3D Positioning: "Consumer Gaming" vs "Prosumer Audio"

[HardwareSearcher]

It has been made clear that if you have high-quality speakers and/or headphones, high-quality dedicated sound is superior to high-quality onboard sound in music, movies, and games when measured by sound quality.

I have also heard people claim that high-quality dedicated sound is superior to high-quality onboard sound when it comes to 3D positional audio in games (regardless of how they sound), though there has been extremely few who have made this specific direct comparison. I always hear people say "3d position audio is great with this sound card!"...but i rarely hear people say "I came from Realtek 888/889 and this sound card was clearly superior in 3d positioning", though I have heard it like once or twice...which isn't strong evidence, but nonetheless evidence.

When I say I haven't heard this, or have heard this, i am including both message boards and professional reviews.

However, what I have NEVER heard is this:
This (input high-quality consumer gaming card) is superior in 3d positioning than this (input high-quality prosumer non-gaming card)...
or
This (input high-quality prosumer non-gaming card) is equal in 3d positioning to this (input high-quality consumer gaming card)

Has anyone ever heard arguments/opinions on this? Considering that the days of EAX and hardware sound performance gains are dying, perhaps the only two important performance measurements left is 3D Positioning and Sound Quality. With hardware performance gain no longer being remotely visible with high-clocked dual/quad core CPUs, prosumer audio cards designed for audio editing, music, and movies, are no longer having to compete in that area...which just leaves 3D Positioning as the question.

 

[illgiveumorality]

You've never heard that? The whole point of EAX is positional audio.

For headphones, there are CMSS and Dolby Headphone, and probably others that I am forgetting.

If you compare EAX versions to themselves, you notice the difference in blending speakers, in game sound altitudes and so forth.

 

[HardwareSearcher]

I have heard that the EAX is just additional sound-affecting sound-effects, not 3d positioning (atleast according to some people). According to what I have heard, EAX is a suite of sound "styles" (like Cave, Forest, etc...) that developers can apply to different areas of a map/level and then the sounds within that area are affected by that style, making it a more immersive audio experience. The claim is made that the 3D Positioning simply comes from creative's core drivers/hardware (and not EAX). If this was truly the case, then I was interested in how other OpenAL compatible sound cards' drivers/hardware handled 3d positioning compared to Creative.

 

[Gorankar]

The point of EAX is environmental audio.

Fading, muffling, echoes, and tons of other effects used to make things sound more realistic for a given environment in a game.

Going from an Audigy 2 ZS to the on board of an Asus Rampage Formula, I noticed a degradation in sound quality but not 3d positioning when out putting analog to a cheap Logitech 5.1 speaker setup. Others with better ears may be able to notice more than I do, but if something in a game starts making noise behind me to the left I know where it is just as well with my on board as I used to with the Creative card.

 

[ourfpshero]

If this was truly the case, then I was interested in how other OpenAL compatible sound cards' drivers/hardware handled 3d positioning compared to Creative.

lol just as soon as another manufacturer makes openal drivers.

i have owned x-fis, audigys, sblive, turtle beach santa cruz(crystal), hercules game theater(crystal), diamond ddl(cmedia), razer ac-1(cmedia/dolby headphone), aureal vortex 1 and 2, several onboards and other low end sound cards.

in 3d positioning: x-fi is superior to audigy is superior to aureal is superior to dolbyheadphone/sblive is superior to crystal chipset is superior to cmedia is superior to realtek

the difference is much more apparent with headphones than with 5.1 setups

p.s. this is in games that support 3d sound only! for movies there is dolbyheadphone and cmss both are comparable

 

[Valaire]

Some kind of 3D positioning algorithm is necessary right now and you don't get that from onboard audio. EAX does help to a certain extent because it deals with how the audio cue should sound. CMSS3D tries to then put it in an accurate environment.

As the above poster highlighted, there are a few competing technologies, some that are defunct. On the bright side, the implementation of Dolby Headphone and Prologic II on my sound card I find, at the very least, equal to CMSS3D from X-Fi, but that is my opinion.

 

[phide]

I have heard that the EAX is just additional sound-affecting sound-effects, not 3d positioning (atleast according to some people).

EAX is essentially a set of effects that can be mixed through/in existing sound sources. Fundamentally, you can filter a sound source: reduce low frequencies or reduce high frequencies, EQ a sound source: enhance certain frequency spectrums, delay a sound source, or apply reverb to an environment which affects all sound events in a defined environment (a room, a hallway, a cave, etc.).

A sound engine that utilizes EAX can use this palette of effects to create the illusion of the game's world having an impact on sound events. Elevation (above or below you) and obstruction (behind an object) techniques may use a combination of filtering and EQ based upon the location of the event and the location of the player (called the listener) to create the illusion. Without EAX, sounds that are cued behind a concrete wall may not receive any kind of treatment aside from attenuation: simply reducing the volume. They'd sound the same as something that's entirely unobstructed. That's how EAX can be used to better define a 3D space.

Keep in mind that there's surround mixing and then there's 3D effects, and that they're very different things that people tend to get mixed up. The API -- DirectSound or OpenAL -- is responsible for mixing down a fully 3D environment into a 6 or 8 speaker format and then piping that through the sound card. EAX doesn't really do that (though it can be used to dictate certain things). Disable EAX, and an X-Fi or Audigy is, for all intents and purposes, no more advanced than an onboard codec or cheap-ass sound card with respect to mixing. It's what happens before mixing that differentiates a game with EAX and a game with no EAX.

According to what I have heard, EAX is a suite of sound "styles" (like Cave, Forest, etc...) that developers can apply to different areas of a map/level and then the sounds within that area are affected by that style, making it a more immersive audio experience.

Those mainly concern reverb presets, but EAX's reverb isn't strictly defined to using presets.

 

[Mystic-Micro]

I went from a Sound max Hd ad1988 from my P5B on board to the gamer, specifically for the Headphone virtualization stuff like cmss 3d, i can tell you 100%, that the positional audio when using headphones was vastly superior to the Asus P5B. Call me crazy, but creative at least did something right there...even though there's the occasional snap, crackle or pop.

 

[HardwareSearcher]

Thanks for the detailed explanations and clearing that up.