DOS Days

Diamond Sonic Impact S70/ S90/ S100

The Sonic Impact S70, S90 and S100 were the value-oriented sound card line from Diamond, released in 1998.

	Released	July 1998
	Bus	PCI
	Chipset	ESS ES1968 Maestro 2 (S70), Aureal Vortex (S90) or ESS ES1989 Allegro (S100)
	Standards	Ad Lib, Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro, General MIDI, Roland MPU-401, Windows Sound System, A3D (S90 only)
	Memory	None
	CD-ROM	None
	Ports	Line In, Mic In, Speaker Out, Game/MIDI Port
	Part #	230-01-01-22-XXX, 230-01-01-24-XXX (Sonic Impact S90)
	FCC ID
	Price	At launch: $119 (S70)
	See Also	Diamond Monster Sound

Whereas the Monster Sound lineup was targeted at no-holds-barred gamers, the Diamond Sonic Impact cards were more generally aimed, and were cheaper and less powerful. They all supported up to 4 speakers and 3D positional audio. Within the Sonic Impact range were:

Diamond Sonic Impact S70 (ESS ES-1968 Maestro 2)
Diamond Sonic Impact S90(A/B) (Aureal Vortex 1)
Diamond Sonic Impact S100 (ESS ES-1989 Allegro)

The Sonic Impact S70 was the cheapest of the series, but still offered good effects and even rudimentary 3D audio. The sound quality however, is known to be fairly poor. The driver CD came with a 2 MB and 4 MB wavetable library. You could change which sound library it would use via Windows Device Manager (Sound, video and game controllers -> Maestro Wave/WaveTable Synthesis Devices -> Properties -> Audio Settings).

The Sonic Impact S90, being based on the first Aureal Vortex chip, is known to be a good quality sound card, offering A3D positional audio that was supported on a good number of games titles.

The Sonic Impact S100 was the flagship of the series. Based on the ESS Allegro (ES1989), it included 3D positional audio technology from Sensaura, and was also compatible with Aureal A3D, Microsoft EAX 1.0, and I3D Level 2.

Board Revisions

I have no information on the various board revisions for the Sonic Impact series.

In the Media

"Diamond may be better known for their range of video cards, or more recently, their 3Dfx offerings, but in fact are becoming one of the world's largest multimedia forces. Previously proving their worth on the high end sound frontier with the Diamond Monster Sound 3D, the Sonic Impact, offering pseudo 4 speaker surround and a few less thrills than its bigger brother could become a popular choice.

The S70 is Diamond's offering to the lower ended market but that doesn't mean it's short on functionality. Offering quite a comprehensive sound solution its real time wave effects include Reverb, Chorus, Bass, Treble and 3D sound effects.

Another interesting factor is that the S70 has support for 4 speakers. The card doesn't actually differentiate between front and rear speakers as the MS3D does, but is still a good starting point for a 4 speaker solution. A neat trick to emulate surround sound is to turn up the bass in the rear speaker and reduce the bass in the front speakers. This effect is quite substantial.

Sonically, the S70 isn't the greatest. The general audio output from the card has a slightly muffled sound to it and at high volumes there is a slight hiss. CD's, although sounding good, are inferior and in no-way comparable to the quality of the Yamaha [Waveforce XG]. Midi sounds are again acceptable, but without downloadable sound fonts are far too limited.

Ultimately, for $119 the S70 is a good sound card." PC PowerPlay, July 1998

"The Sonic Impact S70 brings nothing over from Diamond's Monster Sound series which is mainly intended for the serious gamer, as the S70 is not intended for 3D Audio. The S70, based on the ESS Maestro-II DSP doesn't sacrifice any quality in order to remain somewhat competitive from a pricing standpoint. The ability to process 32 audio streams simultaneously supercedes the capabilities of even the Monster Sound MX200 reiterating the fact that the S70 is not an el-cheapo sound card. The 64-voice hardware wavetable MIDI is also provided for courtesy of the ESS Maestro-II.

Like the Monster Sound boards, the Sonic Impact fully supports and accelerates DirectSound/DirectSound3D games and applications. The DSP can process and accelerate up to 5 simultaneous DS/DS3D streams giving it a slight advantage over some low cost PCI Sound Cards as well as most ISA Sound Cards. While the card itself doesn't support A3D Surround or A3D Interactive technologies, the S70 features a total of 2 outputs consisting of one Stereo Speaker Out and one Line Level Speaker Out. In theory you could connect 2 sets of speakers to the S70, however it wouldn't give you the same experience that doing so to a MX200 or M80 would.

The S70, as with virtually all sound cards that don't allow for a connection to a Legacy Sound Card, provides very little support for legacy DOS games. If you're a big fan of the old classics you probably won't want to ditch your ISA sound card in favor of this puppy just yet. For those of you that are tired with the problems associated with installing ISA Sound Cards, the Sonic Impact S70 will definitely be a blessing from above as it will probably be the easiest sound card you ever had to install.

The bundle with the S70 could be improved, however in order to keep costs down the only things you'll find inside the package other than the board itself are Microsoft's NetShow, Midisoft's Internet Sound Bar 2.0 and Studio Recording Session, the same wav-editor found in the Monster Sound Bundles, a CD-player, and the full version of SimCopter by Maxis.

With a price above that of the AudioPCI from Creative/Ensonic you need to remember to ask yourself whether the features the S70 offers over the competition is worth the $20 of separation between the board and the AudioPCI for example. For a decent high end PCI sound card at a low end price, the Sonic Impact S70 from Diamond definitely brings home the gold. A better software bundle and a slightly lower price would give this card the advantage it needs over the competition, unfortunately you can't have it all in this industry." Anandtech, June 1998

Advert for Sonic Impact S90 (Dec 1998)

Setting it Up

I have no information on how to configure the Sonic Impact cards, but they're all PCI Plug & Play, so installation of the software will fully set up the card to work in Windows.