Creative's CMSS3D - Any Alternatives?

D

Dario D.

Gawd
Joined
Dec 8, 2004
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582
Hi all.

Quick question: is there any alternative to Creative's awwwwwesome CMSS3D? (I simply cant imagine listening to songs on my 5.1 surround sound without CMSS3D 2 enabled)

For example, is there a program you can download that emulates something like this? Basically what it seems to do is move certain frequencies of sound over to different speakers, so that the music engulfs you from all sides. I have mine set to push the sound a lot more toward the rear speakers, since they are quite a ways behind me, in the corners of the room. (for those who don't know, CMSS3d wouldn't do much/anything with 2.1, at least as far as I know)

When I turn it off, everything back to flat, boring sound. :) So I want to know if this can be emulated on any other cards, because I'd like t move away from Creative's (expensive) Sound Blasters, but simply won't if I'll lose CMSS3D 2.

Is this kind of technology limited to Sound Blasters?
 
Hmm, no takers?

There's no 3rd-party software that lets you listen to Stereo MP3's as if they were 5.1 surround?
 
Hmm, interesting. Thanks for the link. :) I didn't know Creative sold off their cards to other manufacturers.

What I'm looking to do though is just move to a cheaper line of sound cards (this one here is $100) or onboard sound, as long as it can do 5.1 surround and EAX, etc.

I just don't want to lose CMSS3D in the process of downgrading (well, I say "downgrading", but I hear through the grapevine that there is little reason to stick with Sound Blasters nowadays). It's fairly difficult to listen to music without it, once you're used to it.

- Btw, can someone enlighten me on whether there's any reason to stick with Sound Blasters, rather than going on-board, such as with Realtek, or whoever makes onboard sound nowadays?

Most of my sound card knowledge comes from back in the days when EAX was "the thing", and games like Thief made it essential. Nowadays, I'm lucky to hear an echo or reverb, no matter WHAT I'm playing.
 
- Btw, can someone enlighten me on whether there's any reason to stick with Sound Blasters, rather than going on-board, such as with Realtek, or whoever makes onboard sound nowadays?
Click to expand...

The same reason you bought the sound blaster in the first place, hardware acceleration and EAX support.
 
So, on-board sound usually (or always) doesn't support EAX at all?

I'm fairly certain most of Realtek's on-board stuff is both hardware accelerated, AND supports EAX. (according to what I read, maybe it's just not GOOD support)

If that's true, then I'm just trying to figure out if there are any significant reasons (aside from CMSS3D) to not abandon Sound Blasters altogether, in favor of free on-board sound.
 
With Foobar 2000 and channel mixer plugin you can create a surround effect similar to CMSS 3D, but of course it only works for media played in Foobar. Doesn't require Sound Blaster though. :)
 
Dario

you ask about 2 different things at the same time, they are not so much related.

(1) On alternatives to CMSS, CMSS-3D and CMSS-Headphones. There are technologies, primarily from Dolby that allow you to upmix stereo contents to surround sound or re-mix surround sound into stereo on the fly. They are not free though and opinions on their quality is mixed. There are free plugins for Winamp and foobar that allow you to upmix stereo to surround but their controls are not that intuitive as with e.g. Dolby Headphones or Creative CMSS

(2) Second thing you ask is what benefits sound cards give, right?
Dario D. said:
So, on-board sound usually (or always) doesn't support EAX at all?
I'm fairly certain most of Realtek's on-board stuff is both hardware accelerated, AND supports EAX. (according to what I read, maybe it's just not GOOD support)
Click to expand...

On board audio is cheapest sort of components. Newegg have xtreme gamer for about $50. Why do you think nobody uses onboard graphics for gaming? This is due to both quality and performance. It is not only about EAX and games though. Good sound cards offload CPU even when encoding to mp3 and stuff.
Read this:
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inqui...t-of-sound-processing-on-cpu-use-investigated
 
Dario D. said:
So, on-board sound usually (or always) doesn't support EAX at all?

I'm fairly certain most of Realtek's on-board stuff is both hardware accelerated, AND supports EAX. (according to what I read, maybe it's just not GOOD support)

If that's true, then I'm just trying to figure out if there are any significant reasons (aside from CMSS3D) to not abandon Sound Blasters altogether, in favor of free on-board sound.
Click to expand...

Onboard has no hardware acceleration and all realtek is software based and only up to EAX2 compatible. The only onboard solution one that ever had hardware acceleration IIRC was the old nVIDIA soundstorm solution when using RCA-Optical where CPU% overhead was even less than that of the Audigy cards. That said with todays onboard if you have SPDIF-Optical-RCA and a good stand alone receiver with some quality bookshelf speakers that's a very good option as todays dual and quad CPU's are fast enough to overcome any 5% CPU overhead with onboard sound.
 
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