Videologic
SonicVortex2 review
Posted by Thomas
McGuire on November 2, 1999 - Page 3/4
Company:
Videologic
Systems Product: SonicVortex
2 PCI
Sounds
After
my initial disappointment with this product I’m extremely
happy to say they were completely forgotten about when I
heard this card in action. For these purposes I played games
like Sin, Half-life, the Unreal Tournament demo & some
other games & the technical demos that you get with the
latest a3d drivers.
The
sound is very nice on it & the 3d feel to it was
superior to that of my Sound Blaster Live. The only game
that came close in similarity was Half-Life, if anything
Half-Life performed better with this card as well.
Sin
sounds incredible on this card using A3D. The up/down
sources of noise have to be heard to be believed you really
could tell where an enemy is by listening. The same can be
said of weapon fire & such. It was quite disheartening
having to go back to the horrid EAX implementation.
The
technical demos were also nice to listen to, the most
pleasing thing to do was close your eyes & listen to the
“source” of the nice. The panning was perfect on it. One
problem with 3d sound on the SB Live was the tendency of
speakers to just cut off as the sound panned around. There
was no such problem here.
To
throw in my bit to the A3D2.0 v. EAX debate I have to say
that A3D2.0 is generally better than EAX. It’s not without
its problems though. CPU utilization has been a
well-documented “issue”. Some games also have had
problems with sounds, such as the muffled sounds that were
in Half-Life. There are patches available to fix most game
problems with A3D implementation.
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