Just diffrence types as stated on webpage, slight diffrences in other versions. Like 1 will be just Entertainment mode only.
Just diffrence types as stated on webpage, slight diffrences in other versions. Like 1 will be just Entertainment mode only.
So am I understanding this right? The current Creative sound cards will NEVER be able to use the advanced EAX in Vista?
Schadenfroh
Elite Member
- Mar 8, 2003
- 38,416
- 4
- 0
I bring this up in the first place because lots of popular games still only use directsound3d and NOT openAL. Lots of older games will be down to basic sound mode because of vista. For example original Halflife (which many like to play still cause a good single player game) uses directsound3d and will be limited to basic stero mode without any EAX effects (very notiable in half life 1).
43st
Diamond Member
- Nov 7, 2001
- 3,197
- 0
- 0
EAX stands for Environmental Audio eXensions, they are presets that can run on any audio API, this includes both DirectSound (DirectX) and OpenAL.
Here's the Wiki info...
EAX 1 = 8 voices
EAX 2 (Live) = 32 voices
EAX 3 = 64 voices
EAX 4 (Audigy) = 64 voices
EAX 5 (x-fi) = 128 voices, w/ up to 4 effects per.
So to summarize all the info:
Creative Cards will support EAX in Vista
In Vista they will run through the API OpenAL
Now am I correct when I say, as long as the driver has a path to OpenAL the cards will work with EAX in vista?
Creative Cards will support EAX in Vista
In Vista they will run through the API OpenAL
Now am I correct when I say, as long as the driver has a path to OpenAL the cards will work with EAX in vista?
SpeedZealot369
Platinum Member
- Feb 5, 2006
- 2,778
- 1
- 81
- Jun 10, 2004
- 14,436
- 5,410
- 136
That just makes the point, they're presets, not open-source implementations of positional audio. What's more, I don't believe I've seen any consumer-level sound cards implement more than EAX2 - which means for gamers, the Audigy1/2/4/Xi-Fi is basically the only choice. I don't like Creative so the sooner more alternatives are out, the better.
Well after reading imaheadcase's link:
"
3. The Vista audio architecture disables DirectSound 3D hardware acceleration; resulting in legacy DirectSound based EAX game titles not working as they did in XP.
Issues that may be encountered:
Could range from loss of EAX functionality in EAX enabled games to a complete game incompatibility, depending on how the game title was authored. This would only happen with games that render 3D audio using DirectSound, it should not affect games that render 3D audio using OpenAL.
"
this "sounds" a bit more serious. It sounds like some "old" games will no longer work at all in Vista. If true and depending on what games, this would give me pause on Vista.
"
3. The Vista audio architecture disables DirectSound 3D hardware acceleration; resulting in legacy DirectSound based EAX game titles not working as they did in XP.
Issues that may be encountered:
Could range from loss of EAX functionality in EAX enabled games to a complete game incompatibility, depending on how the game title was authored. This would only happen with games that render 3D audio using DirectSound, it should not affect games that render 3D audio using OpenAL.
"
this "sounds" a bit more serious. It sounds like some "old" games will no longer work at all in Vista. If true and depending on what games, this would give me pause on Vista.
EAX is quite a bit more than presets, but anyways...I don't understand why people are hailing this as some sort of watershed moment that is going to bring competition back into the gaming audio market. Thats simply not going to happen.
Creative was smart. They pretended that EAX was going to be an open format. That lasted long enough for them to drive aureal into the ground with patent litigation...they bought out all of aureal and sensaura's IP, basically their only competitors. Then they closed it up.
With EAX left as the only alternative for audio more advanced than just positional sound, it was obviously the only one to support, and became a monopoly. The own all the patents. Other companies probably couldn't legally make anything remotely close to reverb/effects in 3d audio. Even if they could, creative would still sue them into the ground, just like they did with aureal.
They have no motivation to make good drivers, or push tech further, because they own the market...
So nothing has changed for the better. You're not going to see any alternatives to EAX. Any sound card released in the past few years could do EAX 1/2, and openAL isn't going to change it. Sure, theres the new EFX extentions...want to know more about them? Go to creative to find out.
The fact that Vista doesnt support hardware D3D is just another ten steps back to take a half step forward. Rather than develop their own standard as powerful as D3D, they just tossed it away, and let OpenAL deal with the scraps.
If Aureal and Sensaura had never bit the dust, I could only imagine how awesome 3d audio would be by now.
The question should be...Now that Vista disables EAX, will you buy Vista? My answer...No. Not that I consider EAX so important, but I haven't read anything about Vista that make me want it.
ViRGE
Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
- Oct 9, 1999
- 31,516
- 167
- 106
Agreed. At this point with the wane in PC gaming and Creative's patent-lock on various technologies, they're basically set for life as the de-facto kings of gaming audio. The high-end market is so small now that it doesn't even support more than 1 company, you'd have to come in expecting to burn a lot of cash over a half-decade period(or more, depending on lawsuits) with the intention of completely obliterating Creative in order to make a profit on the market. Since that will never happen, we're at Creative's mercy as far as future advances go, Vista's changes just make things that much harder.:| I had assumed that MS did this to screw with Creative, but now I'm starting to think they just want to wash their hands of gaming audio completely.
In Creative's defense though, they did get things right with the X-Fi(finally). It finally offers the kind of quality for a headphones user that nothing but the Vortex2 could do before, along with the fuller features of EAX5. Of course, it'll be 2010 before Creative comes out with anything any better...
While your argument is pretty solid in regards to Creative's monopoly in the add in sound card market.... they do have a great deal of competition. They control a very tiny niche market right now, nearly 100% of computers ship with onboard sound, and over 99% of consumers use them.
Even with their core audience of gamers, judging from the Steam hardware survey, only 10-15% of gamers use a creative card, everyone else uses onboard.
I would argue that Creative's biggest competition is onboard sound, and their biggest challenge is to stay relevant in an age where HD 5.1 audio ships for free on every motherboard. Even if they are slow, they still have to push out new drivers, and add new features or otherwise face irrelevance in the marketplace.
Maybe, it's just the onboard sound on my motherboard, but it sounds terrible compared to my sound card. I would be hard pressed to abandon it for onboard.
Well, I was only referring to the add-in, advanced 3d audio market - obviously they have a lot of competitors, but none of them can do what creative can do with EAX. It would be as if nvidia sued ATI into the ground, and we'd be using a buggy version of DX8 for the next 10 years. With the alternative being onboard graphics that don't even support DX8 features, and limited support for DX7.
They push it out just fast enough to keep people interested. I used the original audigy one for almost 5 years, until I got the x-fi. The audigy 2, 3 and 4 were basically the exact same card, with better S/N ratios, and a few extra ports. But they driver locked a lot of the stuff, and you had to download hacked drivers to get more advanced support. Creative is the only company with the balls to actually require you to keep the CD that came with your card in order to properly use it's drivers.
The x-fi is a good card and all, it just should have been here 4-5 years ago.
Exactly. Theres no point anymore. Why bother building a more advanced API when creative owns all the patents that prevents any other companies from using it?
The x-fi does sound good with headphones though - probably because they're finally using the algorithms they got from aureal and sensaura five years ago. They act as if they made something revolutionary, when they've really just been holding onto this stuff for so long that we forgot how good A3D sounded.
I've got ten bucks that they release their new revolutionary "Creative CMSS3D Virtual Ear" technology with the x-fi 2, and act as if it's actually something that wasn't done 5 years ago, and then shoved in a closet.
I decided 2 months ago that Vista was not my cup of tea. That's why i updated my present system because to me it was the most practical thing to do.
Vista required too many resources and offered less back. Just like Windows 64, all the hype and not enough support. Vista will take another year and maybe by that time, I'll look at it once more.
Vista required too many resources and offered less back. Just like Windows 64, all the hype and not enough support. Vista will take another year and maybe by that time, I'll look at it once more.
EAX will continue to exist ONLY in OpenAL games. Games like Doom 3, Quake 4, Prey, Battlefield 2142 and many others (see openal.org for more) will be unaffected by this change.
the games that WILL be affected are games that were using DirectSound3D, Miles, Fmod and any other API that attempted to detect DirectSound. Since there is no more DS3D, most games will fall back to a software solution, usually resulting in stereo output.
the thing is, is that it's not the hardware. its the OS. this will affect any hardware, from a motherboard down solution all the way up to a X-Fi and anything in between.
OpenAL, as mentioned on OpenAL.org, seems to be the solution. OpenAL is supported NATIVELY by Creative's cards and will give you all the EAX features that OpenAL games support.
the games that WILL be affected are games that were using DirectSound3D, Miles, Fmod and any other API that attempted to detect DirectSound. Since there is no more DS3D, most games will fall back to a software solution, usually resulting in stereo output.
the thing is, is that it's not the hardware. its the OS. this will affect any hardware, from a motherboard down solution all the way up to a X-Fi and anything in between.
OpenAL, as mentioned on OpenAL.org, seems to be the solution. OpenAL is supported NATIVELY by Creative's cards and will give you all the EAX features that OpenAL games support.
Which is pretty much 95% of all games released in the past 5 years. OpenAL has had little support, aside from a few big games.
here's a list of OpenAL games. yes, its a short list, but there's some pretty darn good games on that list.
http://openal.org/titles.html
so yes, a large # of games will sound pretty busted. already i have noticed that FEAR no longer gives me even a 3D audio option...much less EAX 2 or EAX Advanced HD.Warcraft 3 gives me some freaky error message when i try to select EAX and World of Warcraft only gives me stereo now.
Microsoft really screwed the pooch with this one. hopefully creative has an answer for the older games and hopefully more developers will start using OpenAL as a solution for the future.
http://openal.org/titles.html
so yes, a large # of games will sound pretty busted. already i have noticed that FEAR no longer gives me even a 3D audio option...much less EAX 2 or EAX Advanced HD.Warcraft 3 gives me some freaky error message when i try to select EAX and World of Warcraft only gives me stereo now.
Microsoft really screwed the pooch with this one. hopefully creative has an answer for the older games and hopefully more developers will start using OpenAL as a solution for the future.
TRENDING THREADS
-
Discussion Zen 5 Speculation (EPYC Turin and Strix Point/Granite Ridge - Ryzen 9000)- Started by DisEnchantment
- Replies: 20K
-
Discussion Intel current and future Lakes & Rapids thread- Started by TheF34RChannel
- Replies: 23K
-
Discussion Intel Meteor, Arrow, Lunar & Panther Lakes Discussion Threads
- Started by Tigerick
- Replies: 12K
-
Discussion Speculation: Zen 4 (EPYC 4 "Genoa", Ryzen 7000, etc.)- Started by Vattila
- Replies: 13K
-
Facebook
Twitter