The AWE64 Gold is unbelievable at the price. Noise is MASSIVELY reduced over the AWE32 and over the standard AWE64 and AWE64 Value, although turning on the '3D Enhancement' ups the output noise level a little.
Indeed, to my ears at least, the analogue input and output is NEARLY (but not quite) as good as a TB Fiji/Pinnacle. The fact that it has an S/PDIF out too is very impressive (with a backplate too!).
The EMU8000 synth is considerably more powerful than it first appears or even that Creative and E-mu let on, particularly the effects unit.
The 4MB GM/GS/MT-32 sound set included is also good, although some of the sounds are a little thin (also note that polyphony on the EMU8000 is reduced from 32 to 30 when using sounds in RAM).
There's also a mass of support from other AWE users (probably the best of any synth or sound card) and plenty of good (and not so good) sounds out there to be found.
As for the WaveSynth/WaveGuide software, it's true, it doesn't work on Cyrix 6x86 processors (as I found to my cost after I bought the card) and is poor on 6x86MX processors too. Creative say this is due to extremely poor floating-point performance on the Cyrix CPUs, and from experience with other FPU-heavy applications, this is almost certainly true. The Cyrix processors are a very poor buy if you need floating-point performance. Contrary to popular belief, however, the WS/WG software works fine on AMD K5 and K6 CPUs.
Having upgraded to a Pentium II, I now get the benefits of the WS/WG software, and I'm thoroughly impressed. The WaveSynth sounds are decent, similar in quality to the Yamaha SYXG-50 sounds. However, the WaveGuide sounds are something else entirely! It's like having a polyphonic VL-70m.... in software! I have to admit to being totally amazed. What's more, the latency (i.e. the time it takes between hitting the note on your master keyboard and the instrument sounding) is.... well, either zero or so close to zero that I can't tell. This is impressive - every other softsynth I've come across has had a huge latency... especially the Yamaha ones. Disadvantages? Well, there are no insert effects on the synths. Reverb and chorus effects are global, although of course you can vary the amount of each effect on each channel.
Second is with RAM. 4MB is okay for starters, but I would have preferred 8MB... and the upgrades are on proprietary modules, making them more expensive and more difficult to obtain (although you can be reasonably sure they will work.) I also don't like the fact that the EMU8000 loses 2 notes of polyphony when working from RAM.
Third, there is no daughterboard connector. I realise that this doesn't make much difference when you've got 64-note polyphony and you could simply buy an SW-60XG anyway, but it doesn't cost much and there ought to be enough space on the card (the standard AWE64 has one I think)...
Fourth, the Creative software doesn't take full advantage of the hardware (particularly the effects unit, which is fully programmable.... but the standard software doesn't let you do this.)
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there is no S/PDIF in. This would make a big difference to its credibility as a semi-pro device and would make it much easier to transfer my old samples from DAT. Overall, a great piece of kit (amazing at the price) and I'd thoroughly recommend it. The only thing that might come close (although I've never used one and it's 100UKP more) is a MaxiSound Home Studio...
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