Diamond Monster Sound MX400

Conclusion

The Diamond MX400 should now be appearing on retail store shelves at an MSRP of $80 and probably less online. That price puts it a good $20 below the retail prices of Aureal's SQ2500 or Creative's Sound Blaster Live! cards. With a very complete feature set and a good price, the MX400 is a very compelling option.

There are a number of things to consider when choosing your 3D sound card. There's of course the same old "quality vs. performance" debate. The SBLive! provides the overall best performance and least drain on a system's resources thanks to the powerful Emu10K1 DSP. On the other hand, the Vortex2's wavetracing algorithms are more realistic, but require more CPU power.

Those that want the best 3D sound quality should go with a Vortex2 as long as you don't mind the performance hit or your system is powerful enough that the difference is bearable. On the other hand, those that want the best performance possible, or have low end CPU's, should pick the Sound Blaster Live! Further, those need a plethora of digital inputs and outputs, the recently released Sound Blaster Live! Platinum with its Live! Drive is clearly the best option.

The MX400 offers a compromise between these two extremes. It offers a few features over both the Live! and Vortex2 that enhance sound quality, but still comes in 3rd place with regards to sound quality. However, the MX400 is cheaper and offers a number of compelling features of its own. For some, the RioPC upgrade option will be the feature that pushes it over the top, assuming it's available in a timely manner. For others, the compromise between 3D sound quality and performance may put the MX400 ahead of the other cards on the extremes of the spectrum.