Related Articles

The Acoustic Edge surround support in games works rather well. The card supports A3D 1.0 and EAX 1.0/2.0, so it takes advantage of the major APIs (even though A3D is already a defunct API). As part of our evaluation, we tested discrete 5.1 sound support for EAX2.0 enabled games such as Motorcross Madness 2, Heavy Metal FAKK 2, and Rogue Spear. The most striking aspect of 5.1 sound using EAX2.0 is that you get a much more detailed sense of the depth of the surround field. In Motorcross Madness 2 the crowd effects were simply amazing, and water effects in Heavy Metal FAAK2 were no less inspiring. We also tried QMSS with several other games like QIII, Unreal Tournament and others. Although QIII uses A3D 2.0, which is not supported by the card, the results were nonetheless very good. Racing games benefit a lot from 5.1 positional audio too… Star Wars Episode I Racer demonstrated perfectly the amazing immersion you can get when you can hear the swoosh of a passing pod racer on your left side. Effects like front-rear pans were amazingly smooth, and in all games, the reverb effects made for some heavy duty immersion.

QMSS in 4.1 speakers

Though 5.1 speakers are the new buzzword, let’s not forget the huge installed user base of multimedia users who are running their favourite 4.1 speakers. Considering also that perhaps the hottest system being sold right now is the Klipsch ProMedia 4.1 system, it is definitely a GOOD thing that the Acoustic Edge’s QMSS support for 4 speakers is nothing short of phenomenal. We did some listening tests with both the famed Klipsch ProMedia and a Boston Acoustics BA4800s, each a very worthy match for the sound card. The results were amazing.

Control Panel: Speaker Test & S-YXG50 Setings

With either of the speakers it was clearly obvious that the Acoustic Edge could handle stereo to quad speaker transformations with a finesse that is surprisingly natural. The few flaws that were present in a 5.1 system were still present, but the clarity of the Klipsch speakers in particular really hit us and really affected our experience with the discrete 4 channel sound. The dimension of the sound was breathtaking, and many MANY songs became instantly transformed. We were pleasantly surprised by the accuracy, or at least the supposed accuracy with which the QMSS algorithms were able to pluck out specific choral elements of the songs and place them into the rear channels for a more seemless surround experience.

In all respects, QMSS processing was as effective in a 4.1 system as it was in a 5.1 system. I challenge anyone to find to find a Dolby Digital-to-quadraphonic downmix algorithm that can surpass the quality of experience that QMSS can deliver from a stereo stream. It is THAT good. Several scenes in the movie "The Skulls" wrapped us in a surround effect that was incredibly unexpected. I mean this is a STEREO stream that has been processed into a 4 channel surround stream by the Thunderbird Avenger chip… and it yet sounds like the audio was originally encoded for quadraphonic playback. To our ears, the results were more impressive than DPL (Dolby Pro Logic), and quite capable of comparing with a true 5.1 setup. The biggest difference is a weaker center channel. QMSS is supposed to be able to generate a more convincing virtual center channel for 2 and 4 speaker playback, but in 4 speaker mode we did not notice a significantly solidified phantom center channel. This is not surprising, considering we could not find a very strong center channel when using QMSS in 5.1 mode either.