Vista Surround Sound Fix

[Elcs]

So.... I upgraded my PC... "Upgraded" to Vista and then heard about all of this "Surround sound in games isnt present in Vista" etc.

So I have a lovely Club 3D Theatron Agrippa which I have hooked up to my receiver via Optical connection, set everything up and tested it works fine.

I have managed to wangle some terrible surround sound out of the system but is obviously cloned and rather bad.

Is there any real solution to this or do I have to return it and get a X-Fi?

I can dual boot XP but with Hellgate London looking so damn fine on DX10, I am loathed to do so.

 

[Ghouler]

Unfortunately Microsoft decided to break compatibility between DX10 and DX9
Consequently games in Vista are in surround only if:
-they are latest DX10
-OR openAL
-OR you use ALchemy - for DX9 games.
The last option works for X-Fi and Audigy cards, but not all models.

 

[Elcs]

Originally posted by: Ghouler
Unfortunately Microsoft decided to break compatibility between DX10 and DX9
Consequently games in Vista are in surround only if:
-they are latest DX10
-OR openAL
-OR you use ALchemy - for DX9 games.
The last option works for X-Fi and Audigy cards, but not all models.

I understand this but surely someone has found some kind of workaround and not just Creative, the EA of the soundcard word, care about customers getting a surround sounded experience.

I am rather disappointed in this and I will go to a dual boot system if I have to but I would much prefer a solution for this.

 

[jonmcc33]

Why don't they just use DD for the surround sound format of games? Enough with the EAX crap and OpenAL BS. Use something that everything can use.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: jonmcc33
Why don't they just use DD for the surround sound format of games? Enough with the EAX crap and OpenAL BS. Use something that everything can use.

Why we all don't play games in software mode of DirectX 6? After all, that is common for every onboard video card and 8800 Ultra. If you are cheap to buy sound card, your problem, I like Creative effort. I'm glad what I get for money: good music and good sound effect in games. Always you have to shell $ for a good thing.

 

[Elcs]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA

Originally posted by: jonmcc33
Why don't they just use DD for the surround sound format of games? Enough with the EAX crap and OpenAL BS. Use something that everything can use.

Why we all don't play games in software mode of DirectX 6? After all, that is common for every onboard video card and 8800 Ultra. If you are cheap to buy sound card, your problem, I like Creative effort. I'm glad what I get for money: good music and good sound effect in games. Always you have to shell $ for a good thing.

I would not call the Club 3D Theatron Agrippa a "cheap soundcard".

I am for once impressed by a large company trying to make up for another big companies mistake, however, Creative's ALchemy does not help anyone aside from the bulk of Creative users.

Please stay on topic and try not to incite flaming.

 

[BFG10K]

Enough with the EAX crap and OpenAL BS.

It isn't BS; I use it in most of my games and it works well.

 

[Elcs]

Getting the seriousness back into the subtle flames, does anyone else besides Creative have a semi-workaround for this?

 

[0roo0roo]

surround sound isn't dead in vista at all.
eax is dead in vista. software solutions will take over.
look at crysis.
its just a matter of developer support. and once they switch over it'll be a better situation since their efforts will benifit everyone, not just creative card owners.

 

[Willyallthewei]

I have Windows Vista 32bit and onboard sound - Realtek ALC883 and just cannot get any game to output surround sound, from older games like Half life 2 to newer games like Bioshock to the newest in Crysis, Call of Duty 4, Unreal Tournament 3.

NONE have surround. My audio receiver outputs surround only because it automatically creates virtual sound even though only two boxes of the 5 light up, thus its getting a stereo signal and upconverting it, which fills the room but, no surround sound.

I don't want to drop the money on a X-Fi and i don't care about accurate sounding EAX 5 is. All i want is the SPDIF on my Realtek ALC883 to output surround sound in the new games like Crysis, Gears of War, Call of Duty 4 and UT3.

Can anyone help? Does my soundcard need to support something like Dolby Digital Live! or DTS Connect? Currently i don't think it supports those two but does support normal DD and DTS. If anyone knows whats going on, please let me know.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Originally posted by: Willyallthewei
I have Windows Vista 32bit and onboard sound - Realtek ALC883 and just cannot get any game to output surround sound, from older games like Half life 2 to newer games like Bioshock to the newest in Crysis, Call of Duty 4, Unreal Tournament 3.

NONE have surround. My audio receiver outputs surround only because it automatically creates virtual sound even though only two boxes of the 5 light up, thus its getting a stereo signal and upconverting it, which fills the room but, no surround sound.

I don't want to drop the money on a X-Fi and i don't care about accurate sounding EAX 5 is. All i want is the SPDIF on my Realtek ALC883 to output surround sound in the new games like Crysis, Gears of War, Call of Duty 4 and UT3.

Can anyone help? Does my soundcard need to support something like Dolby Digital Live! or DTS Connect? Currently i don't think it supports those two but does support normal DD and DTS. If anyone knows whats going on, please let me know.

Have you updated to the latest Realtek drivers (R1.80)?

 

[Willyallthewei]

Yes, as far as i can tell, and my receiver is getting 2channel linear PCM 96khz from the spdif out. When i play movies, I can get DD 5.1, its passed through and I see the receivers front panel light up with all 5 speakers and the Dolby Digital label. But for games its stays as just the 2 speakers, and i believe LPCM 96.

 

[Krogoth255]

Odd, I get surround audio (5.1 channels) in Vista 64 with my Audigy 2ZS + latest drivers. Surround audio works in any game that can support 5.1 audio.

Granted that it is purely software not hardware accelerated. It is no big deal thanks to modern, multi-core CPUs. The overhead is like 15% for one of the cores.

 

[Willyallthewei]

how do you turn off hardware accelerated sound? is the computer trying to do that? i'm not getting a 5.1 signal sent over SPDIF and i think the games might be trying to use the hardware acceleration. Also you have an Audigy, do you have alchemy? IT could be my realtek drivers, i do not know, just making sure, it is possible to play games in surround sound in Windows Vista w/o a Creative Card, is that statement true?

 

[JeffreyY]

I'm looking for a solution to this as well. I also have the Realtek ALC883 and it appears that if I use the analog connection with my Logitech Z-5500s then 5.1 sound works in Half Life 2 but if I switch to the optical connection then I am stuck with stereo sound. I updated to the latest drivers last night (1.82) and it did not fix the issue.

 

[Gooberlx2]

Originally posted by: Willyallthewei
I have Windows Vista 32bit and onboard sound - Realtek ALC883 and just cannot get any game to output surround sound, from older games like Half life 2 to newer games like Bioshock to the newest in Crysis, Call of Duty 4, Unreal Tournament 3.

NONE have surround. My audio receiver outputs surround only because it automatically creates virtual sound even though only two boxes of the 5 light up, thus its getting a stereo signal and upconverting it, which fills the room but, no surround sound.

I don't want to drop the money on a X-Fi and i don't care about accurate sounding EAX 5 is. All i want is the SPDIF on my Realtek ALC883 to output surround sound in the new games like Crysis, Gears of War, Call of Duty 4 and UT3.

Can anyone help? Does my soundcard need to support something like Dolby Digital Live! or DTS Connect? Currently i don't think it supports those two but does support normal DD and DTS. If anyone knows whats going on, please let me know.

If you're sending over SPDIF or Optical (for JeffreyY), then I think your card does need to support DDLive or some such similar solution. If the Realtek chipset doesn't support that then I'm not sure there's anything you can do about it except wire up with analog.

According to this, though, there does seem to be mention of DDLive with the ALC883. Maybe it just doesn't work in Vista yet, or maybe that's the difference between ALC883, ALC883D and ALC883DTS?