Gaming sound card

[Maximilian]

I have a few questions

1. Is EAX really dead? Hasent it just changed into EFX now? Before it was EAX paired with directsound, now its EFX paired with openal right? Different method same result yeah?

2. Does the x-fi actually do any hardware acceleration at all under vista/7 or does that 51 million transistor chip sit idle the whole time? Does it do anything for games that dont use EAX/EFX?

3. Xonars have no hardware acceleration, so whats the oxygen HD chip actually for? x-fi hardware accelerates why dosent oxygen HD do the same?

4. Does hardware sound acceleration still matter? Is it at the point where CPU's are powerful enough and dont need it and thats why the xonars dont have any?

5. Are all the former EAX calls converted into openal EFX calls under vista/7 with an x-fi?

6. Apparently very few games use EAX anymore, makes sense, so what do they actually use now? EFX? Nothing? Something else?


So if someone could answer them or explain this whole gaming sound thing that would be great.

 

[FXi]

1 Not fully, but 85% of the way there.
2 Under Vista/Win7 no.
3 Oxygen is meant to offer improved sound quality over onboard sound solutions.
4 No - current CPU's are powerful enough to manage sound and be practically unaffected in game FPS results.
5 Not sure
6 Either Vista/Win 7 sound solution or proprietary. CPU's are powerful enough that there isn't a need to rely on sound mechanisms tailored to specific hardware.

 

[Sylvanas]

I'm no expert but I ran into the same questions when I bought my soundcard. Basically nobody uses EAX anymore as it's propitiatory and with Vista, Microsoft changed the entire Soundcard landscape by forcing everything to pretty much go through the software. That's fine though, modern CPU's take such a small impact from it's not an important performance factor any more. Most games use either the OpenAL API or their own in house sound. EAX calls are now an extension of OpenAL which Creative have implemented but it's up to game devs to implement it for new games and nobody does these days anyway.

Then there's Creative Alchemy for bringing back acceleration to older games on Win7/Vista.
From wiki:

As of 2007, a solution to re-enable hardware acceleration of DirectSound3D and Audio Effects, such as EAX, called Creative ALchemy was launched[3]. Creative ALchemy intercepts calls to DirectSound3D and translates them into OpenAL calls to be processed by supported hardware such as Sound Blaster X-Fi and Sound Blaster Audigy. For software-based Creative audio solutions, ALchemy utilizes its built-in 3D audio engine without using OpenAL at all.

Realtek, a manufacturer of integrated HD audio codecs, has a product similar to ALchemy called 3D SoundBack. C-Media, a manufacturer of PC sound card chipsets, also has a solution called Xear3D EX, although it works instead by intercepting DirectSound3D calls transparently in the background without any user intervention.

My subjective experience with Onboard, C-Media chipset based card and XFI based card is that in my case I clearly noticed the XFI to have superior sound quality. How can this be if there's no EAX aceleration anymore? Shouldn't all games be pretty much the same if that's the case? Well I've found that it's the post processing XFI specific features such as 'XFI Crystaliser' and XFI CMSS-3D' that make the biggest difference in games. I clearly noted better sound on my Auzentech XFI Forte than my Bluegears B Inspire card (Cmedia chipset I believe). I use a logitech Z5500 5.1 surround for both.

Firstly, Creative have outsourced their hardware to other manufacturers. This is fantastic as Creative make good hardware but garbage drivers so other manufacturers like Auzentech came on the scene with XFI hardware, higher quality components and drivers that actually work. Therefore if you're going to buy an XFI card make sure it's Auzentech and not Creative soundblasters. Asus' Xonar is of course the other player here and I have not tried their cards so I can't comment on quality but I hear it's pretty good. I figured I may aswell hedge my bets and get an XFI as I know it's proven quality, and I can make use of EAX in my older games through Alchemy.

May have gone off track but hope it answer something .

 

[Kalmah]

I have directly compared onboard sound with my creative xi-fi and the sound quality is obvious to me. I can't say I saw a performance difference though.

I plugged good quality headphones straight into the back of the soundcard (and onboard sound) to compare and the difference was insane.

This was in Mass Effect which has a xifi logo on it's boot videos.

 

[digitaldurandal]

My subjective experience with Onboard, C-Media chipset based card and XFI based card is that in my case I clearly noticed the XFI to have superior sound quality. How can this be if there's no EAX aceleration anymore? Shouldn't all games be pretty much the same if that's the case? Well I've found that it's the post processing XFI specific features such as 'XFI Crystaliser' and XFI CMSS-3D' that make the biggest difference in games. I clearly noted better sound on my Auzentech XFI Forte than my Bluegears B Inspire card (Cmedia chipset I believe). I use a logitech Z5500 5.1 surround for both.

I would like to add that I had a lot of issues with the X-fi Forte from Auzentech when used with an Nvidia chipset and Vista 64. I did a search and found hundreds of people having similar issues with various chipsets not exclusive to Nvidia but it was stated that the X-fi cards especially hate Nvidia chipsets.

I personally do not care for the crystalizer. I think it is good for helping a cheap set of headphones or speakers to have a more balanced sound range and that is about all.

The auzentech forte is going to sound much better firstly just because it has a preamp for your headphone and microphone, and may not completely have anything to do with the software from creative. There are some onboard solutions that support the crystalizer, so if that is what you want I would find one of those.

I am not suggesting not to get a card, when the sound is working it does seem more crisp than an onboard solution, unfortunately be sure to purchase it from somewhere with a good return policy because the hardware is known not to play nice with certain configurations.

 

[chedrz]

I've owned an X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty Ed. and my current card, a Xonar D2X. My X-Fi gave me many, many issues after I switched from XP to Vista, and would constantly give a BSOD. Creative's drivers are, and likely always will be, terrible. But when the card worked, it sounded really, really good. My Xonar hasn't had any issues at all since I bought it, and also sounds really, really good. Is it better? For music/movies, definitely. I haven't done as much PC gaming lately, so I can't speak from that aspect.

I may be wrong, but I thought Creative still made the drivers for outsourced cards, such as Auzentech cards. When I was debating between the Auzentech X-Fi Prelude and the D2X, I went with the Xonar because at the time, the Prelude drivers had to be downloaded from Creative. Maybe that has changed.

And for reference, I'm using Logitech Z-5300e speakers.

 

[Modular]

Nothing has ever sounded as good as BF2 in XP Pro paired with my X-fi Xtreme Gamer edition card. I have yet to find a game that has the same purity of spacial quality, directional placement and crispness in tone that BF2 had with an X-fi. Nothing really comes close to be honest.

That being said, I really despise what they've done with current games and no more directsound API. It's really handicapped an enjoyable part of gaming for a lot of people. IMO, my X-fi does sound better than my onboard solution under Vista 64, but the games just don't support directional sound in the same way as they could with DirectSound. It sucks for gamers, but that was M$'s call.

 

[zerocool84]

Onboard sound has gotten very good and to 99% of people, they won't have good enough speakers to notice a difference between onboard and discrete. With how powerful modern cpu's have gotten, you won't notice a performance difference.

 

[thedosbox]

I have a few questions

1. Yes, EAX is pretty much dead. Creative cards will accelerate OpenAL calls via a wrapper.

2. Hardware acceleration only kicks in when OpenAL is used by the game. A sound card could be useful if you plan on pushing Dolby Digital Live out to a receiver.

3. They are other purposes for sound cards than pumping out shotgun sounds As for why the Oxgyen chip doesn't hardware acceleration, see the next answer.

4. Hardware acceleration doesn't matter, and it hasn't for a few years now.

5. No, the game must explicitly use OpenAL.

6. They mostly use software based engines such as Miles, or roll their own.

 

[thedosbox]

My subjective experience with Onboard, C-Media chipset based card and XFI based card is that in my case I clearly noticed the XFI to have superior sound quality. How can this be if there's no EAX aceleration anymore?

You're misunderstanding the purpose of EAX. EAX has nothing to do with sound quality. It just supports sound effects to make it sound as if you're in a church, walking on carpet, or listening to a conversation behind a door.

Shouldn't all games be pretty much the same if that's the case? Well I've found that it's the post processing XFI specific features such as 'XFI Crystaliser' and XFI CMSS-3D' that make the biggest difference in games. I clearly noted better sound on my Auzentech XFI Forte than my Bluegears B Inspire card (Cmedia chipset I believe). I use a logitech Z5500 5.1 surround for both.

The X-Fi "Crystalizer" messes with the equalization to make music sound brighter. Whether that's an improvement is debateable.

CMSS-3D's purpose is to simulate multi-channel sound on a pair of regular headphones. It should not be used with speakers. I believe the technology is a rebrand of Sensaura's HRTF algorithms (who Creative bought a few years back).

 

[GoodRevrnd]

Buy USB DAC/Amp. /thread

 

[Maximilian]

1. Yes, EAX is pretty much dead. Creative cards will accelerate OpenAL calls via a wrapper.

2. Hardware acceleration only kicks in when OpenAL is used by the game. A sound card could be useful if you plan on pushing Dolby Digital Live out to a receiver.

3. They are other purposes for sound cards than pumping out shotgun sounds As for why the Oxgyen chip doesn't hardware acceleration, see the next answer.

4. Hardware acceleration doesn't matter, and it hasn't for a few years now.

5. No, the game must explicitly use OpenAL.

6. They mostly use software based engines such as Miles, or roll their own.

I see... so unless theres some radical change in game developers then creative cards are pretty much worthless now i guess.

 

[thedosbox]

I see... so unless theres some radical change in game developers then creative cards are pretty much worthless now i guess.

Yes, especially as consoles have become the primary development target for most developers.

 

[VashHT]

HT Omega makes very nice sound cards, they don't really offer anything in the way of gaming but they have excellent driver support and really good op-amps and DAC's. The card I have in my sig is heads and shoulders above the X-Fi it replaced for music and games. If you don't care about music though just use onboard sound, no real reason to buy a nice sound card just for games anymore.

EDIT: I just wanted to add that the card I have does support dolby and DTS decoding (which is what the processor does), and some games do support dolby or DTS too. This means it could decode it then send it out over the analog outputs and you don't need a receiver. This is pretty nice for movies or games that do support it. For music though I don't use any processing, I prefer to just stick with the natural sound of the songs.

 

[watek]

Upgraded to Asus Xonar DS, not going back to onboard sound anytime soon!

 

[The Boston Dangler]

if you game with a 5.1 receiver, dolby digital live / dts interactive is a must. this is something the c-media cards have done very well. also, i've found their drivers to be very good for xp, vista and 7. i'm currently using my onboard realtec because it has DDL, but if i were using any analog plugs i would re-install my auzentech.

 

[digitaldurandal]

Buy USB DAC/Amp. /thread

Some of the better USB DAC/Amp companies have been purchased by creative and seem to be slowly getting killed.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

Some of the better USB DAC/Amp companies have been purchased by creative and seem to be slowly getting killed.

Well honestly, even an EMU-0404 isn't a bad choice.

 

[lothar]

For gaming purposes, sound cards are a complete waste of money if you have a modern system.

 

[shingletingle]

For gaming purposes, sound cards are a complete waste of money if you have a modern system.

Not true.

 

[thedosbox]

Not true.

What a compelling case!

 

[toyota]

What a compelling case!

how about its MUCH louder and clearer than the onboard audio. it offers full EAX support for the games that use it. crystalizer and cmss are nice additions which help to customize the sound to my liking.

 

[thedosbox]

how about its MUCH louder and clearer than the onboard audio.

LOL - ever heard of a volume control?

it offers full EAX support for the games that use it.

Sure, if you're still running XP and games released five years ago. You can count on one hand the number of games released in the last year that use EAX.

crystalizer and cmss are nice additions which help to customize the sound to my liking.

Do you even know what those actually do?

Here's an expert opinion on the Crystalizer

I doubt that modern popular recordings need additional violation of their dynamic range. Probably you'd better carefully choose the Crystalizer effect until you hear the signs of overload. You must also take into account that Crystalizer increases the volume level by 3-4 dB in digital form. So perhaps all you need is to increase the volume by the same value and avoid distortions in the tonal balance and other problems.

CMSS is Creative's brand of HRTF. This happens to be useful if you're wearing headphones, and want to simulate multi-channel sound. Link from 2006. However, it has nothing to do with "customizing" sound, and is a BAD idea when using speakers.

Fortunately, popular onboard audio chips (like the CMI-8738) implement their own HRTF algorithms.

 

[toyota]

LOL - ever heard of a volume control?



Sure, if you're still running XP and games released five years ago. You can count on one hand the number of games released in the last year that use EAX.



Do you even know what those actually do?

Here's an expert opinion on the Crystalizer



CMSS is Creative's brand of HRTF. This happens to be useful if you're wearing headphones, and want to simulate multi-channel sound. Link from 2006. However, it has nothing to do with "customizing" sound, and is a BAD idea when using speakers.

Fortunately, popular onboard audio chips (like the CMI-8738) implement their own HRTF algorithms.

look jackass, the volume on the onboard sound would NOT get loud enough and sounded very weak during gunfire and explosions. does every game I play have to be made in the last year? I bought the sound card a couple years ago and I have played about 6 or 7 games that were able to utilize the full EAX effects. and I only use headphones so yes that is a useful feature. the difference between my sound card and onboard was huge and I am glad I purchased it. if you dont agree then I dont really care because I know it was worth it for me.

 

[thedosbox]

look jackass, the volume on the onboard sound would NOT get loud enough and sounded very weak during gunfire and explosions. does every fucking game I play have to be made in the last year? I bought the sound card a couple years ago and I have played about 6 or 7 games that were able to utilize the full EAX effects. and I only use headphones so yes that is a useful feature. the difference between my sound card and onboard was huge and I am glad I purchased it. if you dont agree then I dont really care because I know it was worth it for me.

Sounds like you either need to get your ears syringed (to clear out the wax), or you need better quality/more efficient headphones. :whiste:

You may also want to read the thread - EAX is dying (if not already dead), and has been for awhile. There may be a case for gamers to hold onto an existing sound card, but buying one now? Not so much.