Aureal Vortex PCI 338-A3D
Aureal may be no more, but cards based on the PCI 338-A3D still float around. The card is a good choice for implementing surround sound on your computer. It uses a standard designed by NASA specifically for use in flight simulators called the A3D. A3D is used to implement positional audio using advanced sound processing algorithms.
Special mathematical functions that represent the manner in which the human ear interprets sounds result in an accurate representation of 3D space around the listener. Significantly, A3D is able to accomplish this effect using just two speakers-it can therefore be experienced with standard stereo speakers or headphones. Also, a lot of games have incorporated this standard.
The results show that it is a very capable soundcard for audio positioning. Perhaps the only drawback is the rather high CPU utilisation, which went up to 12.1 per cent in the DirectSound3D tests.