Guillemot Maxi Sound Fortissimo

Guillemot's Maxi Sound Fortissimo
A lot of bang for your buck

By  Marco ?BigWop? Chiappetta
March 19, 2000

The Maxi Sound Fortissimo is a product for value minded people looking for high dollar quality.  We know there are many people out there that would look into a Live! Platinum or an Aureal SQ2500 but don?t have $100-$200 to drop on a sound card. Should these people be deprived of such great features as EAX??or A3D??what about a Digital Output?  Of course they shouldn?t be and Guillemot doesn?t think so either.  The MSRP on the Fortissimo is only $49.99 yet it has those capabilities and features, and more.  Does it compare with some of its higher priced competition?  The only way you?ll know is if you continue reading?

Specifications / Features Of The Maxi Sound Fortissimo A little bit of everything

Features

• Yamaha YMF744 Engine 

• 32 Bit PCI Card

• Full Duplex Capabilities at multiple sampling rates

• DLS Level 1 Connection

• MIDI Support (Yamaha XG with 2mb MIDI hardware Wavetable)

• 128 Voice Polyphony (64 Hardware Voices)

• 676 instrument sounds

• 21 Drum kits

• Sound Blaster Pro Compatible

• Mic-In

• Stereo Line-In

• Digital game port/MPU401 UART port

• S/PDIF Digital output with optical connector

Supported API?s
 
EAX, A3D 1.0, Sensaura, DirectMusic, DirectSound and Legacy DOS support

Click image for full view

Here?s a look at the rear of the card:

Without a doubt, that?s an awesome set of features for a sound card at any price range!  The only noticeable feature absent is support for Aureal?s newer A3D 2.0 standard or the soon to be released 3.0 version.  More on that later.

Installation / Setup Of The Fortissimo It doesn't get any easier

The Fortissimo installed in my machine without incident.  My advice, as always, is to read the manufacturer?s instructions first and follow them exactly.  First time installers (installation in a machine without a sound card installed previously) should, for the most part not have anything to worry about.  If however, you?re replacing an existing card, remember to first un-install any drivers and proprietary applications and delete the old drivers from both your hard drive and from device manager within Safe Mode.  Doing that should ensure smooth installation / operation.  All I basically did was pop in the card, install the drivers from the included CD and I was ready to go.

Drivers, Software and Performance