The installation of this card doesn't goes as straightforward as installing a Creative Labs Ensoniq PCI. As a fact, 3 steps must be followed precisely. The first step is to plug the card in one of the available PCI slots. Next step is to turn the power on and when Win95 has booted up then a dialog box is displayed where you must choose "drivers included on manufacturer floppy disk", then you insert the CD and using the browse option you must choose Win95X and click on the Maestro.inf file. Then, after the re booting of the computer you double click on the CD icon to start the applications installation and voila you now have completed the Diamond Sonic Impact PCI installation!

Now, to talk about the audio applications included on the CD I must confess that this CD is generously filled. As a fact, an Audio Rack full of nice features is included among them. This Audio Rack includes a Midi player, a WAV player, a CD player, a mixer and a special effects keyboard. We can really say that Diamond did his homework on the functionality side of this card.

For instance the special effects keyboard is including no less than 9 different effects and among them there is a treble and a bass control which feature is not commonly found on sound cards. On the other hand, we can find all the more standard effects like "Reverb", "Delay", "Chorus", "3D" and a few others that for some reasons I didn't investigated were not working on my system.

There are two wave sets included with this card and they are a 2mb and/or a 4mb wave set switchable from settings/control panel/system/device manager/video sound game controller/Maestro wave table synthesis devices.

Speaking about wave sets I must tell you that they are not very brilliant ! As a fact these wave sets are far and even very far away behind those of the Creative Labs Ensoniq PCI sound card ! Really flat, without any dynamic, no originality, these wave sets are really deceiving. Furthermore, I saw no options allowing to upgrade them or to use a 8mb wave set as it is the case on the Creative Labs Ensoniq PCI sound card. I'm sorry I have to say it but Diamond really missed the train with these wave sets and they could have make greater efforts on this side because things were not looking so bad until now :-(

Besides, while we are in the bad news why don't we go for it and burst the abscess ! I don't know what was causing it but when I used to play Midi files I was constantly hearing noises on a regular basis. As a fact, there was clicks and pops and scratchy noises easily audible all along the music was playing on this sound card and It has never been the case with any other sound card I used !

Furthermore, when I used to open a new application these weird noises were louder and sustained as along as the application was loading into memory and this also has never happened to me before. I am felling that this card uses a lot a memory to work and that this is what is causing all these noises. As a fact even the opening of a new window is causing noises while the music stops a short period of time !

No need to say that I couldn't make this card work under the real DOS mode even if there are statements saying the contrary in the CD user manual and even in some Readme,txt files ! I have been trying to find for more than 2 hours in the user manual how to do to use this card under the real DOS mode to no avail ! All I have been able to do is to enable the music sound card under the Sound Blaster Pro compatibility mode while playing Warcraft 2 but I have never been able to get this card recognized for any digital effect sound card I tried. Finally, as if all of this was not sufficient, when I used to boot under the real DOS mode it was impossible to come back to Win95 and I had to use all sort of tricks to finally be able to boot Win95 and again I have never encountered this sort of problems with any other sound cards !

Now, I would like to give you a good idea of all the features of this sound card included on the Audio Rack and on the mixer as well. Note that the poor lettering quality is not of my fault as it is exactly how it appears on normal use !

The top image allow us to see the features available when the mixer is switched to Play. The bottom picture is showing the same mixer now switched on Effects but with the Audio Rack removed.

Listening to WAV files with this sound card didn't showed any specific problems and this time and I found a very acceptable sound quality reproduction so I have no other comments about this sound card when used to play WAV files.

To put the final word about this sound card I would like to review all the available phone jacks and plugs of its back panel. First of all there are two audio out phone jacks because this card can use 4 speakers in a 3D environment. We can also find a microphone input, an auxiliary in and finally a joystick port. Voila, its is about all that is covering this sound card.

The strong points

The strong points of this sound card are: its excellent audio applications included on its accompanying CD, The Audio Rack, its mixer, its special effects keyboard, its great effects diversity and its bass and treble controls.

The weaks points.

The are pretty numerous and regrettable. Among them we have: the poor wave sets quality, the noises problems while playing Midi files, the real DOS mode refusing to work (at least on my actual system), the win95 re booting problem after a real DOS session, the lack of instructions about how to use the DOS mode in the user manual. All sort of weak points giving hesitations to recommend this card.