Nog maar net aangekondigd en nu al een review: 3D Gaming Review heeft de primeur met de eerste bespreking van Aureal's nieuwe SQ2500 soundcard:
As far as 2D sound goes, the SQ2500 is the same as the original Vortex2 chip. In general, it is very good, with the SoundBlaster Live! edging it out by a small margin. MP3's won't sound any different on the two boards, and in general, .WAV's won't either. However, CD audio on the Live! (with the CD-ROM connected to the S/PDIF of course) is much clearer. Unfortunately the time I spend listening to CD's is dwindling as I find my MP3 collection growing to almost 2GB, making the S/PDIF a moot point for me.3D audio, on the other hand, is simply gorgeous. After not having played Half Life for a good 3 months, I once again installed it, enabled A3D 2.0, turned the lights off, and closed my eyes. The experience is nothing less then real. The difference between the A3D 2.0 and the EAX I was used to amazed me once again. With the Sennheiser HD580 headphones on, the positional audio was a real as I could ever imagine
