Introduction

Alternative is In

A year ago, it was unthinkable to purchase a non-Aureal or non-Creative sound card. To put it bluntly, most competitors simply could not match Aureal and Creative Lab's impressive price/performance ratio. However, in the last few months, the idea of alternative sound cards powered by ESS, Philips, or Yamaha chips has become more popular. Even S3's widely popular Diamond Monster Sound product line will soon be bringing "alternative" to the main stream.

Today, we will be taking a look at Guillemot's latest product in the venerable Maxi Sound line, the Maxi Sound Fortissimo powered by the Yamaha's second generation YMF744 chip. The Fortissimo is very similar to the Hoontech SoundTrack Digital XG, which means that you'll be getting the same Sensaura HRTF algorithms that you'll find in S3's Diamond Monster Sound MX400 but at a lower price point. Furthermore, the Guillemot Fortissimo offers TOSLINK digital outputs that'll allow you to connect to portable MiniDisc recorders, something the Sound Blaster Live! and MX400 cannot do out-of-the-box.

With Guillemot famous for top-notch video cards including the Falcon Northwest Special Edition Xentor32, and the Hercules 3D Prophet DDR-DVI you might expect the Fortissimo to be expensive. This is far from true. The Fortissimo is a scant fifty bucks.

Technical Specifications

Yamaha YMF744B Audio Chip
SigmaTel STAC9708 CODEC

• 18-bit full-duplex DAC / ADC
• Analog Line Out SNR: 98 dB
• Digital DAC SNR: 96 dB
• Digital ADC SNR: 87dB
• Total Harmonic Distortion: - 0.02%
• Crosstalk (Input Channels): - 70 dB
• Spurious Tone Rejection: 100dB

4-speaker HRTF positional audio
64 voices hardware-assisted Sondius-XG wave table synthesizer
Hardware accelerated Joystick Port

Input/Output connectors

Digital output (optical) at 48 kHz only
2 x Stereo Line Out (front/rear)
Line-In
MIC-In
MIDI/Joystick Interface (IBM 15 pin Sub-D)

Internal Inputs

CD Audio (4-pin Creative)
CD Audio (4-pin Mitsumi)
CD Audio (4-pin MPC)
Digital CD-in (2 pin, cable not included)

Compatibility

DirectSound/DirectSound3D acceleration
A3D 1.0 Emulation
Sensaura MacroFX and MultiDrive
Environmental Audio extension support (EAX)
Windows 9x, NT, and 2000 support

Although value priced, the Guillemot Maxi Sound Fortissimo really doesn't skimp on the features. You get top-quality full 4-speaker HRTF as well as digital output.