Product: Terratec wave xtable
Price Paid: USD 185
Submitted
05/31/2008
at
02:09pm
by
Dave
Features
:
9
The terratec wave xtable is a waveblaster type expansion card. It is able to be connected to any computer sound card that has a waveblaster connector or a custom made external circuit to provide midi i/o and power such as in the elector article. It is a good GM sound source with 16mb sample ram. The sounds are very clean and crisp sounding. It also has the extended soundset for the Yamaha XG format, so it is useable for playing back XG midifiles. It can play back 128 voices with 16 different parts or tracks at once.
Sound
:
8
The sounds are very clean and crisp. much brighter than other cards like the db50xg or creative waveblaster cards. I ended up not keeping it however due the sounds and effects not matching as well for XG midi files. While it is cleaner and brighter sounding, the XG files specificly made for XG synths end up sounding different. If you were creating your own music, this would not be a problem. If you use other's XG files much it is a problem. Also the effects do not come out sounding the same.
Action, Fit, & Finish
:
9
It is easy to use. Just plug it into a waveblaster, and if your soundcard is set correctly it works. I had to find the right volume slider on the soundcards mixer to hear it. (If you need a soundcard with drivers for vista that has a waveblaster connector, the Dynex 5.1 sound card is easily obtainable on ebay for $10-20. Drivers are available from VIA as it uses a VIA Envy 24 chip.)The card can also be used in the terratec Axon guitar to midi converter and Oberheim MC1000 midi controller.
Reliability/Durability
:
No Opinion
I did not have it long, but it is likely it would hold up well.
Customer Support
:
7
There is information on terratec's ftp web site, but I never had to use any help.
Overall Rating
:
7
Considering the card is not cheap. ($175-200 US) I opted to just get a db50xg clone card off ebay (~$50) It is a high quality GM wavetable expansion card for waveblaster header equipped units, but has some significant differences in sound for XG file playback.
Product: Terratec wave xtable
Price Paid: USD 145
Submitted
01/29/2007
at
06:37pm
by
brainburst
Ease of Use
:
8
1.02 Just plugged this in and it worked... (It's a soundblaster compatible wavetable daughter card.0
Features
:
6
128 voice! Nice. Only bad thing is that it is not recognized by my sequencing program. So I have to manually edit. Pain in the A$#
Expressiveness/Sounds
:
No Opinion
Very nice clean sounds. Even guitars sound OK. 1 or two of the pianos have incorrect velocity mappings it seems.
Reliability
:
7
VERYb good so far
Customer Support
:
No Opinion
Good support for a barely successful product. Good communication.
Overall Rating
:
No Opinion
