• PII 300 MHz, 512K cache
• 64 meg of SDRAM
• Quantum Ultra DMA 4.3 gig
• STB Velocity 128 3d 4 meg
• Creative Labs 3d Blaster V2 8 meg
• JAZZ 3d Speaker System front
• Hitachi Speaker System rear
• VOXON 17
• Quickshot Masterpilot
• TM F22 Pro and TQS

We received new information regarding the last driver revision over the weekend and have had to make major changes in this review....

In our last PCI review (TB Montego) we surveyed the reasons why the move to the PCI bus is significant. In short, PCI sound boards free up the CPU, especially when multiple sound tracks are played or when sound is also positional. But some of the newer boards are also offering digital game ports. Now Videologic enters the PCI sound market with their recent introduction, the Sonic Storm.

Not long ago opting for PCI based sound meant that you would have to dedicate two separate slots for sound if you wanted to retain DOS gaming ability. But now PCI sound boards are offering Sound Blaster Pro emulation, and the Sonic Storm is one of these (so long as the game runs in a WIN95 DOS box).

Like the TB Daytona, the Sonic Storm has its own proprietary method for generating positional audio on two speakers. In fact it does this quite well. Its true that A3D is rapidly becoming a standard, but to date you will still only find Aureal positional audio in a few popular games, and not a single new simulation (though we expect there will be some announcements in this direction quite soon).

The Sonic Storm uses the Maestro ESS-1 chip, with 64-voices in hardware. The only other board on the market with hardware capability for 64 voices is the Ubisoft Game Theatre 64-3d, but that board is ISA based. The old Diamond Monster Sound only managed 32 voices (the new MX200 offers 64), and the AWE64 and TB Montego will manage 32 voices in hardware and another 32 in software.

Installation was a snap. Gone are the days of crashes, fiddling with IRQs and looking for drivers. Plug n Pray has almost become Plug n Play with PCI based sound boards. If you can't find the manual, its a small one in the form of a booklet in the CD case.

MIDI in WIN95 sounds great, and I used Comanche 3 and DIs F16 Fighting Falcon to check out the DOS box SB Pro emulation. These sounded good also, and ran fine. Channelized reverb and chorus is also supported on MIDI wavetable instruments.

Incredibly, SonicStorm supports DOS games even in a true DOS session (thanks to AECU.SYS in CONFIG.SYS, and MAESTRO.COM in AUTOEXEC.BAT) - especially with the v191 drivers which solved the Phoenix/AWARD BIOS issue. As far as I know, the SonicStorm is the only PCI sound board which can make this claim!

The Sonic Storm has three cable inputs: one for speaker out, another for Audio-In and a mike input. On the board itself there are three more inputs: one for your CD, one for Aux and another for Video. If you have the hardware you can connect a DVD kit, a second sound source such as a TV tuner or modem, and your CD-ROM cable for onboard music.

Click to continue . . .

Sound quality was very good overall, on par with the TB Daytona, which is another very clean and high quality sound board. Until recently the only time you would notice a difference in sound quality is when comparing the SonicStorm to a board running with Aureals' A3D technology (like the TB Montego). However, new drivers (5 meg) released on April 30th now support A3D emulation. Version 1.91 info is as follows:

• Added 4MB WaveTable support (4 MB card only)
• Enhanced QSound3D 3D positional game coverage
• Added support for Aureal's A3D API interface.
• Added PC Speaker volume control in the mixer volume control.
• Fixed bug which stopped audio being heard in DOS sessions when running on certain BIOSes e.g. Phoenix

As for the joystick port, its analog like that on the Game Theatre 64 or TB Daytona. Before much longer we will likely see more sound boards with digital ports like the MonsterSound and TB Montego. Its worth quite a gain to offload the CPU from tracking analog stick signals, and since the competition is going this way the weight of technology should soon catch up to Videologic as well.

Effective immediately, all SonicStorm PCI-based audio cards will come bundled with a full version of Cowon Systems Inc.’s Jet-Audio 3.12. Here is the press release:

Cowon Jet-Audio 3.12 combines a comprehensive suite of audio and video multimedia playback features in a user-friendly interface. The home audio system interface supports:

• Playback of audio CD and MIDI, as well as Digital Audio formats including Wav and Real Audio
• Recording of Digital Audio formats including Wav and Real Audio
• CDDB for automatic downloading of CD track and artist information off the web
• Built-in MPEG 1 layer 3 audio decoder (MP3 playback, including ID3 tag song information)
• DSP reverb engine for MP3 playback including stadium, hall, room, stage modes
• Six-band graphic equaliser for MP3 playback
• Spectrum analyser function with peak hold
• Remote Control panel and taskbar icon for ease of use
• Management of multiple audio and video formats
• In addition Jet Audio 3.12 also supports Digital Video playback including Real Video, AVI, VideoCD and MPEG formats as well as Quicktime if installed. With Jet-Audio, you can enjoy video files with adjustable playback speed, and even capture and convert individual frames to BMP format.

Summary

With a FIVE year warranty, clear and clean sound, A3D emulation, full DirectSound3d acceleration, full DOS support and at around $99 US and possibly a little less, the Sonic Storm is an excellent value and worth considering as an upgrade to your old SB compatible.