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Web Developer's Journal Archive SectionAria 16by Kief Morris |
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Looking at sound cards these days, you get the impression that you need to spend $200, $300 or more to keep up with the leading edge. Certainly nobody wants an 8 bit card anymore, and the high end cards have all kinds of fancy features that we've got to have (right?). But if I had $300 to spend on hardware to add to my system, it probably wouldn't go towards adding sound–I just don't need $300 worth of sound in my PC–I'd rather have it in my car! Fortunately, Prometheus has come up with a sound card in the lower price range which has the flexibility to fulfill the needs of most PC users, the Aria 16. The Aria 16 is, obviously, a 16 bit sound card, with Wavetable synthesis and a 44 MHz DSP that it puts to good use. In fact, the Aria can be reprogrammed using software, so you won't be left behind as new features come out. Aria users can download new features and add them right into their sound card without having to buy a new card, and without having to pop the cover off their PC to fiddle with their existing card. That's a big bonus in anybody's book - installing a sound card is something nobody should have to do more than once in their life. That's another area where the Aria 16 excels. No jumpers! The Aria comes with an installation program that sets IRQ's and DMA's for you and tests the card to make sure all works fine. My own installation wasn't quite so simple–the installation program kept telling me to install the Aria 16 even after I had installed it. After playing 52 pickup with the cards in my system I found the Aria didn't like my ZyXel serial card with 16550 UART chips, despite the fact that it had no IRQ's conflicting with those of the sound card. After I removed this card and reinstalled the old serial card that came with my system the Aria worked fine. The only explanation Prometheus technical support had was that my Aria might be defective, and I should return it for another. The Aria 16 can emulate an 8 bit SoundBlaster, which means it can be used with most any game out there for regular sound. My card, as shipped, wasn't able to do some of the fancier things such as synthesized speech, since the 8 bit SoundBlaster can't, and the games didn't have drivers for the Aria. A DOS driver is under development which will make it possible to operate the wavetable synthesizer on the Aria with DOS MIDI output. For Windows users, the Aria 16 comes with several programs to put the card through its paces. Midisoft Music Magic can be used to edit, compose and play music using the Aria wavetable synthesizer, by adding and rearranging musical notes. There is also the Animotion MusicRack for playing digital audio, MIDI synthesis, audio mixing and CD-audio. It even comes with several cheesy disco-esque tunes. The most fun, though, is Aristosoft's Wired for Sound Sampler, which lets you attach annoying WAV sounds and voices to nearly anything that happens in Windows. My dog liked this best of all the items and software I've ever reviewed–her ears constantly perked up as I navigated through Windows menus and buttons enhanced with sounds. Prometheus also sells the Aria16se, which has a SCSI-2 controller for a CD-ROM and a few extra pieces of software, including speech recognition. Both Aria's have a combined MIDI/joystick port, which means you need to buy a MIDI adapter box to connect a MIDI device such as a keyboard, synthesizer, or sequencer. They also use advanced wavetable synthesis with 32 operator support, which means they can produce richer, more complex output than 20 operator sound cards, especially when it comes to percussion. Although it may not have quite all the bells and whistles of the higher end sound cards, the Aria 16 is a heck of a value for those of use who just need good sound from our PC's. The ability to add new features via software mean the Aria should avoid falling behind too quickly as other cards are prone to do. |
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