Installation and Drivers

Installation was painless. Just install the card, then point it to the CD when Windows asks for drivers. The default driver install adds three items to device manager: the primary sound driver, a basic XG MIDI software synthesizer, and a legacy audio driver for DOS SoundBlaster support.

After the driver is installed, all of the configuration options are accessible via an icon in Control Panel. This provides a centralized interface for tweaking your sound configuration. For example, you can specify whether you are using headphones or speakers for 3D sound effects, enable or disable troubleshooting modes for DirectSound3D and DirectSound, and enable various global MIDI effects. And for the karaoke lover in all of us, you can even add reverb and echo to the microphone input!

If you want the full-blown XG MIDI software synthesizer or any of the other optional bundled applications, you'll need to install them from the driver CD afterwards. Unfortunately, the Waveforce is saddled with one of the most tedious and annoying autoplay installation programs I've ever seen. Unless you have a lot of time to waste on pointless multimedia antics, I suggest you skip the autoplay installation routines and just run the setup executables directly from the CD.