Bundle

Bundled with the FORTISSIMO are 2 nice little programs. The first is Acid DJ for those who wish to test their skills at light music editing and production. The second is Guillemot's swank looking audio player, Media Station. Media Station is a multi-function graphical stereo interface with mixing panel, wave player & recorder, MIDI player and audio CD player. After using it for a while I must say, it is certainly a very nice audio player, especially if you don't like to use either the windows media player or Winamp. All in all the FORTISSIMO includes a very nice bundle for a card so inexpensive.

Verdict

The FORTISSIMO is not for everybody. Although, I must admit for $49.99 this is a nice sound card with a decent list of features, and a software bundle unheard of in this price range. 3D Positional audio sounded good, but was nothing special. The movie audio was decent, but did not have enough to blow me away. Finally music audio was just about as good as you can get with any other sound card on the market. If you a true gamer, and want to get the most out of your games, I would suggest you go out a purchase either a Sound Blaster LIVE! Or a Vortex 2 based card, both offer exceptional 3D positional audio for not too much more. As far as overall value and features are concerned, you can't go wrong with the FORTISSIMO. This is an excellent card if you are trying to build a system on the cheap, or are not concerned with playing many games or movies.

by Ryan Wissman

Price - 10 Performance - 7 Overall - 8

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