Sharky Extreme was recently given the opportunity to attend an event held by Diamond Multimedia. Located at CEO Bill Schroeder's expansive home, the gathering allowed certain members of the press to take a behind the scenes look at four of Diamond's hottest upcoming products.

Sharky Extreme will be bringing you full reviews of all these products within the upcoming weeks. In the meantime however, enjoy the sneak peek.

Apparently, Diamond doesn't believe in saving the best for last. After some brisk introductions with numerous brand managers, product managers, VP's, public relations specialists and a host of Diamond staff, we were whisked away to bear witness to the MX300's power. Powered by Aureal's AU8830 (more commonly referred to as the Vortex 2), the MX300 features a 320 voice DLS wavetable, 64 hardware supported voices and 96 streams of audio. Like its younger brother, the MX300 has full gold connectors for all of its ports, including the joystick, to minimize signal loss and distortion. Although for most gamers, the difference in sound quality between gold and aluminum connectors is negligible, if noticeable at all, we salute Diamond for taking the extra step.

At the heart of this PCI sound card lies the Vortex 2, Aureal's latest brainchild. One of the key features of this chipset is its support for A3D 2.0, arguably the most robust audio API available for end-user products. A3D 2.0 picks up from where the original A3D left off. A3D's claim to fame was 3D positional audio through the use of two speakers or headphones, and truly, games with A3D support were offered a new experience in sound. Lucas Arts' Jedi Knight was one of the first titles to push its A3D support. The game gave players a great example on what Aureal's API can do. No longer were players limited to sound coming from their left or right. Sounds from enemies that were either above, below, in front of or behind players were now accurately represented.