DOS Days

Diamond Monster Sound MX300

The Monster Sound MX300 was released in 1998. It used the Aureal Vortex 2 chip with its A3D 2.0 technology to produce some of the very best 3D positional audio capability available. It also had an embedded DLS wavetable synthesizer with 320 voices.

	Released	Late 1998
	Bus	PCI
	Chipset	Aureal Vortex 2 (quad channel)
	Standards	Ad Lib, Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro, General MIDI, Roland MPU-401, Windows Sound System, Aureal A3D, EAX 1.0 (via software driver)
	Memory	None
	CD-ROM	None
	Ports	Line In, Line Out, Mic In, Speaker Out, Game/MIDI Port, Wavetable header, "MX-Link" daughtercard header CD audio-in, Aux-in, and modem connectors.
	Part #	23010123-00X
	FCC ID	(Unknown)
	Price	At launch: $99 July 1999: $69
	See Also	Monster Sound MX200 Monster Sound MX400

The card also supports Dolby Digital for 2- or 4-speaker output, and up to 6 speakers (Dolby Digital 5.1) with an optional S/PDIF daughtercard (the Diamond Monster Sound MX25) via its MX-Link connector (see connector on far right).

For use in DOS, the card claims real mode DOS compatibility, though this is handled by emulation, rather than having a dedicated OPL chip.

The card has an excellent Signal to Noise Ratio of -96 dB. In playback [digital-to-analogue] tests conducted by PCAVTech, the MX300's signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio was measured at -77 dB, which is considered very good.

Its minimum system requirements were a Pentium 90 MHz or faster (266 MHz PII recommended for SoftDVD support), 16 MB of RAM, Windows 95/98 or NT 4.0, and 50 MB of hard disk space.

Bundled software included Zoran SoftDVD software for DVD video playback and a Dolby Digital overview.

The MX300 was bundled with Compaq Presario desktops such as the 5600i in early 1999, along with JBL Pro Premium speakers with a subwoofer. It was also bundled with the Alienware Hive-Mind PC in March 1999 which came with Cambridge Audio 4-point surround speakers and a sub. Both of these machines were specced with a Pentium II 450 MHz and 128 MB of SDRAM.

Board Revisions

Just one revision of the main board is known: A.

In the Media

"Reaching for the purple and orange Sound Blaster Live! box in aisle 51 at your local computer store? Diamond Multimedia and new tag-teammate Aureal want you to instead consider the green and red Diamond box with a Monster Sound MX300 waiting inside.

While we haven't seen an MX300 at press time, its feature checklist got us hot enough to look away from the packed Sound Blaster Live! card for a moment. Consider the wave-tracing technology and quad-speaker support, and then factor in the AC-3 or Digital Dolby virtualization down to two or four speakers. Toss in a suite of MPEG-3 applications and we had to have a drink of cold water to calm down.

But there's some bad news for budget shoppers waiting for no-name Vortex 2 clones to hit the shelf at $29. Aureal has signed exclusive deals with five vendors around the world to use the Vortex 2. The U.S. market will see Diamond and Turtle Beach pumping out Vortex 2s, with Diamond apparently out to capture the marketing spotlight early.

Creative Labs isn't sitting on its hands, though. Although the features are mostly meaningless with the current generation of games, Creative said it will quadruple the number of DirectSound3D streams from 8 to 32 in hardware. The Vortex 2 currently supports 16, but in response to Creative's announcement of 32 streams, now says the Vortex 2 can max with 76 DirectSound3D streams. The Live! will also eventually support AC-3 decoding as well. Until we see titles that scale up to use the amount of 3D sound channels, it's just marketing hype.

Diamond has priced the MX300 at a competitive $99. With Creative Labs' Sound Blaster Live! Value Edition, basically the Live! without the fancy-schmancy digital I/O connectors, coming in at $99, you'll spend a long time fidgeting in the aisle." Maximum PC, November 1998

Advert with Half-Life game ( November 1998)

Setting it Up

The Diamond Monster Sound MX300 is fully Plug & Play-compatible, so no hardware configuration is required. "Out 1" is to be used for a 2-speaker setup, "Out 2" is for 4-speaker setup and for connecting headphones. The Monster Sound taskbar utility allows you to configure and test your audio output. Dolby Digital 5.1 output requires the additional Diamond MX25 daughtercard.