3D Sound Effects

3D sound drives the market

Like video cards, the real action in the sound cards market is in the area of 3D. Just about anybody can create a video card today that handles basic 2D tasks competently-heck, even dirt cheap Trident video cards have great 2D. The real art lies in handling 3D effectively. 3D sound algorithms require some serious math-it isn't just a sound card, it's a sound accelerator. I can already hear the cries of the audio purists. "There is no such thing as 3D sound!", they say. Well, consider this: is what you see on your monitor when you play Quake really 3D? It is, in fact, a clever illusion of 3D displayed on a flat 2D surface. If your eyes can accept that illusion as 3D, certainly your ears can be similarly fooled.

Of course, sound is extremely subjective. Some people (and I must admit I am one of these people) find 3D sound very compelling, while others can barely hear the difference. The bottom line, as always, is to listen and decide for yourself.

What's big in 3D sound?

Whatever your thoughts on the legitimacy of 3D sound, I can assure you that it is a giant step up from stereo. The Yamaha Waveforce uses licensed Sensaura HRTF (Head Related Transfer Function) algorithms to generate 3D sounds, through any of the A3D, EAX, or DirectSound 3D APIs. In my testing, the A3D support was limited to old A3D 1.0 titles like Jedi Knight. The EAX support, on the other hand, worked with every new title I threw at the card: Myth II, Half-Life, Thief: The Dark Project, you name it. I was pleasantly surprised to see how well this card worked with all EAX titles.

The EAX reverb effect was audible in every EAX enabled game I tested. In my opinion, games abuse the 26 EAX presets by making every situation a theatrical showcase for echo and reverb, even if it's wildly inappropriate. And the hard boundaries are unrealistic. You'll be in a corridor jam-packed with reverb and then a split second later you're in a room with cavern-like echoes. But that's a development issue, and not a fault of the card. Reverb, when used appropriately, does sound great. Solid EAX support is very good news.

It's not all rosy

The bad news is that the 3D sound effects were weaker than the Monster Sound MX300. Unlike the Sound Blaster Live!, the Waveforce does not support four speaker output, so it cannot fall back to four speaker positioning to simulate 3D, either. The 3D positioning effects were present, but they were less convincing than what I've heard from the Aureal chipsets. It would be premature to fault Sensaura's 3D design for this however, and I'd certainly like to see one of their 4-speaker cards (particularly the Terratec boards) for more comparisons.