993 and, more recently, Ensoniq Corp., in Jan. 1998. Both E-mu and Ensoniq are brand names well known to professional musicians and, in fact, both brands still hold important positions in the pro music marketplace with their dedicated synthesizers and sampler modules and keyboards.
The SB Live! family of cards, based on the technically impressive EMU 10k1 digital signal processor, were capable of cranking out 1,000 MIPS of raw processing power and served well to maintain Creative Labs' dominance of the PC audio hardware market. Now, the company is poised to release a new generation of audio hardware it says will further blur the boundaries between consumer audio and pro-quality sound.
Just as the SB Live! finally did away with the "8-bit playback/16-bit record" limitations of its predecessor's lame-o "full duplex" operation, the new chip, dubbed "Audigy," addresses some of the limitations of the 10K1. Most notably for musicians, the Audigy marks the first time that Creative has committed to shipping ASIO drivers as a standard component. Frustrated musicians were forced to use a third-party driver hack with the SB Live series cards, or make do with the Windows DirectX driver, after Creative dragged its feet for more than four years without fulfilling a promise it made to ship ASIO drivers for the SB Live.
The Audigy also promises to finally consolidate support for 5.1 audio standard. Dolby Digital 5.1 is the standard for DVD. The number "5.1" alludes to the specification's support for connection of up to five satellite speakers plus a subwoofer. Currently, the Sound Blaster Live is available in a confusing number of variations with and without support for the 5.1 "surround sound" home entertainment standard.
All of the Audigy-based sound cards will have another useful innovation, too: an onboard FireWire I/O port. FireWire (or SB1394 as Creative calls it, further confusing a standard with too many names already!) can be used to transmit audio data, but it has gained wide acceptance as a quick and easy method of transferring digital video information between computers and DV cameras. FireWire -- also known by the ungainly moniker IEEE1394 or the more mellifluous "i.LINK" name offered by Sony -- represents an effective and reasonably speedy (400 Mbps) way of connecting hard drives, CD-writers, scanners and other PC-connected peripherals. Creative Labs is touting a further application for the high-speed serial standard: as a network gaming interface. (Recent Windows releases support general-purpose local area networking via IEEE1394, as well.) As with the much slower (12Mbps) USB 1.1, FireWire is a strictly "plug-and-play" affair -- devices don't need to be powered down before they are connected or disconnected. Surprisingly, though, the Audigy SB1394 currently does not support audio input. 3DSoundSurge.com has details.
The Audigy also addresses another limitation of the EMU10K1 digital signal processor: the inability to vary sample rates from the hard-wired 48KHz rate. This design decision kept the SB Live from effectively addressing "prosumer" musician markets, despite their support of MIDI, digital I/O and, in the case of the high-end APS audio production system also based on the 10K1, other advanced features targeting the "serious musician." The 10K1 chip's 48KHz only design forced audio producers to run a separate sample-rate conversion utility for such tasks as CD mastering.
The Audigy supports 44.1 (CD quality) 48KHz (DAT quality) and 96KHz (exaggerated marketing claim) sample rates, as seen in this screen shot, nabbed from an Audigy fan site based in Russia. It should be noted, however, that this 96K rate is not a "true" sampling rate, when it comes to recording, so caveats must apply here. (See Tech-Report.com for details.) The recording function is still done at 16 bit/48 kHz.
But, as we noted back in 1997, in our introductory remarks to the SB Live, it's gaming enthusiasts that make up the bulk of the market for Creative Labs products, and the Audigy's design and software bundle is a clear reminder that Creative Labs hasn't forgotten this. The Audigy further refines and promotes the Creative Labs "standard" known as Environmental Audio Extensions ("EAX"). This feature, via an EAX application programming interface, delivers realistic 3-D placement and reflection of sounds in the virtual worlds game developers create. When a gamer explores a damp cave in an EAX-enabled 3-D shooter, the sound will have 3-D spatialization effects consistent with the echoes one might hear in a real cave. If water drops from the ceiling, that, too, will be sonically positioned and treated for an appropriately authentic effect. Those familiar with the SB Live will already know what I'm talking about; those with four speakers or 5.1 setups also know how much benefit is derived from a surround-sound speaker setup. In a word: lots.
Back in the late '90s, many gamers felt that the competing Aureal A3D audio standard delivered better 3-D spatialization than Creative's EAX. Oddly, the Audigy's new drivers have apparently incorporated none of Aureal's technology -- despite the fact that Creative Labs acquired the intellectual property rights to the A3D technology after a protracted legal battle between the two companies in Y2K resulted in Aureal declaring bankruptcy and, after the customary round of executive resignations, Creative ended up buying Aureal's assets. Apparently, the Audigy and its EAX Advanced HD spatialization technology was far enough along in development that, by the time it had Aureal in its pocket, Creative Labs felt their own implementation was superior to A3D. Now, the company says it has no intention to ever using it.
Aureal's market misfortunes were, perhaps more than its technological merits, the key to EAX's success. Whatever the reason, it gained wide support in games as developers exploited the system’s acoustic modeling extensions to Microsoft’s DirectX/DirectSound. Now, sadly, it seems doomed to fade away.
Currently, the Audigy family of products (including a top-of the-line Platinum eX model complete with an external version of the "LiveDrive" audio module featuring analog and digital I/O connectors, non-standard MIDI ports, game port, volume control, infrared sensor and FireWire jack) is planned for the PC only, with shipment expected to commence in Sept. at various price-points, depending on the model. As was the case with the SB Live, the Audigy family also includes specialized "X-Gamer" and MP3+" editions, a Platinum version with a drive-bay mounted LiveDrive and a home entertainment-oriented version designed for the Asian market (only), as well. Creative Labs confirms that the Windows 2000 WDM drivers are also compatible with Windows XP, and says the drivers have been sent to Microsoft for WHQL certification. A website-based update will be available in Oct, claims the core developer on the iexbeta.com website. See the Creative Labs press release for details....
There is one Audigy feature that's generating more talk than all the features combined: The new chip will also act as a copyright cop, via a technology called ContentPass, designed to police the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials. This is a "feature" we suspect not everyone will be looking forward to having.
It is likely that Creative Labs will address the Mac market sooner or later but, considering that an SB Live product for the Mac just started shipping earlier this year (and still isn't really working all that well), we think Mac users might be thankful that Creative hasn't put the SB Live completely behind it yet. (With that said, we're disturbed by recent reports of layoffs among the Mac division that suggest that the product might die an untimely death if sales don't pick up.)
See www.soundblaster.com for additional details about the technology behind Audigy. It's also worth mentioning that the Audigy drivers, also work with the SB Live and APS. The new drivers deliver, at least on a system on which the user has made the extra effort to perform a "clean installation" of the operating system and sound card hardware, audio latency values as low as 2 milliseconds in audio applications using ASIO drivers. Unfortunately, Creative Labs says "These drivers are not intended for use with Live! products. Early testing revealed instabilities when used with products from the Live! series," so standard caveats, of course, apply. However, some users believe this to be little more than the standard party line to encourage people to upgrade.
Time will tell whether this apparent similarity to the SB Live! means that the Audigy will also suffer from data corruption problems on systems using the VIA 686B Southbridge chip. Although we won't know for sure until we get our hands on a review unit, it appears that the Audigy's 96KHz maximum sample rate is not achieved through some form of interpolation or other software trickery, as this feature does not work on the Live! series cards. We'll publish further findings, and attempt to verify Creative Labs' claim of a 100dB signal-to-noise ratio, after our tests are complete.
Currently, we know of one disappointing omission: Creative has confirmed that the Audigy will not be able to encode 3D audio in Dolby Digital AC3 format for playback on AV receivers & speakers. Fortunately, there are a number of third-party software applications that can do that for filmmakers and others who wish to create a Dolby Digital soundtrack.
The new Audigy MP3+ is now shipping. 3DSoundSurge.com has a review.
In related news, E-MU, a division of Creative Technology Ltd., on Sept. 12, 2001 announced the launch of SoundFont.com, a new, independent web site focused on the SoundFont format of downloadable sound technology used in the popular Sound Blaster Live!, AWE 32, AWE 64, Audigy, and E-MU APS and E-card sound cards. The site features news and information on SoundFont technology, as well as the opportunity to download SoundFont banks over the web. The web site URL is: www.soundfont.com. Read more at Harmony Central.
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