Diamond PCI Sound Round-Up

Is A3D not your "bag?" If all you need is a PCI sound card then Diamond has exactly what you're looking for. Currently, the PCI sound cards you've probably seen in retail stores consist of the generic brands, and most likely the Creative/Ensoniq AudioPCI. These sound cards are mainly intended to bring affordability over to the PCI Bus and nothing more. What has been lacking from just about every PCI sound card is the high end advantage that Guillemot and Creative Labs held over the rest of the market with their Game Theater Pro 64 and AWE64 Gold during the days of ISA sound cards. Diamond is hoping to restore that high end advantage with their Sonic Impact.

The Sonic Impact S70 brings nothing over from Diamond's Monster Sound series which is mainly intended for the serious gamer, as the S70 is not intended for 3D Audio. The S70, based on the ESS Maestro-II DSP doesn't sacrifice any quality in order to remain somewhat competitive from a pricing standpoint. The ability to process 32 audio streams simultaneously supercedes the capabilities of even the Monster Sound MX200 reiterating the fact that the S70 is not an el-cheapo sound card. The 64-voice hardware wavetable MIDI is also provided for courtesy of the ESS Maestro-II.

AnandTech's Windows 98 test system had no troubles at all installing the S70 board, unfortunately, once again, the board did not come with any sort of acceptable written documentation meaning that if you happen to have any problems with the installation, albeit unlikely, then you're pretty much on your own unless you decide to take advantage of Diamond's technical support...but who ever does that?

Like the Monster Sound boards, the Sonic Impact fully supports and accelerates DirectSound/DirectSound3D games and applications. The DSP can process and accelerate up to 5 simultaneous DS/DS3D streams giving it a slight advantage over some low cost PCI Sound Cards as well as most ISA Sound Cards.

While the card itself doesn't support A3D Surround or A3D Interactive technologies, the S70 features a total of 2 outputs consisting of one Stereo Speaker Out and one Line Level Speaker Out. In theory you could connect 2 sets of speakers to the S70, however it wouldn't give you the same experience that doing so to a MX200 or M80 would. A stereo line in and a mic-in compose the other 2 ports on the back panel of the S70, leaving just enough room for the standard MIDI/Gameport interface. On the actual card are your CD, Modem, Auxiliary and Digital input ports for CD-ROM drives, modems, auxiliary device sources and Video decoders.

The S70, as with virtually all sound cards that don't allow for a connection to a Legacy Sound Card, provides very little support for legacy DOS games. If you're a big fan of the old classics you probably won't want to ditch your ISA sound card in favor of this puppy just yet. For those of you that are tired with the problems associated with installing ISA Sound Cards, the Sonic Impact S70 will definitely be a blessing from above as it will probably be the easiest sound card you ever had to install.

The bundle with the S70 could be improved, however in order to keep costs down the only things you'll find inside the package other than the board itself are Microsoft's NetShow, Midisoft's Internet Sound Bar 2.0 and Studio Recording Session, the same wav-editor found in the Monster Sound Bundles, a CD-player, and the full version of SimCopter by Maxis.

With a price above that of the AudioPCI from Creative/Ensonic you need to remember to ask yourself whether the features the S70 offers over the competition is worth the $20 of separation between the board and the AudioPCI for example. For a decent high end PCI sound card at a low end price, the Sonic Impact S70 from Diamond definitely brings home the gold. A better software bundle and a slightly lower price would give this card the advantage it needs over the competition, unfortunately you can't have it all in this industry.