Aureal SQ2500

[Chandler]

This isn't a current product, but I thought that it is worth mentioning.

Aureal SQ2500

I'm still running an Aureal Vortex 2 (AU8830) based sound card in Windows XP - the Aureal SQ2500.  The SQ2500 was one of two retail Aureal cards released in 1999, the other being the SQ1500, based upon the Vortex Advantage (AU8810).  Aureal had been making sound cards for a number of years, but they were either sold to OEMs such as Quantex and Micron, or sold under different names by other manufacturers such as VideoLogic.

Both the SQ1500 and SQ2500 offered the same back plate connections, but the SQ2500 was the more advanced of the two.  At the time, it's main rival was the Creative SoundBlaster Live! and it walked all over that in most respects.  96 hardware sound channels, compared to 32 in the Live and superior sound quality from better DACs.

Aureal were pioneers in 3D positional audio, i.e. realistic 3D sound from just two speakers or headphones.  You may think that it's not possible to get 3D sound from just speakers but it is.  Aureal were doing this well, while rivals such as Creative were using 4-speakers to do the same thing.  Of course the SQ2500 supported Quad speakers too, but the fact that it could do it with a simple pair of headphones was very attractive to many gamers.

I still use the Aureal SQ2500 today, and it runs fine in Windows XP.  The sound quality is still top notch to me, and when connected to my VideoLogic ZXR-500 speakers, it sounds so much clearer than the SiS 7018 + Realtek ALC200 on my laptop.  I was listening to some music files this evening, some which I listen to frequently with my laptop and there are sounds audible which weren't before.  At first I thought it was noise from the adjacent room, but no it's sound which I was just missing with the poor quality Realtek codec.  The fact that a sound card can still sound good 4 years after it's introduction is truly amazing.

Aureal had originally planned to offer an even better card than the SQ2500; the SQ3500 Turbo.  This was essentially the SQ2500 but with an additional daughterboard piggy-backed onto it, which offered Dolby Digital and DTS hardware decoding and hardware A3D reverb, all done courtesy of a Motorola DSP.  It have been the most advanced consumer sound card, and was ulitmately the first card which offered hardware DD 5.1 and DTS decoding.  Most new cards, even the expensive ones, use software to decode it and send it to analogue outputs.  Anyway, Aureal got into financial trouble (many blame Creative Labs for this) and filed for Chapter 11 bankrupcy.  They did manage to get some Windows 2000 drivers out before they were bought by Creative, but they were incomplete.  Microsoft now maintain these drivers, and updated them slightly for Windows XP.

More to come later...

Final Score: 10/10