Differences I notice.

1)RCA out. convenient if you want to hook up to another amplifier (like your home theater system) or want to record. I can live without this.

2)Headphone "station" connection. Looks like a cat5 cable connection that I can only assume will run to a proprietary breakout board with headphone jack and volume control that you can mount up front. Cool idea, depending on cost. I bought a $10 cable from amazon to extend my original PinSound headphone jack, I got a 4pole cable so the speaker mute still functions Works great.

3)Shaker port. Supposedly this is on the original card too. Not yet supported in software fully so hard to tell

4)Led strip port. This I really wish I had. I've got some speaker lights that this could probably work well with.

I think when they're mentioning Native 2.1 and HQ sounds, they are comparing a Pinsound to a stock soundcard. I don't think there is anything new here regarding the new card.

I hope they update PinSound Studio. There are still some inconsistencies with it and the Data East sound engine.

All in all, I just got my Pinsound on black Friday, so I'm bummed not to have the newest, I did save a little bit of money.

I remember reading that about the shaker. I hope the hardware when it surfaces works on both boards. I was mad enough frying a $40 LEDwiz on a project, I’m not going to DIY something on a $400 card.

I hope the software comes around as well. It doesn’t play well with Data East so making mixes is especially tough.

No, the "chirp" is letting you know the board is booting and I think checking for new audio files etc. Once the board boots it plays "boot.wav".

If it takes longer than 30 seconds, check your power supply board. My LW3 got slower and slower after the pinsound install, but hten I realized the DMD wasn't turning on either and the whole system was slow. New PSU board fixed that.

Keep everything you don't change, unless you are positive the game is not using it.

It takes some trial and error, but you can probably figure out which music track it is using. With pinsound studio you can playback a gameplay recording, or the easier, but slightly time consuming way, is to just keep swapping stuff and testing it on the machine.

I actually made audio files of me saying numbers and loaded it up in the game so I could be sure which folders were used. Lethal Weapon 3 definitely has some unused duplicate music files and call outs.

Yes just move them to the other folder. Its that simple.

They used to correspond. You used to be able to use Pinsound audio packages with Visual Pinball without running PinSound Studio. They changed it all a while back. Its super annoying because the original numbers kinda made some sense. Luckily I still have the original LW3 and DESW audio packs.

My LW3 is currently running with the original folder numbers, I hope the new firmware doesn't break that.

Not in my experience. Mine was working fine, but figured I should upgrade. The Pinsound pages take you to the "+" files first (Why couldn't they just call it 2)

Wouldn't load on my card, found the original Pinsound help page and that download worked.

The original pinsound firmware update download is only 331kb, whereas the Pinsound + is 2.7mb. Not sure if I should be worried about the size discrepancy. The nice lady's voice told me it was updating, I haven't had a chance to check out the self diagnosis feature, but the board works and sounds the same to me. (great as always!)

I'm going to do much more experimenting now that PinStudio 1 fixes the DE engine problem. Currently if I don't add a config file manually to the USB stick that tells it its a Data East it handles jingles, etc differently.

Obviously you've been pointed on how to add more mixes, but I also added a $6 USB extension cable so my USB drive is now right inside the coin door. Very handy for when I was first creating my mix.

I put these https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B000230LBI/ref=oh_aui_search_asin_title in a DESW and Lethal Weapon 3. One has a Pinsound, one doesn't. Speakers sound great in both, and they were only $15. The originals were intact but I figured what the hell.

Do you prefer the 1 over the plus for some reason?

Very excited for this. Firing the shaker through pinsound via callouts should be alot easier that wiring it up to flashers. Glad it will work with the original board as well.