Getting a new soundcard...

[MultimediaMan]

I got an email from Philips in the Netherlands today. Itseems my pleas have not fallen of deaf ears. The respondent did direct me to the U.S. support line, but also left the door open for me to answer his reply. I explained the problem concisely, and hopefully, this will cause some cages to get rattled here in the U.S.: Currently, the Acoustic Edge is a U.S. product only.

I still intend to release the article as it is now if I do not get a response by the 5th. of January.

[paulcs]

I asked concise questions also.

"When will Philips begin providing online technical and driver support?"

Stuff like that. No response.

I cannot find the Acoustic Edge anywhere in the Bay Area.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[MultimediaMan]

Oh, the Humanity!

The Saga continues...

Today (01/05/2001), there was an update in progress for the Acoustic Edge. The files on the webpage were being uploaded when I spoke to a tech rep (who actually DID know something about Windows, this time around).

I'll wait and see, the page should be finished in a few minutes, assuming there are no bugs in it. (I can get to the page, but it fails halfway loading the update ActiveX controller)

[EchoWars]

Soooooo....where might I read the final article??? Tired of a silent Win2k with my Aureal (but dual-booting to WinME eases the pain).
Whatever happened to nVidia building soundcards??

[MultimediaMan]

Yes, there was an update posted on January 5th. - it even fixed a few things.

WinME: ACPI support is still broken with the WinME drivers, but all issues with the Yamaha S-YXG50 MIDI player have been resolved, as has the polyphony issue. In addition, there has been support added for for a soft lowpass filter for the LFE output channel when using DVD playback software. (They really need to do this with the regular output of the LFE channel).

Win2K: EAX support has been firmed up, and future support for AC-3 output with software DVD players is definitely indicated in the control panel applet. (Probably waiting on SP-2)

So Basically, these updates shredded my article...I'll still include excerpts of it for before and after purposes. I've been working on this, and another little project, so bear with me.

[XHotKolaX]

EchoWars:

Do the beta drivers. Aureal's site is down but since it's reference drivers any form of them will work on ur's too. Go to videologic's website and d/l those drivers. Works fine.

Only thing is u won't have any A3D.

[EchoWars]

With Win2k, and the beta drivers, sound is still a no-go. Sound quits halfway through the Windows start-up .wav, and never comes back. I have installed three Aureal Vortex2 cards on dual-boot machines, and all display the same symptoms: Win98 or WinME all is fine (except with WinME, the Aureal cards will not wake from suspend mode), and with Win2k, no sound at all.
So I give up on the best soundcard I ever owned. Sucks.
We are now in the dark ages as far as souncards go, thanks to Aureal's piss-poor management and Creative's ability to exploit this fault. I need a new card that works as advertised in Win2k, but Phillips?? I dunno...I don't think they can get the job done.

[MultimediaMan]

I feel your pain. I think the soundcard manufacturers were caught out with the Win2K architecture.

It's not a case of simply writing better drivers, it's about designing soundcard chipsets to exist within the framework of Win2K.

I'm still wrestling with the S/PDIF output of the Acoustic Edge: the volume output level using S/PDIF is NOT adjustable within Windows: you get a fixed volume output independant of the mixer. Either this is a driver shortfall, or a huge FUBAR by not integrating an S/PDIF volume control on the chipset.

This is a gaping hole in the card, as far as I'm concerned. Kinda forces you to use the Analog outputs, which is fine, unless you want to do digital Dubbing or other clean mixing operations with an offboard decoder or soundcard on another machine.

[Rags]

The SPDIF issues are a win2k OS problem. SP2 is scheduled to allow drivers to fix this problem. Keep your eyes peeled for new LW4 drivers at about the same time SP2 hits the street.

Rags

[EchoWars]

Got a chance that I can't pass up for the Phillips card. W2k without sound is screwing me up big time, as I find myself booting to Win98 less and less (WinME has been scrapped...serious POS Op-system, at least on my T-Bird setup).
Am I making a mistake? I have never been able to find drivers at their site, and I am concerned that after-the-sale driver support is gonna suck...whatta think?

Multimedia Man...what happened to the review?

[MultimediaMan]

*Poking out from under a rock*

Philips has an Installshield Updater on their site: go to www.philips-usa.com and select Support, Downloads, PC Peripherals, Soundcards...The Acoustic Edge has a page there.

I wish they would simply give us the freaking drivers to install, rather than doing a webupdater...

As far as the review is concerned, I really am (still) adding finishing touches. The card is quirky:

The card lacks some S/PDIF features that I would have otherwise expected: The Only S/PDIF signal that is output is Wave/Direct Sound...any analog input sources will not be transmitted over the S/PDIF output.

The S/PDIF support stinks: there is no other charitable way to put it. It sounds plain awful: static, hiss and other artifacts scream jitter and signal strength issues.

The S/PDIF Setup screen is innovative, but it looks as if they need to work on the drivers some more before we'll get better features.

I'll upload it and post the link.

I have an SBLive! Platinum 5.1 here as well: Nicer card, but at twice the price. :-( Even though our Win2K support is slow in coming, watch for it soon after Win2K SP2 is released.

[MultimediaMan]

http://www.geocities.com/goobergal5/MP5SD5/philips.html

[Rags]

.

[EchoWars]

What is this?


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?

[MultimediaMan]

Methinks he is tagging the threads he has read.