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