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At the heart of the Platinum we find Aureal's impressive Vortex 2 audio processor which packs some serious power making it capable of up to 96 simultaneous audio streams. The Platinum of course supports most of the leading audio API's such as A3D 1.0 (76 channels), A3D 2.0 (76 channels), DirectSound3D (76 channels) and DirectSound (92 channels) as well as Microsoft's brand new DirectMusic API. As if that wasn't enough, the gameport found on the Storm Platinum accelerates DirectInput commands, off loading processing power when using a joystick.
The Platinum's output quality is quite impressive with mixing up to 48Khz at 18bit (you read that right, not 16bit) and a signal to noise ratio that's better than 94.The Platinum even comes with a 10 channel graphic equalizer to further improve output quality, with the accompanying tools you can tweak bass, mid-range and treble to your liking or use one of the presets that include Rock, Dance and Classic amongst others.
MIDI performance / quality isn't exactly essential to the average gamer but if you still dig on those funky MIDI tunes the Platinum delivers. Capable of playing up to 320 voices with host based high quality 16bit 48Khz PCM samples MIDI output is very nice to say the least, and while the sample set that comes with the board isn't as impressive as what some Professional MIDI boards might offer it's more than sufficient. We've also got 2 effects banks which each can apply one of 8 real-time effects (echo, reverb etc) for added quality. MIDI enthusiasts you're well covered.
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