Support for legacy EAX with on-board or discrete audio?

[Ronin13]

As far as I understand, EAX (and hardware accelerated 3D environmental sound) died quite some time ago, and isn't really supported in OSs newer than Win XP (?).

But say you want to replay old EAX titles (like Baldur's Gate, Diablo II, Thief, No One Lives Forever, etc), can the EAX effects be emulated in Windows 7?

If so, what hardware is required?

Specifically, will an on-board Realtek ALC892 do it?

Will a Sound Blaster Z do it?

Can the ASUS Xonar DSX do it? (It has 'GX2.5 for realistic 3D gaming audio effectsts' - for an old EAX title, would it sound similar to the effects experienced with a SB card in Win XP?)

How about speakers with their own DAC, Like B&W MM-1's ADAU1761 or Audioengine 2+'s TI Burr Brown PCM2704?

 

[lamedude]

3D SoundBack is suppose to do this for Realtek. No idea if it still works. Creative Alchemy should work if you have a SoundBlaster.

 

[Ronin13]

Thanks for the link. Looks like it's a beta and for Vista only?

Is it pretty safe to assume that when using USB speakers with their own DAC, as mentioned above, there will be no EAX emulation and older games will play without those effects?

 

[MaxPower83]

http://www.kxproject.com/index.php?language=en

Don't know if this may help you , but with these driver i managed to use an old sounblaster live card under windows 7

 

[Ronin13]

Thank you. I take it 'manage to use' doesn't mean you got EAX effects on old games, but just that you made the card work in Win 7?

 

[MaxPower83]

as far as i know Eax effects are not fully supported on kx driver , but i found this (old) thread you may find helpful

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/community/threads/kx-and-eax.74083/

 

[Ronin13]

Thanks. It seems there really are no perfect fixes for this, but that Alchemy with a SB card is the best bet for EAX in Vista+, and that you pretty much have to give up EAX with other cards/DACs...

 

[postmortemIA]

Yep alchemy works but you have to configure it for each game