Quad X-Treme

32 Bit PCI Bus Master, PCI 2.1 Compliant

Fully Plug and Play Compatible

Sound Blaster Pro Compatible

Roland MPU 401 (UART mode) compatible

Supports Win98, Win95 and Win NT

Supports multi-channel EAX games with 4-channel speaker output

256 voice Wavetable synthesizer

Effect synthesis with reverb, chorus, flange, echo on and wave and MIDI playback

Support positional 3D audio and reverb under Direct X 5.0

Incorporates Q3D 2.0 Qsound Technology

AC’97 Codec with 48Khz sampling rate

Built in Midi Port and Joystick Port

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Introduction

Local manufacturer MediaForte has been around for quite a number of years now. They are not a big name like Creative Labs but they, like many companies start from ground zero. Slowly introducing themselves to the market, feeding the computer industry with small little innovations and slowly progressing. They’ve had some pretty good products to date, e.g. 33.6/56K modems and some Internet products. Now to add to their list of products, The SoundForte Quad X-Treme 4-Channel PCI sound card.

This card is no Creative SBLive or a Diamond Monster Sound MX300 but it does pack some power of its own that seems worthy of a note. Supporting most industrial standard, Microsoft Direct Sound, Direct Sound 3D, Direct Music and even Creative’s Environmental Audio Extension or EAX as we now all know. Sounds pretty good eh, well let's see how much well it performs in various conditions and whether it’s the RIGHT one for you!!! 

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The Good

Features & Benefits

The SoundForte Quad X–Treme does come with quite a number of power pack features

·        Supports multi-channel EAX games with 4-channel speaker output

·        256 voice Wavetable synthesizer.

·        It is compatible to Microsoft Windows, Microsoft DirectX, EAX and DOS games and supports on DirectSound,

·         PC 98 standard for audio quality.

One thing that really impressed me was its utilities. The control panel provides quite a number of settings for users to tune, as you can see in the pictures below. All this is easily accessible with a click for the Sound Forte control in the system bar next to the “Windows clock”.

In the above pictures, you can test the setting of your setup to meet your requirements. Adjusting the different types of setting is child’s play compared to a number of sound cards that are available. In the effect tab, I tried a number of environment settings and they were pretty good. Playing these sounds off my PC Works speakers the effects were quite impressive. The EAX support is pretty ok; most of the effects could be heard while playing some EAX enabled games like Unreal, Fifa99, Need For Speed 3 and Phantom Menace.

As you can see from the above pics, the number of volume controls available is quite handy. Users have almost full control of all the available channels. Also the number of available Audio Inputs is quite a few. For starters, there are two types of audio connectors available, (Sony, MPC standard and the Panasonic, Mitsumi Standard). This is useful, as you need not search for another audio cable if your audio cable uses either type of headers. There is also an Auxiliary-In for other devices like TV-tuners and DVD/Mpeg decoders.

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Installation

The Bad

Let's face it guys/gals, for $45 you can’t get a symphonic orchestra, right?! Yeah well anyway you can’t. The General Midi on the card is weak, even the FM synthesis from the SB16 was better. This could be the reason why it comes with Yamaha XG soft-synthesizer. As we all know the Yamaha XG is pretty ok but nothing more. Even worse, it draws quite a hefty load off the CPU so at times, it's really not worth it. Many people will argue that at this time and age, Midi is pretty dead, most new games now use CD Audio. Well, I tend to disagree, as a good general Midi is always a plus point for me. Midi files are small and easy to compress, games and Internet pages that utilize Midi are general faster and smoother.

The Quad X-Treme may support a lot of new standard but it does not really implement them the way they should have been. When testing the DS3D on the Direct X Diagnostics, at most frequencies I could hardly hear the difference. When playing EAX games, the sound did not sound/feel like what my SBLive gave me. Not to say that it's terribly bad but it’s not like the real Joe.

When the volume is placed up to the MAX or very high, you can hear distorted sounds coming out of the speakers. Playing MP3, they were also not very clear compared to the top of the line cards. Not to say that the sound is bad, but there tends to be slight/mild distortion occasionally. This could also be due to immature drivers; hopefully newer version of the drivers could resolve this problem.

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Conclusion

This Sound Card at $45 is extremely worth it. It's good for home-users looking for a sound card that works on almost every games/platform. The utilities for the card are very good. I’d probably love to have this card in my office machine, not too heavy duty on usage but still producing decent sounds at an extremely affordable price. Hardcore gamers and gaming enthusiast would probably stay clear of this one, at $45 topping another $60 or so one can pick up a SBLive value edition.

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Ratings

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