Fremont, California-based Media Vision has a new add-in sound card, the Pro Audio PCMCIA, for notebook computer. The company claims it is compatible with virtually all personal computer-based games software as well as business computing applications. Based on Media Vision’s JAZZ16 16-bit audio chip set, the product offers compact disk quality sound recording and playback, is MPC and MPC2 compliant and supports MS-DOS and Windows 3.1. It is also fully backward compatible with SoundBlaster and AdLib. The card features an on-board FM synthesiser, a software controllable mixer and a game port and a built-in MIDI interface that allows control of other MIDI music synthesisers. An external music keyboard can be controlled from the card. The sound card can record and play back 16-bit stereo digital audio up to sample rates of 48KHz. An on-board audio mixer allows simultaneous recording of multiple audio sources. A 4-to-1 audio codec feature enables audio files to be stored in less disk space. The card comes bundled with a variety of software applications including ExecuVoice speech recognition software from Dragon Systems; a text-to-speech synthesiser called Monologue for Windows; and a set of applications that can be used for recording and editing digital audio and controlling the playback of audio CDs in a connected CD-ROM drive. The Pro Audio PCMCIA should be out in the US next quarter at $300. An international version is in the wings.
