Aureal's Vortex Turns 2

Aureal, the company behind the A3D positional audio technology, announced the availability of its new Vortex 2 PCI audio processor. The processor is the first to be optimized for the company's A3D 2.0 audio API and is currently being sampled by potential hardware manufacturers.

Vortex 2 gives gamers access to Microsoft's DirectSound3D along with support for new features like Aureal Wavetracing (the ability to configure the chip to accept up to 320 wave-table voices) making it a worthy competitor in accelerating DirectMusic and MIDI audio. Wavetracing adds the ability to bounce wall reflections and occlusions to bring a more lifelike audio atmosphere to a 3D gaming environment.

"Aureal has elevated PC audio in the past with their A3D technology and now provides the next logical step with A3D 2.0 and the hardware to make it work - the Vortex 2,'' said Kip Kokinakis, CEO at Aureal Semiconductor. "With tons of support by the gaming community, this is the must-have audio platform for the future.''

Other hardware features that should interest gamers will be a hardware-based ten-band-per-channel graphics equalizer and speaker support for headphones, two-speaker, quad, 5.1, and 7.1 home theater systems.

Cards equipped with the new chip will be compatible with legacy DOS games, will work with Windows 95/98 and NT 4.0, and have SP/DIF output.

A3D is the current sound API of over 100 games including Unreal, Incoming, Descent: Freespace, Battlezone, and Jedi Knight.