Diamond Monster Sound MX400 Manufacturer : Diamond Multimedia Pricing: $99 Availability: Out Now Reviewed by: Date : April 20th 2000

MultiDrive - 360-Degree Sound Field

Due to cross talk 3D sound with a 4 speaker set up has always been cumbersome. Aureal uses panning at the rear while creative uses the more recent methodology of HRTF filters for both front and rear speakers. Though panning did work fairly well, sounds above and below the listener were lost to a great extent. Even though the HRTF filters did facilitate for sounds above & below the listener it was not optimal for sounds from behind. Sensuara 3D positional audio technology has now incorporated and patented a multi speaker capability for creating 3D sound fields using four or more loudspeakers. This technology enables the playback of directsound3D material and provides improved effectiveness of rearwardly placed virtual sound sources. This has been achieved by using each speaker pair to create a complementary sound field, addressing the frontal and rearward hemispheres respectively. The frontal and rearward sound hemispheres are seamlessly integrated together such that any number of virtual sound sources can be made to move around the listener, traveling smoothly between the two, controlled by directsound3D. Because each of the Sensuara sweet spots are tolerant laterally and has high tolerance for front-back movement for frontal speakers, the sweet areas for frontal and rearward speakers are quite large and have a high degree overlap. Consequently, the final sweet spot covers a much greater area than does the intensity-based sweet spot.

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