3DsoundSurge Review: Skywell Magic Sound Live

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Important Info:

Sound Card By : Skywell Technology
Price : ~$99
API Support : DirectSound, DS3D, EAX 1.0 and A3D 1.0 (by translating to DS3D calls, works with most but not all titles)
S/N Ratio : > 95 dB

Minimum System Requirements:

Pentium 133MHz or above
Windows® 95/98, Windows NT 4.0 or MS DOS 6.0 or above
System Memory - 16MB or above (32MB for Wavetable software users)
One available PCI slot
CD-ROM or DVD-ROM
Speakers (Dolby® 5.1 compatible speaker system recommended)

Reviewers PC:

Mark
- Win98
- Celeron 333a o/c 416
- 128MB PC100 ram
- Creative TNT
- Creative Voodoo Blaster 12 M
- 6.1 and 13 GIG EIDE HD
- For four speaker testing purpose I hooked the card up to Videologic's Sirocco Crossfire speaker system using the analog inputs as well as MidiLand S4-7100. For 6-speaker testing I used the MidiLand S4-7100. For two speaker testing purposes I used the same speaker systems but only connecting to the front channels as well as the Diamond Audio Technology HPM-4100 and for headphones testing I used a set of Sennheiser HD525s

Specifications

PCI 2.2 compliant, and PCI Bus Power Management rev. 2.1 compliant
18 bit AC-97 rev. 2.1 Codec with low floor noise(over SNR 95dB, and THD – 80)
Built-in SRC(Sampling Rate Converter) and digital mixer.
Dual game ports support MPU401(MIDI port)
Analog/Digital-Joystick interface
YAMAHA 128 Voice Software Wavetable
Q3D positional filter API: provides scalable audio for 3D games.
Connect 5 Speakers And A Subwoofer
Audio input/output : Mic-In, Line-In, CD-In, Video-In, Line-Out(stereo earphones), Front Speakers Out, Rear Speakers Out, Center Speaker, Sub-Woofer, and S/PDIF Out.

Compatibility

Microsoft Direct 3D Sound and MMsystem support, compatible with DirectX 6.0
Support AdLib Music Synthesizer, and real DOS Sound Blaster Pro
D3D, A3D, EAX and Native DOS game compatible

Update: We don't think this card is available anymore. If you are interested to buy a soundcard using the same chip (FM801) we suggest you check out our FM801 reference review

The last twenty months soundcards using the Vortex2 or the EMU10k1 (all Creative Labs Live cards) have garnered almost all the attention in the consumer market. Soundcards using other chips have had to compete on price or offer some special feature that the Vortex2 or Emu10k1 lacks to create any interest. With Aureal's future in doubt at best, there is certainly room for alternative solutions to gain some of that limelight. With the Magic Sound Live, Skywell did both by offering 5.1 speaker support with a SRP of $99. Magic Sound Live, just like Best Data's Theatrix and several other cards less common cards, uses Fortemedia’s FM801 chip which features support for DS3D, A3D 1.0 and EAX 1.0 using QSound's Q3D 2.0 engine. It also features QSound’s stereo expansion technology, QXpander and 2D-3D. The real attention grabber, as mentioned, is of course the analog 5.1 speaker support which many have been waiting on to play DVD movies using 5.1 systems that are just Dolby Digital ready. That is the system has 5.1 analog inputs but don’t include a Dolby Digital decoder. To be able to take advantage of the cards support for 5.1 output you also need to buy a software DVD player that supports the 5.1 mode of the Magic Sound Live and Skywell has looked after that by bundling the full version of WinDVD with the card. In this review we will take a look at how Magic Sound Live performs for playing music, games and DVD movies. We will also compare it to true hardware DD 5.1 decoders and the 4-speaker down-mixing mode of the Live and Vortex2.