Diamond Monster Sound MX400

Canyon3D Features:

• Four speaker audio capabilities put you in the middle of the action
• World's first true positional 3D PCI audio accelerator
• Adds vertical positioning with Sensaura's patented MultiDrive technology
• Engulfing 4.0, 4.1 and 5.1 multi-speaker support
• Master balance/fade controls
• Individual Wave, MIDI and Analog controls
• Hardware solutions produce industry-leading real-mode DOS support
• AC '97 2.0 architecture
• Ultimate Dolby Digital and PCM support with S/PDIF digital output interface
• Microsoft DirectInput compatible joystick interface
• MPU-401 MIDI interface
• PCI 2.1 compatible interface
• Microsoft DirectSound and DirectMusic compatibility

Canyon3D

The Canyon3D has actually been around since April 1999 and has been used in cards from TerraTec and Fermosa. Driver issues limited those implementations, but when Diamond signed on, the ESS driver team kicked into high gear and worked out most of the issues. One of the biggest they were having was support for playback of multiple digital audio sources in Windows - such as e-mail notification during MP3 playback.

The implementation of Sensaura's technology is flexible so that different price points can be met. This is accomplished by allowing hardware manufacturers to implement any features they want in hardware and software will provide the rest. The ESS Canyon3D provides hardware support for MultiDrive, MacroFX, and EnvironmentFX.

The Canyon3D also supports 2.0, 4.0, 4.1, and 5.1 speaker output, while an S/PDIF output provides Dolby Digital or PCM digital output. Like other manufacturers cards, the S/PDIF is only capable of outputing Dolby Digital AC-3 audio that is passed on from a software DVD player with proper support for the Canyon3D. You'll of course need a Dolby Digital receiver or decoder to use such a signal.

Sensaura 3D positional audio technology is at the heart of the Canyon3D's abilities and provides its EAX 1.0, EAX 2.0, and A3D 1.0 compatibility. There are a number of pieces that make up that technology, including Sensaura3D, Sensaura MultiDrive, Sensaura MacroFX, Sensaura EnvironmentFX, and Sensaura Virtual Ear. All these pieces are designed to be enhancements to, and work in conjunction with, Microsoft's DirectSound3D.

Previous Canyon3D cards have "only" supported 32 DirectSound3D streams in hardware, but with Diamond's drivers, it can now do a total of 48. Vortex2 cards support 76 DS3D streams in hardware as long as wavetracing is not enabled, and 16 with it enabled. The Live! supports "just" 32 DS3D streams in hardware.

Sensaura3D

Sensaura3D is the name of Sensaura's 2-speaker 3D positional audio implementation. It uses Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTF) and cross-talk cancelation to simulate the effect of a sound wave traveling into the ear and modifies that sound wave to make it sound as if it is coming from a specific location. The 2-speaker configuration is limited to producing effects in a horizontal plane. This is exactly what A3D 1.0 does to produce its 3D sound effects and also has the same limitations.

Sensaura MultiDrive

The MultiDrive part of the equation adds support for four or more speakers and support for effects in the vertical and horizontal planes from two or more speakers. That sounds a lot like Aureal's A3D 2.0, and it is very similar. However, MultiDrive allows for full HRTF support from all four speakers, while A3D 2.0 is limited to just 2-speakers in this respect. In fact, Aureal's quad speaker support is actually a hybrid solution, using traditional 2-speaker HRTF with volume panning to produce effects in the rear speakers.

Sensaura MacroFX

MacroFX is Sensaura's solution for providing sound effects that are very close to the listener, one of the big weaknesses of other 3D sound implementations. This will provide for effects such as bees buzzing around your head, whispering in your ear, or wind rushing past you, or bullets flying past your ear.

Sensaura EnvironmentFX

Much like Creative's EAX, EnvironmentFX simulates 3D audio environments through a set of 26 different preset environments, such as underwater effects, sewer-pipe, etc. Aureal's route for simulating environments under A3D 2.0 is based on their proprietary wavetracing technology, which uses the games built in geometry to calculate what happens to a sound effect.

Sensaura Virtual Ear

Taken straight from Sensaura's website:

For both headphone and speaker listening, it is important that the HRTFs used in the signal processing are as close as possible to the listener's own head and ear characteristics.

Virtual Ear Technology enables the listener to 'tune' the Sensaura HRTFs so as to optimize this match for the ultimate listening experience, bringing reality that little bit closer.

Although supported in the Canyon3D, the MX400 did not offer any utility or option to configure the Virtual Ear. Hopefully we'll see this in a driver update from Diamond.

API Compatibility

Features mean nothing if they're not supported by developers, and Sensaura knows it. For that reason, all Sensaura features are compatible with DirectSound3D and EAX. EAX compatibility is no surprise since EnvironmentFX functions just like EAX. Fortunately, Sensaura has provided full EAX 1.0 and 2.0 compatibility, but whether that can or will be upgraded to support future EAX standards is unknown right now. The other Sensaura effects are produced using existing in game data available from DirectSound3D or EAX.

A3D 1.0 compatibility is provided by converting A3D 1.0 calls to DirectSound3D calls, much like Creative has done with the Live!. A3D 2.0 compatibility can now be accomplished on any card out there through Aureal's own "A2D" drivers, which are freely available from their site. Just like Creative and Sensaura have done for A3D 1.0 , A2D simply converts A3D 2.0 calls ot DirectSound3D calls.

Sensaura vs EAX Vs A3D

Now just because Sensaura and ESS support EAX and A3D, it doesn't mean that they sound the same. The HRTF and reverb functions are implemented differently on every chip on the market, including the Canyon3D. Thanks to MultiDrive, the 3D positional effects, especially with sounds coming from above or below, were much more convincing than from a Live! or Vortex2 card. The effects from MacroFX were also quite impressive and easily noticeable. If a game supports both A3D and EAX, definitely choose the EAX model when using the MX400 since only A3D 1.0 is supported.

On the other hand, the preset EAX reverb effects on the Live! were more convincing than those of the MX400. Further, the wavetracing of A3D 2.0 is definitely the most realistic of the bunch. This may be in part because the Live! and the Vortex2 are the cards for which most developers are designing their games.

As far as support goes, the gaming community is pretty evenly split between the EAX and A3D API's. There are a few more games with EAX support, but most newer ones are supporting both API's. Of course the big win for Aureal was the A3D 2.0 support built into Quake 3 Arena.

Of course, the last part of the equation is performance and was a key point in the Vortex2 Vs Live! debate. Since all the Sensaura functions are implemented in hardware, the MX400 should perform quite well. Let's see how it stacks up with the Vortex2 and the Live!