Terratec EWS64XL

Terratec EWS64XL: A Very Versatile PC Audio Card

Product: Terratec Audiosystem EWS64XL
From: Terratec www.terratec.net
Version tested: 3.0 (for Win9x/Me/NT/2000)
Price: about US$580 (street)

Pros: An astonishing number of features packed into this hardware and software combo. ASIO 2.0 support. Fairly good sound, flexible and easily upgradeable architecture. ASIO 2.0 support (complete with Direct Monitoring) in Cubase 3.7.x or newer. Support for all 32-bit versions of Windows, including NT and Windows 2000.

Cons: ISA card is moderately noisy and has "plug and play" problems on some systems. Not compatible with SoundBlaster 16. There are so many signal routing options, the mixer software can seem confusing at first. I/O module must be physically disconnected to use devices that use the card's on-board MIDI port, such as Microsoft SideWinder Force Feedback joystick. Latency in Cubase is higher than we'd like.

Closest Competitors: Hanmesoft/Hoontech Sound Track 128 Ruby, Creative Labs SB Live! Platinum,  Guillemot Maxi Studio ISIS

Summary: The Terratec EWS64XL is is a card that tries to do it all: it's a hard disk recorder, a sampler (with up to 64MB of RAM onboard). It's a SoundBlaster and Windows Sound System compatible multimedia/games card with a joystick port and quadraphonic audio outputs. It has an outboard I/O module innovatively designed to fit in a 5.25" drive bay, with two MIDI interfaces for up to 32 separate MIDI channels. It features both analog and digital (optical and s/pdif coax) outputs. This separate module offers front-panel access to MIDI, digital I/O and headphone jacks. The card's elaborate mixer software provides effects ranging from reverb and echo to 3D spatialization and pitch control. It has expandable onboard RAM (4MB standard) and can load up to 64MB of General MIDI and/or GS files and, well, you get the idea. Remarkably, it is rather successful at nearly all of it. For the hobbyist to semi-pro musician, this is a card well worth considering. The EWS64XL was named "best soundcard" in CHIP Magazine, in May, 2000.

The version 2.0 software was a big improvement over earlier releases in both functionality and technical design and version 3.0 further enhances the card's usability and adds long-awaited "ASIO 2.0" drivers for professional-level performance and monitoring capabilities in Steinberg Cubase and other ASIO-compatible audio applications. (The final 3.0 drivers are now available at www.terratec-us.com, along with the long-promised "Ed!son Wave" waveform editor.) Version 2.0 also added a useful Audio In control, allowing easy adjustment of reverb, echo, chorus and volume of incoming signals, features that again appear in the 3.0 release.

We found that when audio was routed via the WAVE inputs and outputs, the fidelity and S/N ratio were better than when the card's CODEC I/O was used. The Codec feature, it seems, is primarily there for games compatibility. It is also worth mentioning that the EWS' effects section is much less of a CPU hog (being implemented in hardware) than the effects available in Cubase VST, which are currently software-based, even on systems equipped with a DSP audio card.

The EWS 64XL 2.0 and 3.0 drivers also have less onerous IRQ requirements than earlier releases. With the version 1.x drivers, it took three IRQs to enable all the card's features. Version 2 reduces this to one -- and, if use of the codec is not required, it requires none at all. Even better, versions 2.0 and 3.0 allow several EWS cards to be added to a system, each one "cascading" off the first card's  IRQ -- neat! (With that said, it is worth mentioning that you will achieve the best timing stability and performance by leaving all the interrupts "on.") The EWS Stress Control Panel has additional details.

Initially, we experienced some timing problems in Cubase VST when using this card. However, following the advice listed in the Cool CuCake Forge section at EWS64.com and the tips posted at CubaseFAQ.com helped a lot. We found that turning off the Codec input, setting the Clip function "on" and/or disabling unused Wave inputs improved the S/N ratio. The above-mentioned FAQs and the Steinberg UK website have a number of useful tips on how to set up Cubase for optimum performance. Another useful site is the MAZ sound website. It has a page of useful tips and links specific to the EWS64XL.

This card is not a great choice for those running NT4 or 2000, but it works. Although Windows NT and Windows 2000 drivers are available on the Terratec website, NT's lack of plug-and-play configuration can make this device -- like many other ISA cards -- a hair-puller to successfully configure. We had better results with Windows 2000, despite some caveats listed at Terratec's website. Aside from the lack of DirectX support for the card's onboard FM synthesizer (which, unlike most sound-card-based FM synths, isn't exceptionally cheesy sounding -- it boasts a 24 dB/oct resonant filter, 3 envelope generators and 2 LFOs per voice) and a few other minor limitations such as a lack of multicard support, we were able to get the card working with virtually all features intact under Win2K, including ASIO 2.0 support, either by the EWS64XL's own ASIO driver (which is full-featured, but delivers only fair performance, with stable latency levels at 43ms or higher), or the low-latency DirectX Full Duplex ASIO driver (which is amazingly fast, and capable of latencies as low as 11ms!)  bundled with Cubase VST 5.0. We also tested the EWS 64XL under Windows Millennium Edition and can report that the card works 100% under this OS, too.

The EWS64's mixer and control software, which we originally criticized for being buggy and incomplete, is now something almost as bad: it's confusingly complex. But, when the hardware has as many features as this card does (it is, essentially, two unrelated audio systems in one), this is difficult to avoid (although Creative Labs seems to have done a good job of it, with its "LiveWare 3.0" software for the SB Live card).

Although Terratec's 3.0 software version represents a big improvement over earlier releases, we still find its "split personality" frustratingly convoluted to manage at times. While we're not about to pull it out and put our old AWE32 back in, we're not sure we'd recommend it, as CHIP magazine did, over a SoundBlaster Live. Despite all the negative comments you tend to read about Creative Labs sound cards around Usenet, any of the Creative Labs cards (found in several of our test PCs here at PCBuyersGuide) tend to be considerably less trouble overall. The inexpensive SB Live Value Edition (about C$70) sounds at least as good as the EWS 64XL, particularly when combined with its 8MB RAM GM bank or any of the optional EMU "SoundFont" collections. While we'd name the C$349 Sound Blaster Audigy eX the best bet for general-purpose audio and GM MIDI playback for the "serious enthusiast to semi-pro," this card is the second-best we've tested.

Product: Sound Track 128 Ruby
From: Hanmesoft, distributed in Canada by B&B SYSTEMS Inc. (Tel : 416-754-0730)
Price: US$199

Pros: This Korean clone of the EWS64 is about 1/2 of the Terratec card's price, when the price of the optional digital I/O module is factored in. Four independent outputs, or 2 outs plus effects. SRS 3D sounds great. Less confusing mixer software than that provided with the EWS64XL.

Cons: Takes two IRQs. We were unsuccessful at setting up the card without errors under Win98 and NT4. (It worked well in Win95, though). A SoundTrack 128 support page is at www.audiencedp.com (along with several broken links, a problem for which we cannot provide a solution).

Like the Terratec card, this card comes with a 4MB RAM module, support for 32 MIDI channels plus 64 hardware voices, four outs, a digital I/O module (optional) and 20-bit recording capability. The Dream and Crystal chips provide WSS and SB Pro compatibility, along with a variety of onboard effects, including very nice SRS 3D and mixer taskbar controls. The drive-bay I/O module of the Terratec card or SB Live! Platinum outclasses the simple expansion slot digital I/O (in and out) connectors provided here, but the functionality is similar. Overall, we'd rate the Hanmesoft/Hoontech card's software as easier to use and better designed than Terratec's -- except for one key issue. While your chances of plugging a Terratec or Creative Labs card in and having it "just work" are good, the chances of this happening with the SoundTrack 128 are, apparently, practically nil. Our efforts to get the Sound Track 128 working without any problems listed in the Windows Device Manager under Windows 98 were unsuccessful. We could, with quite a bit of fiddling, get it to play WAV audio files successfully, but there was always an error message saying "SoundTrack 128 not found" after the system booted. We've read other reports that suggest it is possible to get it working, but it sure wasn't obvious to us. By comparison, a Sound Blaster series card "just works" -- (well, unless you have a motherboard based on a VIA chipset. But that's another story.)

Product: Home Studio Pro64 Maxi Sound
From: Guillemot (http://www.guillemot.com)

Summary: For MIDI and audio enthusiasts, the Guillemot Home Studio Pro64 Maxi Sound was once on our list of recommended products. However, weak support from the company since its release and poor drivers have stifled our enthusiasm for this card -- despite a feature set that looks to be a good value for US$199.

Indeed, on the surface, the specs are impressive. It has a signal-to-noise ratio of 92dB when using the RCA line and even higher when using S/PDIF. Guillemot's most recent drivers for the Maxi Sound line (including the Game Theater 64 Home Studio Pro 64 and Game Theater 64 Dynamic 3D) are DirectSound compliant.

The Home Studio Pro 64 Maxi Sound uses the same audio chipset -- the Dream 9407 50 MIP DSP -- as the TerraTec EWS64 XL, Hanmesoft SoundTrack Ruby 128 and Hoontech ST 97 (an older Hoontech design used the DSP chip DREAM 8905). The TerraTec card is the most expensive of the bunch, but of course you get what you pay for, since it's a professional card; the others are semi-pro cards. Of course, any of those four cards will beat Creative Lab's AWE64/Gold hands down in terms of audio fidelity.

There are a few notable issues with the card, such as the fact that oversized joystick connectors, such as the one on Microsoft's Sidewinder 3D Pro, block the Line out jack on the card (some users resort to using a knife to shave down the plastic on their game connector), and another, more easily solved problem with some joysticks -- they don't work at all, until you do the following:

1. Go into "Multimedia properties".
2. Go into "advanced".
3. Click on "sound devices" and your sound card's Audio ("Audio for Maxi Sound Pro 64 Audio" in this case).
4. Click on "settings" and turn on "single mode DMA".

This isn't in the manual, but it really should be, as it is a widely reported problem among users.

It's the software quirks, specifically the complicated and occasionally troublesome mixer software, that are these cards' main weaknesses. (Lack of SB16 compatibility and dubious NT drivers are also problems.) And that is why the machine I am typing this article on has a SoundBlaster in it.

Compare Also:

• Mediatrix Audiotrix XG (www.mediatrix.com)
• Sound Blaster Live (www.soundblaster.com)  
• Guillemot Maxi Studio ISIS

Glossary

• s/pdif (often pronounced "spidiff") -- Sony/Philips Digital Interface Format - a standard digital connector found on sound cards such as the Terratec EWS, Event Layla, SoundBlaster AWE64 Gold, etc. 
• Codec - compressor/decompressor 
• MIDI - musical instrument digital interface 
• IRQ - Interrupt request 
• S/N - signal to noise
•  VST - Steinberg's term for Cubase's Virtual Studio Technology

Terratec has announced a product called Microwave PC, a new add-on 5.25" drive bay module that emulates the classic Microwave synth. www.terratec.de

Visit the Steinberg site at www.steinberg.de. Hanmesoft's SoundTrack 128 DDMA is a PCI version of the ST128 RUBY. According to the company's broken English press release, "it's only one card completely compatible older soundcard in PCI slot." See Hanmesoft Corp. Sound Track News for details.