Who had an Aureal Vortex or Vortex 2 sound card?
Posted by theSiliconSiren@reddit | vintagecomputing | View on Reddit | 18 comments
I remember them being all the rage for a bit among my friends, but I was still young and definitely had no room for surround/rear speakers, so I just stuck with my Sound Blaster at the time. I think the fad died out pretty quick, iirc.
I miss the days of pushing the envelope in sound tech though.
Divergent5623@reddit
Still have a Vortex 2! A Turtle Beach model.
frenchretronerd@reddit
My first sound card was a Turtle Beach Montego A3D ! (Vortex 1)
Sample_And_Hold@reddit
TB Montego II PCI, that's the same one I have!
frenchretronerd@reddit
I had a Montego A3D Vortex with AU8820 in my first PC, a Dell XPS R350. I have rebuilt the exact same machine a few months ago and it's obviously rocking an Aureal Vortex sound card (Although I couldn't find an affordable Montego so I took an equivalent model)
Sample_And_Hold@reddit
I had one, may probably still have it stashed somewhere. There was indeed some hype around then at the time.
frenchretronerd@reddit
I had a Montego A3D Vortex AU8820 in ly first Dell XPS R350 PC. I have rebuilt the exact same machine a few months ago and it's obviously rocking an Aureal Vortex (Although I couldn't find an affordable Montego so I took an equivalent model)
carcenomy@reddit
Installed one last night 😂 Apparently you need very specific driver versions for K6 systems or it swamps the PCI bus and you lose PS/2. Quality!
theSiliconSiren@reddit (OP)
Very cool! And interesting issue on K6 systems, I wasn't aware of that. Wonder how many people were plagued with that and didn't know it 😱
carcenomy@reddit
It's funny, there was always the constant jabber about how Creative Labs wrote trash drivers. There's some truth to that, but from recent experimentation they *all* wrote trash drivers!
BCProgramming@reddit
I have a Vortex 2. I got it at the thrift store in a box with several expansion cards, though it's was the only OEM Driver CD in the box. If I remember correctly it is in my Pentium II tower, which pairs it with a Voodoo 3 3000.
majestic_ubertrout@reddit
It's by far the best way to play games like Half-Life, Thief, and Unreal. Crazy that most people who have played them don't know how they're really meant to sound.
steak4take@reddit
I had both then I got an Nvidia nForce motherboard with Soundstorm and never looked back. Dolby Digital Live out to my 5.1 amp and speakers made games like GTA IV something special.
moostermoomoo@reddit
I won one in college thru an online drawing when they were released. The gift package was also supposed to include some sort of videogame related to angels/demons/something but the software was delayed. It ended up shipping with a copy of Descent Freespace - which I absolutely loved!
ovor@reddit
My best memories are from playing Thief on my A3D with headphones. And it was totally "what it says on the tin" thing. I was scared shitless by zombies, but I always knew where they are. Several years later, I replaced it with SB and its EAX was absolute crap
Fairlight60@reddit
Didn't have this one but my SB Live had 4 speakers output (stereo front and stereo back) and EAX for environment effects. I remember playing Unreal Tournament with all of these and it was mind-blowing for the time.
Hot_Cheesecake_905@reddit
I got a Aureal sound card at the time specifically for the SPDIF connector so I could dump music from my PC (128kbps MP3s) to mini-disc. It was such a slow process.
postmodest@reddit
I had one. I recall that its support in Unreal was ...unreal[?].
You could hear the ship fall apart around you on the intro level, and when you crashed and escaped, you could hear the insects fly around your head.
The EAX version had none of that. Then Creative bought them and canned it.
LuigiThirty-@reddit
I had the Aureal Vortex. A3D absolutely worked as advertised through headphones. The positional audio demos were mind-blowing as a kid.