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Date |
: Oct 1st, 2001 |
| Category |
: Audio |
| Manufacturer |
: Evergreen |
| Author |
: Jin-Wei Tioh |
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Sound quality is where things really start to get funky. Since WOW and TruBass type enhancements usually work better on more modest sound systems, the RumbleFX was hooked up to a Diamond Monster Sound (which lacks software treble and bass adjustment) and an Altec Lansing ACS90, a 2 piece speaker system.
Music was the first type of source material to be sampled. Songs such as Loverboy (Mariah Carey), Hit 'em Up Style (Blu Cantrell) and Bootylicious (Destiny's Child) worked wonderfully with WOW and TruBass fully enabled. The bass beats and electric guitars were accentuated very nicely, giving an overall "wrap around" immersive effect. Likewise, all the prayer songs and the orchestral version of Suteki Da Ne from the Final Fantasy X soundtrack came through great. Hadyn's Trumpet Concerto in E Flat Major required the WOW to be dialed down by half, but once there, the mellowness of the trumpet was enhanced, producing an overall nice effect. Generally speaking, sounds/music with already a fair amount of reverb present or with short to mid-length, reasonably well defined bass beats benefit the most from a full WOW and TruBass boost from the RumbleFX.
One supposed benefit of the RumbleFX is its ability to process mono into stereo. Some really old audio clips were thrown at it, and the results were a mixed bag. One annoying characteristic of WOW is that it boosts the treble, especially the higher range. Mono recordings are almost always old recordings - hisses are omnipresent and slight pops and clicks are occasional visitors. Bessie Smith's Lost Your Head Blues (1962), Billy Strayhorn's Take The "A" Train (1941) and Charlie "Bird" Parker's Bloomdido (1950) (all classical jazz pieces FYI) sounded better off with 3D Sound completely disabled. Background noise and tape hiss were over-emphasized while the songs stayed stubbornly in mono. There were some exceptions however; Louis Armstrong's Hotter Than That did turn out to be a little better sounding. But the RumbleFX's talents seemed to best suit Harold Arlen's Over The Rainbow (1939). This is a beautiful legato melody that invokes dreaminess and a sense of wonderment. The expanded soundstage with slight reverb made it most delightful to audition.
How does the RumbleFX fare in games? In Unreal Tournament, the background music definitely sounds better. However, when tested on a SBLive! equipped system, the audio positioning already done via Creative's EAX was quite mucked up by WOW. One simply couldn't tell where attacks were coming from, ie. above, below, left, right, front or back, a tactical disadvantage. Plain stereo PC and console games almost always sounded better with the RumbleFX as in the case of Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Brothers and Final Fantasy IV.
While one cannot go wrong with TruBass, WOW is not as perfect. As previously mentioned, WOW amplifies the higher treble range. If your speakers and sound card lack some form of adjustment, the effect produced can sometimes be extremely aggravating. Piano and violin pieces don't sound particularly good, as can be readily demonstrated by feeding Vivaldi's La Primavera from The Four Seasons, Chopin's Nocturne in E Flat Major and Franz Liszt's Transcendental Etude into the RumbleFX. The effect of Hadyn's Surprise Symphony and Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun were compromised by dialing up WOW.
Moving to more modern examples, WOW didn't do much for the 3DMark 2001 soundtrack, except bringing the guitars out front and sending everything else into the distant background. Nelly Fertado and The Corrs definitely fared better with WOW completely disabled. Interestingly, metal fans might be disappointed by the RumbleFX. Otherworldly, the only heavy metal track in Final Fantasy X sounded somewhat fainter and hollow with WOW. Only the TruBass bass boost was beneficial. Sometimes, WOW produced very strange sounding effects. For instance, Race to Old New York from the Final Fantasy : Spirits Within soundtrack with WOW fully enabled sounded as if you had crawled right under the London Symphony Orchestra. Same thing goes for the Star Wars orchestral pieces.
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