• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Vista and EAX DS3D. ALchemy!

So in other words you're screwed if you don't have a X-Fi card? They can't do this with the Audigy 2 or 4- or the WONT do it with them?
 
OpenAL is only needed to add EAX effects to the sound in Vista because EAX can't be added through Microsoft's directsound anymore. Without OpenAL the worst thing could happen is just losing the EAX effects, sound positioning would still be the same if the game already has a discreet surround sound because directsound is still available. OpenAL is not a big deal for sound cards without EAX support or with limited EAX support, I don't think that using OpenAL or directsound will make any difference for these sound cards. Creative needs OpenAl because EAX is their selling point, if they couldn't make EAX to work, people wouldn't buy their products anymore. I don't think that Creative will add the OpenAL support to their older cards because they want people to buy their latest product, not staying with their older products.
 
So it looks like they could support the Audigy 2/4 cards but are not. Nice motherboard by the way :) Have you tried running a X-Fi card on the board with success?
 
OpenAL is only needed to add EAX effects to the sound in Vista because EAX can't be added through Microsoft's directsound anymore.
Click to expand...

very much a wrong statement. DirectSound doesnt EXIST in Vista any more.

Therefore, when games go looking for DirectSound, and they don't find it, they give you a software fallback..usually resulting in stereo and NO effects.
 
Actually some DirectSound3D games will revert back to stereo in Vista. But that's besides the point, what games are currently supported?
 
OpenAL is only needed to add EAX effects to the sound in Vista because EAX can't be added through Microsoft's directsound anymore. Without OpenAL the worst thing could happen is just losing the EAX effects, sound positioning would still be the same if the game already has a discreet surround sound because directsound is still available
Click to expand...

Have you tried to run a DS3D game under Vista? In all I've tried they not only disable the EAX effects, they lose the positioning, all you get is stereo panning even if the game didn't support EAX in the first place.
 
Moofasa~ said:
Actually some DirectSound3D games will revert back to stereo in Vista. But that's besides the point, what games are currently supported?
Click to expand...

Battle for Middle Earth 2
Call Of Duty
Call Of Duty 2
Diablo 2
Everquest 2
F.E.A.R
Full Spectrum Warrior
Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers
Guild Wars
GTA San Andreas
Hitman Blood Money
Max Payne 2
Medieval II: Total War
Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights 2
No One Lives Forever 2 A Spy in H.A.R.M's Way
Rome: Total War
Serious Sam Second Encounter
Star Wars Empire at War
Thief: Deadly Shadows
Titan Quest
Tomb Raider: Angel Of Darkness
TRON 2.0
Warcraft III
World of Warcraft


It is very easy to adapt further games itself.
 
Even if the wrapper is a sub-par performer (I expect it should be fast enough, though), at least it has a clever name. I like it.

alg7_munif said:
OpenAL is only needed to add EAX effects to the sound in Vista because EAX can't be added through Microsoft's directsound anymore.
Click to expand...
Only if the audio engine is dependent on the hardware abstraction layer. Very old titles may continue to function with EAX, even though they are built upon DirectSound because they don't require the HAL. This is what Creative says, in any case.

alg7_munif said:
Without OpenAL the worst thing could happen is just losing the EAX effects, sound positioning would still be the same if the game already has a discreet surround sound because directsound is still available.
Click to expand...
There may slight differences between OpenAL and DS3D/XACT output. One wouldn't expect drastic changes, but these changes may exist.

alg7_munif said:
OpenAL is not a big deal for sound cards without EAX support or with limited EAX support, I don't think that using OpenAL or directsound will make any difference for these sound cards.
Click to expand...
I'll beg to differ, actually. If developers begin to move themselves toward OpenAL, cards that perform OpenAL processing via wrappers with low-level EAX extensions will be subject to additional performance hits. These performance hits haven't been evaluated yet, but we're essentially talking about two levels of CPU processing if the game allows for EAX 2.0 or lower.

I doubt, even with the ALchemy project, that developers will favor integration with DirectSound if they choose to also utilize EAX. They will strongly lean toward OpenAL as the HAL still exists natively via that API. This gives developers the opportunity to perform both hardware acceleration of OpenAL functions and hardware acceleration of EAX extensions for X-Fi owners AND owners of legacy Creative hardware. Besides which, from the looks of things, ALchemy is not exactly plug-and-play. Developers don't want users to have to install other applications if they can avoid it, unless you're Valve.

An alternate audio path may be available, but to utilize EAX, developers will probably use OpenAL. The best case scenario would be an engine with one extension-less DS/XACT path with audio engine based effects (like Crysis), one DS/XACT path with EAX effects (accelerated via ALchemy) and one OpenAL path with EAX effects (accelerated by all Vista-ready CL cards). This really equates to three entirely separate audio paths, which means some multiple of the workload.

alg7_munif said:
Creative needs OpenAl because EAX is their selling point, if they couldn't make EAX to work, people wouldn't buy their products anymore.
Click to expand...
Creative needs OpenAL because Microsoft made a major, fundamental change in the way sound is processed in Vista via DirectSound/XACT. Users want OpenAL (and titles that utilize OpenAL) because both sound processing and audio extensions (EAX) can be accelerated by most CL cards.

C-Media needs to adopt OpenAL natively because OpenAL is in a position of becoming the dominant audio API used for games. OpenAL, like OpenGL, means total cross-platform compatibility if the drivers support it. Windows, MacOS, Unix, Linux, etc..

What we need are open-source extensions to OpenAL that are supported by all sound card manufacturers and accelerated by all sound cards so we can eliminate Creative's market dominance and alleviate potentially significant processing burdens from the CPU.
 
Diseaseboy said:
So it looks like they could support the Audigy 2/4 cards but are not. Nice motherboard by the way :) Have you tried running a X-Fi card on the board with success?
Click to expand...
I ran two sound cards(X-Fi and X-Meridian) without any problem on my system.
jester1176 said:
very much a wrong statement. DirectSound doesnt EXIST in Vista any more.

Therefore, when games go looking for DirectSound, and they don't find it, they give you a software fallback..usually resulting in stereo and NO effects.
Click to expand...

Directsound still exists in Vista, only hardware support doesn't exist, the missing hardware support means that X-Fi's DSP can't add EAX effects to the sound.
With Microsoft's decision to remove the audio hardware layer in Windows Vista, legacy DirectSound 3D games will no longer use hardware 3D algorithms for audio spatialization. Instead they will have to rely upon the new Microsoft software mixer that is built into Windows Vista. This new software mixer will give the users basic audio support for their old Direct Sound games but since it has no hardware layer, all EAX® effects will be lost, and no individual per-voice processing can be performed using dedicated hardware processing.
Click to expand...

If a game doesn't revert back to stereo on WinXP's directsound, there is no reason that it will revert back to stereo in Vista. Games that have the problem are games that are based on purely OpenAL-EAX engine like Doom 3 engine. Doom 3 based games wouldn't give a surround sound on non-Creative sound cards even in WinXP.

Edit: If you want OpenAL for other sound cards, check this out. Check this to learn more about Vista's audio.
 
alg7_munif said:
I ran two sound cards(X-Fi and X-Meridian) without any problem on my system.


Directsound still exists in Vista, only hardware support doesn't exist, the missing hardware support means that X-Fi's DSP can't add EAX effects to the sound.


If a game doesn't revert back to stereo on WinXP's directsound, there is no reason that it will revert back to stereo in Vista. Games that have the problem are games that are based on purely OpenAL-EAX engine like Doom 3 engine. Doom 3 based games wouldn't give a surround sound on non-Creative sound cards even in WinXP.
Click to expand...

In some cases, where a game specifically looks for a hardware audio path, it may even fall back to plain stereo output.
Click to expand...

Yeah just pick and choose which statements to quote. :rolleyes:
 
i'm all confused by this thread.. but why wont sound cards be like video cards.. nividia and ati both support two standards, directx and openGL.. users have a choice and get teh same visuals with both cards.. not like sound cards, where i'm forced to buy creative because of EAX and all that hardware bull shit.

btw, i have a creative x-fi extreme music
 
mjz_5 said:
i'm all confused by this thread.. but why wont sound cards be like video cards.. nividia and ati both support two standards, directx and openGL.. users have a choice and get teh same visuals with both cards.. not like sound cards, where i'm forced to buy creative because of EAX and all that hardware bull shit.

btw, i have a creative x-fi extreme music
Click to expand...

A sound card can support both stands. But at this time only Creative and some Nvidia integrated sound chips support both DirectSound3D and OpenAL (in XP of course). Any company can add OpenAL drivers; they just choose not to.
 
MixBar said:
Hardware mixing and effect processing.
Click to expand...
Mixing and effect positioning can be done in software.
Moofasa is right.
In some cases, where a game specifically looks for a hardware audio path, it may even fall back to plain stereo output.
Click to expand...
In some cases, like Doom 3. Even in WinXP the game will fall back to stereo, Creative needs to make their hardware works in OpenAL because they need to make sure that EAX is working, they use hardware to add EAX effects.
OpenAL is open source like OpenGL, all sound cards can use it, Creative want to use it with their hardware to add EAX effects.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top