As PCI bus becomes the standard way of attaching sound cards and other plug-in boards to PCs, the competition is heating up between manufacturers of new 3D sound cards that take advantage of the increased bandwidth PCI offers over traditional ISA bus. Sound in the world of ISA-based desktops has been, and still is, dominated by Creative Technology Ltd’s 2D SoundBlaster card, a name which has become almost synonymous with computing audio. 3D PCI sound cards enable sounds to originate from positions anywhere around a listener, providing the 360-degree surround or 3D sound. It’s mostly intended for game players as PCs do yet offer a sound experience equivalent to the home hi-fi. By year-end all PCs should be shipping with PCI and standard PCs which cost more than $1,300 should all come equipped with 3D, three-speaker sound built in. Aureal Semiconductor Inc claims its 3D algorithm and Vortex2 chipset – effectively a frozen version of the software – provides more advanced audio features and is technologically at least a year ahead of Creative Technology’s own 3D work (the two are also in patent litigation). Aureal’s technologies support the company’s own A3D and Microsoft Corp DirectSound3D APIs. A slew of game companies are using the Aureal API – Microsoft’s DirectSound API will take some time to mature, Aureal says – in new games which will ship in time for the holiday buying season. The chip-set is shipping on a $99 Monster Sound card from Diamond Multimedia Systems Inc. Some PC manufacturers integrate the Aureal technology directly on to motherboards, including Dell and Compaq with another top-tier company said to be in the pipe – or resell the add-in boards. Although PCI cards can provide bandwidth capability which exceeds the 44.1KHz used by home CD players – Aureal says its chip support 48KHz DAT-quality sound processing – higher quality chip and speaker technologies will be required before consumers are likely to use their PCs in place of hi-fis as a home audio system.
