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Maxi Sound Fortissimo
A soundcard with EAX and A3D
Manufacturer: Guillemot
Base Chip: Yamaha YMF744B Engine
Form: PCI 2.2
Compatible with: DirectMusic (hardw), DirectSound (hardw) EAX and A3D 1.0
System Req: Pentium 166Mhz MMX or higher/compatible, free PCI 2.2 slot, 16Mb Ram, Win95 OSR2/Win98/WinNT 4.0, Cd-Rom drive
Retail Price: 2.900 Belgian Francs (around 93$)
Date posted: 15 March 2000
Written By: Bjorn
Introduction
Many many years ago, we were all very happy when we got our first sound card, namely a "Creative Labs" Soundblaster. Most of us stayed with Creative Labs because lets face it, they were at that time the 'King of Audio'.
There were other brands too, cheap ones but they didn't deliver the audio quality that Creative gave us with our very first Sound Blasters, Sound Blasters PRO and the Sound Blaster 16.
Years later, the Audio industry has changed a lot. Not only high quality audio was important, but 3D-positional and quadraphonic audio was also introduced into the industry.
Now, today we have several high quality sound cards that are working with the best 3D-sound API's that are available. Creative Labs has one, Aureal and Diamond Multimedia (now with S3) also produced their own 3D sound cards.
But many of the gamers went with Creative Labs and their new 3D sound card, the Sound Blaster Live!. But the products from Creative aren't cheap so others chose for sound cards from Aureal or Diamond (which weren't cheap also). These were all pretty good decent sound cards but many of these didn't had all the SEVERAL 3D API's like EAX, A3D 1.0, DirectMusic and DirectSound together.
Now the well-known hardware manufacturer Guillemot came with a solution and produced the Maxi Sound Fortissimo, a 4-channel digital sound card which integrates DirectMusic and DirectSound in hardware, EAX and A3D 1.0.
Gimme the specifications!
Well, we all know that there are certain people that read this technical specifications and somehow I can understand them because it is important to know what kind of product it is and if you are comparing different products, then it is absolutely normal that you'll check what kind of products has more features and/or additions then the other one.
DATA TRANSFER
- PCI bus (high speed data transfer)
DSP (Audio Processor)
- New generation Yamaha YMF744B Engine
CD-Audio sound quality & Pro audio quality
- 16-bit, mono/stereo 4kHz to 48kHz
- True full duplex Playback and capture with different sampling rate
- Supports all open standards including industry-standard two-speaker and multi-speaker
3D audio technology
- Microsoft® DirectSound™ 3D hardware accelerator
- Creative Labs' EAX™
- Aureals' A3D™ 1.0
- and Sensaura
Interactive Positioning on 2 or 4 speakers or headphones
- DirectMusic™ hardware accelerator.
- Legacy audio compatibility provides support for older DOS games
Yamaha XG built-in synthesizer with 2MB MIDI hardware wavetable
- GM™ (General MIDI) , GS™ (General Standard) and Yamaha XG compatible
- 128-voice polyphony (including 64 hardware)
- 676 instrument sounds and 21 drum kits
- Effects: reverb, chorus
Audio compatibility
- Accelerates Microsoft® DirectSound™ in hardware
- Compatible with Sound Blaster™ Pro, DirectInput®
- DownLoadable Sound (DLS) level-1 Connection
- Inputs : Mic-In, stereo Line-In, digital game port/MIDI MPU401 UART port, Internal CD-audio connector
- 2 independent stereo outputs to connect 4 speakers
- S/PDIF Digital output with optical connector (optical cable not supplied).
As you can see, this new sound card has a lot of nifty features where somehow other cards just fail to deliver.
I'll get into the new YMF744B Engine chip from "YAMAHA" on the next page.
What's included?
Of course when you buy something new, there are always more things included in the box than just the card.
Here's a list of the other items that were included:
- The Maxi Sound FORTISSIMO sound card
- 2 Installation CD-Rom's:
- 1 with the software interface (see details on back) & drivers,
- 1 with Acid DJ™.
- Step-by-step photo-illustrated Quick Install guide.
- Online Product documentation.
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