Audiotrix 3D-XG sound card
Radzfel Geonzon
Anyone heard of this sound card? Is it any good? It is the exact same card
as the Audiotrix 3D, but the Yamaha OPL-4 chipset is replaced by a XG60
chipset.
RG
Vince Worthington
In article <01bc61ac$8df76080$7b4b...@geonzonr.cadvision.com>,
I've heard of it - it is Mediatrix's newest/best wavetable and 16-bit
full duplex (at the hardware level) PnP soundcard.
I haven't seen one yet though, I'm still waiting for mine from
Mediatrix. It is due out literally any day now.
The 3D/XG gets its XG support by adding a Yamaha DB60XG daughtercard to
the AudioTrix 3D sound board. Yes, that's correct, I said DB60XG. Not
to be confused with the DB50XG daughtercard, or the SW60XG standalone
MIDI-only soundcard. I've already been through the ropes with the tech
support and programming folks to clarify this. The DB60XG is basically
a DB50XG with the SW60XG's additional capabilities to add
(individually-programmable) effects processing to each mixer source
(wave, line-in, mic, cd, as well as midi). The SW60XG's AD Mixer
section is removed from the DB60XG, and instead connected (through the
waveblaster connector) to the 3D's mixer. That makes sense if you really
think about it, there is no need to have the SW60XG's AD mixer on the
daughtercard since all soundboards I know of already have a mixer. <g>
The word from Gary Gregson, author of XGEdit, is that his recommendation
is to set XGEdit to use an "SW60XG" as the XG Module. This will allow
us to program the effects on the various sources (you can only program
MIDI effects on the DB50XG). He is not sure, however, that the SW60XG
A/D MIXER functions of XGEdit would work properly, however, since the
3D/XG does something a little different. Also, he'd never heard of a
DB60XG daughtercard either until I asked him about it and he checked
with his Yamaha contact. The DB60XG is only sold (normally) in Japan,
and apparently only to Mediatrix outside of Japan for the 3D, and
getting hardcore specs on them hasn't been easy. (Anybody have anything
on them?) Gary has been in contact with Mediatrix and has expressed
willingness to write a custom "module" to fully support the 3D/XG (if
it's even necessary to support all of its features).
Don't let this scare you off, though. XG is a solid standard, and is
also backwards-compatible with General MIDI, and Roland GS/TG300.
That's *ANY* XG tone module, and at the SysX level! At bare minimum, we
will have all the capabilities of the DB50XG, plus the programmable
effects capabilities of the SW60XG.
As far as digital audio, their spec sheet says it uses the Sigma-Delta
codec, which they say is 100% AD1848 and CS4231 compatible (one of the
people I talked to at Mediatrix told me the codec is 100% register-level
compat with the CS4231). 16-bit hardware full duplex, and the
signal-to-noise ratio is listed as ">80dB".
The card is said to be 100% Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro, and
Windows Sound System compatible.
Mediatrix says it has drivers for:
DOS/Win3.1
Win95 (w/DirectSound)
Win NT 3.5 and 4.0
OS/2 Warp
Unix
All in all this sounds like one heck of a card. Yeah, the S/N ratio is
a little lower than I'd like to see, but the true test will be my ears.
Unfortunately it is easy for manufacturers to fudge their S/N ratio
numbers - for a mfgr to say their S/N ratio is 95 dB may really not be
saying anything.
So I continue to wait for mine. I'm very excited about it and can't
wait to do some sequencing with her. I will report my findings as soon
as I have one to report on.
BTW the *LIST* price for the 3D/XG is only $299!
They have spec sheets and other info on the 3D/XG on their website (in
HTML and Adobe Acrobat format):
>
>RG
--
Cheers,
Vince Worthington
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