There weren't as many new stories or product introductions at Comdex in the auido card department as there were in some of the other hardware departments. This is mainly because the two biggies (The Diamond MX300 and the Creative SB Live!) either are already on the market, or are about to be. (On a sidenote, the debate about the MX300's actual release date continues to rage as some contacts we talk to say "Mid December" while other more rabid employees of Diamond swear on their Grandmother's grave that a "last week of November" release date is imminent. I guess we won't know the truth until either the card ships, or we hit Dec 15th…..The hardware is ready, this is just a case of driver development.)

Sharky Extreme promised an in depth "SB Live! Value vs. MX300" comparison some time ago, but at Diamond's request we've decided to hold off on it. In fairness to our readers and to Diamond, we want to wait until the product ships before rendering jusgement. I'll give you a preview on the outcome however:

If gaming is your focus: MX300
If MIDI/Music manipulation is your focus: SB Live! Value

We'll have full tests/benchmarks/explanations etc in the comparo when we write it, for now we're in a holding pattern. Anand from Anandtech did tell me he's possibly planning on doing the comparison between the two cards early, so you might want to ask him about it if ya just can't wait.

Besides the SB Live! product line, Creative was showing a variety of other products that will serve to bolster their growing multimedia juggernaught in 99. First, Creative is mulling the idea of firing off a competitor to Diamond's upcoming MP3 walkman, the "Rio". Creative's plans are past the "conceptual" stage for the player, as a prototype was at the show and was playing MP3 files without a hitch.

Little is known about a release date or price for the Creative MP3 Player, if it's even given the green light at all. We'll keep you posted.

3D positional audio king Aureal had a slew of new proprietary technology demonstrations going on over at their booth. The best part is that most of the demos were running on their own Vortex 2 audio processors, the same one as the one found in the Diamond MX300. As more information is learned about both the Vortex 2 and its Creative counterpart (the EMU10K1) it's becoming more clear how powerful these new chips really are.

Expect several driver/feature updates for both chips over the next six months as software engineers extract the highest levels of performance and compatibility.