Monster Sound Jumps to ESS

Some of you might remember reading about the Diamond Monster Sound - which, back in 1997, was powered by Aureal's original Vortex chipset - and scoffing at the audacity of wasting a precious PCI slot on a simple sound card. Oh how the times have changed. Diamond was one of the first multimedia hardware manufacturers to introduce a PCI sound card with 3D sound capabilities, and through its partnership with Aureal, has since challenged Creative Labs' decade-long monopoly on the audio market.

But the times, they're a-changing again. Aureal's two-year partnership with Diamond, now a part of S3, is over. The Fremont company is now integrating its Vortex line of chipsets onto its own boards instead of selling them to vendors like Turtle Beach and VideoLogic, leaving Diamond to search for new candidates to supply chipsets for its sound cards.

And so, it's only with a little bit of surprise that Diamond (or S3, actually) chose ESS Technology's Canyon3D processor to power the new Diamond Sound MX400, announced earlier this morning. Some of you might recognize the name, some of you won't - and for good reason. ESS hasn't exactly been on the cutting edge of 3D sound technical innovation, relying instead on making affordable chipsets that motherboard manufacturers could integrate onto their mainboards. The Canyon3D processor, however, obviously flexes enough 3D audio muscle to earn the nod by S3/Diamond to carry on the Monster Sound torch.

Like its popular MX300, S3/Diamond's new MX400 is designed to deliver 3D positional audio to hard-core gamers by supporting a number of 3D sound APIs, including DirectSound 3D, A3D 1.0, EAX 1.0/2.0 and I3D Level 2, an API developed in conjunction with Creative and Aureal. The only feature lost on the MX400 is A3D 2.0, which is only supported by cards powered by the Vortex2 - like the older MX300. Except for that minor detail, the MX400 outshines its predecessor in every aspect. The new board supports 32 DirectSound hardware channels and quadraphonic HRTF for true four-speaker playback. It also features a S/PDIF out and Dolby Digital support for DVD playback and a 320-voice wavetable.

"The Monster Sound MX400 audio accelerator provides consumers with an all-inclusive solution for enjoying state-of-the-art audio from their PC at a very reasonable price," said S3's Michael Buchanan. "With Monster Sound MX400, S3 is S3 continues to deliver advanced audio solutions for our consumers who want the best possible sound quality on their PC."

The Monster Sound MX400 will be available sometime in November for US$99.95 and will come bundled with a number of audio utilities designed to be used with S3/Diamond's Rio (portable MP3 players) products, as well as a seven-level version of Slave Zero. Diamond told us that it plans to include a demo of an as yet undisclosed game with the MX400, too. For those of you who can't wait, you can preorder the MX400 from a number of national retailers starting today. In addition, S3/Diamond will introduce the Rio PC daughter card (similar to the MX25) in January, which will add hardware MP3 encoding and decoding capabilities to the MX400. We'll keep you updated.