You're looking for a new PCI sound board, but you're on a tight budget. You want solid playback quality, and you want hardware acceleration of DirectSound and DirectSound3d. Who you gonna call?

If you aren't too worried about sound recording quality, and you don't need A3D compatibility, the Diamond Sonic Impact may be the bargain you need. It doesn't have two speaker outputs llike the MX200, and it doesn't do DOS, but it sits on the PCI bus and can process 32 audio streams simultaneously, actually exceeding the ability of the Monster Sound MX200. Moreover, the Sonic Impact, with its ESS Maestro-II, goes beyond the MX80 with 64 voices in hardware.

Installation was painless, but documentation is sparse and if you have an older glitchy mainboard or the early release of WIN95 trouble may stalk you. On the other hand, the PCI bus installation of sound boards is generally less hassle than the ISA bus.

The Sonic Impact goes beyond boards like the TB Daytona and the Ensoniq PCI to actually accelerate DirectSound in hardware, and it will even process up to 5 simultaneous DS/DS3D streams. I don't think there are any other PCI sound boards on the market that reach that high, although Aureal's next generation chipset may go even higher. Sound designers say that the optimum number of streams would be eight, though there arent' any games using that many streams yet.

Click to continue . . .

The Sonic Impact has the usual four RCA plugs on back, 2 outputs and 2 inputs. The outputs are for stereo speakers and Line Level speaker. The inputs are for stereo line in and a mike. The standard MIDI/Gameport interface is here also, but I haven't discovered whether this one is analog or digital, but I suspect its analog. The board itself boasts the usual CD, Modem, Auxiliary and Digital input ports.

I was a little suspicious that this board might lack full duplex capability, but thankfully Diamond hasn't done away with this on their entry level sound board. You will still be able to use Netmeeting or your voice mail program, and you can even experiment with simulataneous voice in games if you have games that support it.

As for wave sound quality, the wave set on the Sonic Impact leaves a lot to be desired. Turtle Beach's Montego or Daytona fare far better here, and even Creative Labs old AWE64 is superior. But whaddaya want for a buck?

Software includes Microsoft's NetShow, Midisoft's Internet Sound Bar 2.0 and Studio Recording Session (for wav files), a CD-player, and SimCopter by Maxis. For the sim or strategy gamer on a budget, this one is hard to beat.