Creative titanium + win7 question

[genetech]

I am wondering if this card series was designed to fix the 3d positional audio problems in vista and win7. Since i heard that vista and 7 use a different audio processing core than XP. I heard that creative is using an openAL converter plugin but that costs money and was wondering if this is necessary on the titanium series.

 

[Balthazor]

XP used DirectSound3D, which was an API developers could use for games to direct sound to the different speakers in your configuration.

Vista and Windows 7 do not have DirectSound3D; any games that used DirectSound3D would be limited to stereo (two speakers) only.

This does not affect games that do not use DirectSound3D for their sound; some use OpenAL, some use other audio engines. These games are unaffected by the removal of DirectSound3D.

Some hardware developers, including Realtek, Creative, and Asus, have third party applications that attempt to 'restore' surround sound to DirectSound3D games. Realtek, for instance, calls their app 'SoundBack.'

Creative's application, ALchemy, attempts to do this by translating DirectSound3D calls and 'transmuting' them into OpenAL calls, which are then processed on your Creative sound card for surround sound. ALchemy is free and functional on most sound cards that have been made in the past few years.

The Titanium, like every other sound device out there, is affected by the lack of DirectSound3D support in Vista / Windows 7. It would need Creative's ALchemy application in order to provide surround sound for DirectSound3D games. I've used this, and it works fairly well. There are a few games that aren't supported, but many are.

Unfortunately, Creative hasn't gotten ALchemy working under Windows 7. I'm not even sure they're working on it; maybe someone else has read an announcement regarding this.

Games that do not use DirectSound3D would properly have surround sound on the Titanium or any other sound device.

 

[genetech]

Well thanks for the reply. although i do recall that creative was charging for ALchemy for a while. I wonder when it became free.

 

[TheGamerZ]

ALchemy has always been free for X-Fi owners. Only Audigy owners have to pay. The Titanium works fine in Vista/7. I'm still running mine.