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[News] Repulse sold outANN.lu
Posted on 15-Sep-2002 20:15 GMT by Teemu I. Yliselä15 comments
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The Aliendesign homepage is back online with the news that their Repulse soundcard is now sold out and that the "product has been an inspiring and outstanding success.".
Repulse sold out : Comment 1 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by José on 15-Sep-2002 21:49 GMT
Cool, now what about new production, and specially a PCI version? Maybe they could get some sales from PC users (and Mac?), and at the same time publicise the Amiga to them by having complete Amiga support. And making a great card at the same time of course. I don't know much about current PC sound card market, do you think they'd have a chance?
Repulse sold out : Comment 2 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 16-Sep-2002 04:07 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (José):
No! :-)
Repulse sold out : Comment 3 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by Don Cox on 16-Sep-2002 05:12 GMT
In reply to Comment 2 (Anonymous):
The Repulse is a very good 16 bit card, but there are plenty of
companies producing good 16 and 24 bit sound cards in PCI format. It
would be almost impossible to break into the market unless the card
had some unique feature such as special support for Amibisonics.
Repulse sold out : Comment 4 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by Peter Gordon on 16-Sep-2002 06:25 GMT
In reply to Comment 3 (Don Cox):
Ehm... its a very good 16/24bit card :) but yes, it wouldn't stand much chance in the PC world. OTOH, I think mine is fantastic, and wouldn't swap it for an SB128 (or even a Live) even though I have a mediator!
The only complaint I have is that no module player will correctly play music modules though it without horrible timing problems.
But for games, mp3s, sound editing etc. its absolutely brilliant.
Repulse sold out : Comment 5 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by Don Cox on 16-Sep-2002 06:37 GMT
In reply to Comment 4 (Peter Gordon):
The Repulse is in a completely different class from the PCI128, which
is sold as a low budget consumer item. You can't do any serious
recording with the PCI128 - it is more suited to dictation and speech
recognition.
To get a PCI equivalent of the Repulse, you would probably have to pay
more than the price of the Repulse.
There are good sound cardas around, but they cost money.
Repulse sold out : Comment 6 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by Peter Gordon on 16-Sep-2002 07:01 GMT
In reply to Comment 5 (Don Cox):
I know that. I was only comparing them because the 128 is the only card with Amiga drivers, and the Live is the only one with promised drivers :)
Repulse sold out : Comment 7 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by José on 16-Sep-2002 07:45 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (Peter Gordon):
"To get a PCI equivalent of the Repulse, you would probably have to pay
more than the price of the Repulse."
So how can you say I couldn't stand a chance in the PCI market? At least Amiga users of future PPC machines would buy it. And come on, if the price is not that much of a problem comparing to equivalent PC cards, it could stand a chance.
Repulse sold out : Comment 8 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by Björn Hagström on 16-Sep-2002 08:50 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (José):
Might be not so fun to write win32 and/or linux drivers though. If they want to reach a wider market that is.
/Björn
Repulse sold out : Comment 9 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by Graham on 16-Sep-2002 09:14 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (Björn Hagström):
If they were to make a PCI audio card, they would use a standard PCI audio chip as the base. Therefore Windows drivers would be a given from the manufacturer anyway. Linux drivers would open the card up for Linux users of course, considering that audio card support in Linux is a bit hit and miss sometimes.
An example PCI audio chip is the VIA Envy24 - a high-end 24-bit audio DSP with 96kHz sampling rates. http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=140 or the HT version which can do 192kHz audio and 7.1 channel audio ... http://www.viatech.com/en/multimedia/envy24ht.jsp Of course, writing drivers for these, or other similar chips, for the Amiga would take some time I imagine.
Repulse sold out : Comment 10 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 16-Sep-2002 11:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 5 (Don Cox):
On the prosumer side you can buy an Audigy for a lot less (and get Firewire free). On the professional audio side people are willing to pay say EUR 700, but they expect something like the RME Hammerfall, with large numbers of inputs & outputs and very broad compatibility (not to mention excellent audio quality).
It is possible to get attention with a good product from a small company in pro audio. If your company is eccentric in certain ways (e.g. supports the Amiga, believes that SPDIF is inherently evil, names all products after types of cow) it will be forgiven or even encouraged so long as you get good reviews.
Without listening to a Repulse I can't tell you if it would get good reviews. After all the $20 CMedia PCI cards claim approximately the same /physical/ specification and they sound... no better than you'd expect for $20.
Repulse sold out : Comment 11 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by Hmmm on 16-Sep-2002 13:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (Anonymous):
The "Aliendesign Fresian 24Pro" ... :D
Repulse sold out : Comment 12 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by Donovan Reeve on 16-Sep-2002 21:54 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (Anonymous):
I have an Audigy, and for the $200.00 U.S. it cost me I think it sounds
fairly bad. I am frankly very dissapointed in it after all the hype.
I also bought Creatives best (or at least nost expensive) 5.1 sound
system to go with it, and I am even more dissapointed in it. In my
opinion Creative Sound Labs is resting on their laurels and has gotten
fat and lazy. Yes, I think a new competitor might indeed have a good
chance f they made a good product. Creative is ripe to have their semi-
monopoly toppled. And the software that came with Audigy is downright
irritating, abusive, overbearing and unfriendly
Donovan Reeve (bubby@inebraska.com)
Repulse sold out : Comment 13 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by [JC] on 16-Sep-2002 22:20 GMT
In reply to Comment 12 (Donovan Reeve):
The Live! and Audigy are both shit cards, with nasty PCI bugs that play up on certain configurations (most modern VIA chipsets, most of the Intel i8xx series in some setups). While Creative are content to simply blame VIA, it has been proven time and again that the problems with these cards (hanging the system, ticks/noise/skipping in audio) are due to the Live/Audigy violating PCI standards.
Steer well clear and get a card like those based around the Crystal SoundFusion DSP series of chips (such as the Videologic SonicFury/Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, or Guillemot's range of sound cards like the Fortissimo). In my opinion, my SonicFury sounds miles better than my girlfriends Audigy on the same speakers.
Also Cirrus Logic, the makers of the Crystal SoundFusion DSP's, have full tech specs and hardware documentation online for free, which I'd say is pretty ideal for Amiga driver authors. Linux support is also very good if that's your kind of thing.
Repulse sold out : Comment 14 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by Reverend Robb on 16-Sep-2002 23:10 GMT
One thing that all [that I know of] sound cards for the Amiga lack, and I would very much like to see, is more than just 2 outputs: I would like to do quad, or surround, though I really prefer the quad 4 over surround 5.1. But that's me. Any card that could do the later could do the former, so I'd be content.
Repulse sold out : Comment 15 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 17-Sep-2002 01:12 GMT
In reply to Comment 14 (Reverend Robb):
Well, if you don't care enough to know why 5.1 is different from 4 channel stereo then I think you'd be very happy with the following hack.
AC3 (= Dolby Digital) is an encoding for 5.1 surround that happens[*] to fit over an ordinary SPDIF connection. A suitable hardware decoder (they're widely available because a lot of Home Movie setups need one) can be connected to a SPDIF cable and will squirt out a bunch of surround channels.
Now, it's important to understand that the musical fidelity of a home movie 5.1 system is not considered very important. The Home Movie experience is all about loud noises, big stereo and lots of rumbling bass. So if you're the sort who would rather sit in silence than put up with FM radio this will not suffice.
The Repulse, or any other card with a SPDIF optical output can be persuaded to send AC3 encoded audio instead of the normal 2ch 44.1kHz (or 48kHz) PCM data. It doesn't need to "understand" the digital data so it doesn't matter that this is an alien encoding. So long as you don't try to listen to it through the analog output. Now you just need to create your AC3 data.
[*] Of course it's not really a coincidence.
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