Diamond: Sound Business

A quick lesson

A year ago, in order to take on Creative Lab's next-generation Sound Blaster Live, Diamond went to Aureal Semiconductors to license out the 8830 Vortex 2 chipset, an amazing sound engine which had a number of unique features. Using a proprietary method called "wavetracing," the Vortex 2 would use the 3D geometry from the actual game and mold the sonic characteristics of a sound based on that geometry. Sound would bounce along walls (reflection), high-frequency sounds would be muffled as it passes through dense structures, and much more, all done in real time. This product was the Diamond MX300, and was considered by many to be the next big step in audio.

Say goodbye to Aureal

Unfortunately for Diamond, it seems like Aureal decided to take a lesson from 3dfx (and ironically, S3), and create their own brand from their powerful sound processor. Since Aureal engineers have a hand in manufacturing every Vortex sound card produced, it was a simple decision for them to withdraw from the chip-vending business and charge full-steam into the retail and OEM market. Unfortunately, this left a few vendors out in the cold, including Diamond.

While losing the only wavetracing chipset generally available, the show must go on. There had to be a successor to the hugely successful MX300 product, especially something that could make up for the loss of the much-trumpeted geometry-modeling capabilities.

ESS, the savior

When it comes to sound, two names have the lion's share of consumers' minds: Creative Labs and Aureal. Creative of course has always developed their technologies in-house, as well as marketed, branded, and sold their products individually. Aureal is now doing the same. So where does Diamond turn to find a high-tech sound chipset still being sold to independent vendors? The answer is ESS, whose Canyon3D chipset has been charged with leading a silent revolution in sound.

The Canyon3D is a relatively new chipset, and has been on the market for only several months now, in products like the Terratec DMX. While it doesn't boast anything revolutionary over the products provided by Aureal or Creative, ESS is focused on creating an identity for itself and thus looks to innovation where it can.

While the world was waiting for Aureal to produce a driver set to allow the Vortex 2 to support more than 16 3D audio streams, ESS already had support for 32. Before SBLive!'s LiveWare 2.0 update allowed Creative's product to enhance the 3D characteristics of sound passing through the rear stereo speakers, Canyon3D already supported Head Related Transfer Functions for all four speakers. It looks like Diamond had found a solution.