When is OpenAL going to catch up with EAX?

[yhelothar]

I know a lot of people don't like creative and their proprietary technologies, but seriously, current game audio doesn't seem to come anywhere near as good at EAX back in the day. The environmental effects are gone.

I've been playing farcry2, a couple of source engine games, and amnesia, and none of them have environmental effects.

In fact, since vista came out, I can't remember playing a single game with environmental effects. I think Quake4/Doom3 was the only OpenAL game that had environmental effects that I remember.

 

[Fox5]

Creative uses OpenAL as the api to communicate with their proprietary EAX extensions. EAX isn't dead yet, almost every Electronic Arts game uses it and gimps those who don't have it.

I can't say how games that use EAX versus those that don't compare, but I'd imagine it's a developer by developer thing, instead of using pre-canned EAX effects.

 

[Anteaus]

I know a lot of people don't like creative and their proprietary technologies, but seriously, current game audio doesn't seem to come anywhere near as good at EAX back in the day. The environmental effects are gone.

I've been playing farcry2, a couple of source engine games, and amnesia, and none of them have environmental effects.

In fact, since vista came out, I can't remember playing a single game with environmental effects. I think Quake4/Doom3 was the only OpenAL game that had environmental effects that I remember.

OpenAL is more in competition with DirectSound, in much the same way OpenGL is in competition with Direct3D. EAX is a proprietary format. If you want people to stop using EAX, then you need to stop people from buying Creative products and motherboards whose onboard audio supports EAX.

I agree that EAX has been hurting lately, but that is primarily due to driver issues. When DX10/vista came out, MS banned all low level driver access which all but killed EAX because their drivers needed it. Instead of just writing new drivers for X-FI, creative just pushed the ball down the road and used OpenAL as a crutch until their next audio chipset to replace x-fi comes out, which will hopefully be sooner than later. All the features that you mentioned as missing from EAX will be returning, and all those games that use EAX released in the past few years will be able to take advantage of it.

Since many of the 3rd party sound card makers are still basing their stuff on X-fi, Creative tech maintains a huge footprint in overall home PC applications, thus the reason for such widespread EAX preference.

 

[Schadenfroh]

OpenAL does not sound as good as DirectSound with A3D, IMO. But, this might be due to the game developers not making an in-depth use of it.

Also, I wonder what to make of this:
http://www.creative.com/oem/products/chips/soundcore3d.asp

 

[Skurge]

Anyone here play Dirt2/3?

The audio in that game is great, especially the environmental effects. It uses Rapture audio.

 

[motsm]

EAX is still around as has been mentioned, but more often than not it's processed behind the scenes on your CPU, instead of using the capabilities of your sound card. There is also a growing number of games that use their own occlusion and environmental acoustics, but most of them are unfortunately far too subtle and used too sparingly compared to many EAX titles of the past.

I am in agreement though, I've been waiting for the next step in game acoustics, or even just waiting for some form to become more widely used. Far too many games go without environmental audio these days.

 

[Modular]

I'll never forget how awesome it was to fire up BF2 with an X-fi card in XP. Nothing has ever come close in sound quality.

 

[minmaster]

plus more and more console ports mean we get our games with software audio and zero hardware acceleration anyways.

 

[Red Hawk]

Don't console games use Dolby?

 

[coloumb]

Don't console games use Dolby?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_hardware

yes - all games made for the Xbox 360 are required to support at least Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound.

 

[Ross Ridge]

Don't console games use Dolby?

Dolby would be something else.

The original PlayStation's sound chip could do basic reverb effects for environmental audio, and so have other consoles since at least then. Modern consoles do this sort of thing on the CPU now though.

 

[yhelothar]

CPU has more than enough power to not need a dedicated soundcard to do processing. Back in the day the difference between getting a soundcard and using onboard was like getting a video card upgrade, but today the difference is negligible.

 

[yhelothar]

Is OpenAL harder to code for or something? You would think that if environmental audio gets support by any system instead of a single brand, there would be more efforts into coding for it, but it seems to be the opposite!

 

[lamedude]

Going to blame consoles again. Why bother porting to OpenAL when the Xaudio2 code you wrote for the 360 already works.

 

[yhelothar]

bah that's lame dude

 

[frowertr]

CPU has more than enough power to not need a dedicated soundcard to do processing. Back in the day the difference between getting a soundcard and using onboard was like getting a video card upgrade, but today the difference is negligible.

I would disagree. Purchase come good cans and a quality sound card and the level of detail compared to onboard audio will blow you away. I felt similiar to you before I bought my current soundcard/headphone setup. Now I cringe when I hear onboad audio when listening to music/games someone else's setup.

 

[motsm]

CPU has more than enough power to not need a dedicated soundcard to do processing. Back in the day the difference between getting a soundcard and using onboard was like getting a video card upgrade, but today the difference is negligible.

The CPU is powerful enough for the current, rather outdated forms of environmental audio used in games, sure. (Of course dedicated sound cards will sound better anyway) Current CPU's are not powerful to properly advance game audio to modern forms of ray tracing on their own however, and as long as developers keep their focus on graphics and other technologies, audio is never going to advance outside improvements in production quality due to the massive budget games have these days.

 

[TestKing123]

I would disagree. Purchase come good cans and a quality sound card and the level of detail compared to onboard audio will blow you away. I felt similiar to you before I bought my current soundcard/headphone setup. Now I cringe when I hear onboad audio when listening to music/games someone else's setup.

Then you've never heard HD audio. HD audio is 100% digital, sound quality is completely dependant on end user equipment (receiver/speakers), just like an HDMI signal is 100% digital and quality is dependant on your display.

The need for dedicated soundcards these days for gaming purposes is nill, a waste of money and slot space. EAX is a relic of the past that thankfully shouldn't be supported anymore by developers. In todays games developers that want audio effects integrate it in their game audio engine (or should anyways). I never liked EAX effects anyways, the transitions from one room effect to the next was always unrealistic and disjointing. A game developer today has the tools to program exactly the kind of audio effects they want rather than depend on a limited EAX library set.

Even motherboard audio is fast becoming irrelevant. HD audio is built into every AMD and Nvidia GPU these days. Of course not everyone can utilize HDMI out, but this is fast becoming the defacto standard.

I'll also never forgive Creative for that Vista fiasco years ago, wanting Audigy 4 owners like myself to PAY for the same functionality I had for free with Windows XP. Since then I discovered onboard audio was just as good, and the EAX libraries were free anyways. No developer uses EAX today because it's just not necessary. Most common environmental effects were underwater/big open hall type scenerios, and while it's still in use today (I hear it with Witcher 2)...it's just developers do it directly now instead of relying on EAX.

 

[Anteaus]

Then you've never heard HD audio. HD audio is 100% digital, sound quality is completely dependant on end user equipment (receiver/speakers), just like an HDMI signal is 100% digital and quality is dependant on your display....

There's a middle ground to be had. You're both in the right here, depending on perspective. There are basically two sides to this. SNR and signal processing.

As for SNR, the onboard stuff has gotten better but it still can't compete in this regard. One could argue perceptibility, but the numbers are there. If you want a high SNR, dedicated is the way to go, at least as of now.

Signal processing is a bit different. If your running 2 channels, onboard and dedicated cards are virtually identical. Surround is where it gets dicey. If your running 7.1 channels, the performance between dedicated and onboard becomes more pronounced. Will it affect your blu-ray movie streaming at a constant bitrate? Probably not, but if your running HD EAX pushing 64-128 audio channels in games, the processing requirements sky rocket which can affect overall performance in game if your demanding your onboard/cpu sound solution to handle the entire load.

In short, while a dedicated sound solution is ideal to cover all the bases, it is certainly not a requirement for great sound.

 

[baronzemo78]

Lossless audio out of HDMI makes sound cards irrelevant.

I used creative products for years but now I do audio through my graphics card.

With a good setup it sounds great, and by having the audio programming done using CPU resources you don't have to worry about some games supporting EAX and some not.

EAX going away is a good thing and I'm a huge game audiophile.

 

[TestKing123]

There's a middle ground to be had. You're both in the right here, depending on perspective. There are basically two sides to this. SNR and signal processing.

As for SNR, the onboard stuff has gotten better but it still can't compete in this regard. One could argue perceptibility, but the numbers are there. If you want a high SNR, dedicated is the way to go, at least as of now.

Signal processing is a bit different. If your running 2 channels, onboard and dedicated cards are virtually identical. Surround is where it gets dicey. If your running 7.1 channels, the performance between dedicated and onboard becomes more pronounced. Will it affect your blu-ray movie streaming at a constant bitrate? Probably not, but if your running HD EAX pushing 64-128 audio channels in games, the processing requirements sky rocket which can affect overall performance in game if your demanding your onboard/cpu sound solution to handle the entire load.

In short, while a dedicated sound solution is ideal to cover all the bases, it is certainly not a requirement for great sound.

Arguing about SNR and digital audio is like a Best Buy rep arguing a $300 Monster cable is better than a $5 Monoprice HDMI cable.

HD audio is strictly 1's 0's. There is no signal degradation like an analog cable. Most motherboards with onboard audio sold now have HDMI ports. Better yet, motherboard/dedicated sound isn't even required with AMD's and Nvidia's current and future generation GPU's.

EAX needs to die, if it's not dead all ready. Glad no developer is seriously supporting this bloatware anymore. Even with older games that still support EAX HD bloatware, running 128 audio channels isn't a problem with modern CPU's. The performance difference is negligble. Native audio engines seem to do a much better job at handling a high number of audio channels and environmental effects compared to EAX bloatware. And of course, with HD audio over HDMI all the CPU does is pack the audio stream, the audio processing itself is done on external equipment (not to mention its lossless as well). With todays high end TV's and audio recievers, a dedicated soundcard is just plain inferior.

 

[Lonbjerg]

Arguing about SNR and digital audio is like a Best Buy rep arguing a $300 Monster cable is better than a $5 Monoprice HDMI cable.

HD audio is strictly 1's 0's. There is no signal degradation like an analog cable. Most motherboards with onboard audio sold now have HDMI ports. Better yet, motherboard/dedicated sound isn't even required with AMD's and Nvidia's current and future generation GPU's.

EAX needs to die, if it's not dead all ready. Glad no developer is seriously supporting this bloatware anymore. Even with older games that still support EAX HD bloatware, running 128 audio channels isn't a problem with modern CPU's. The performance difference is negligble. Native audio engines seem to do a much better job at handling a high number of audio channels and environmental effects compared to EAX bloatware. And of course, with HD audio over HDMI all the CPU does is pack the audio stream, the audio processing itself is done on external equipment (not to mention its lossless as well). With todays high end TV's and audio recievers, a dedicated soundcard is just plain inferior.

I beg to differ.
I havn't seen any game with better 3D sound than BF2.

You be so kind as to link me to a game that matches it's 3D sound?

Then we can talk about what is "bloated" afterwards...

 

[Anteaus]

Arguing about SNR and digital audio is like a Best Buy rep arguing a $300 Monster cable is better than a $5 Monoprice HDMI cable.

HD audio is strictly 1's 0's. There is no signal degradation like an analog cable. Most motherboards with onboard audio sold now have HDMI ports. Better yet, motherboard/dedicated sound isn't even required with AMD's and Nvidia's current and future generation GPU's.

With todays high end TV's and audio recievers, a dedicated soundcard is just plain inferior.

You might be using your pc tethered to a surround reciever thru HDMI, but most of us still use speakers with standard analog stereo inputs. SNR will always be an issue as long as there is a D/A conversion taking place. I digress in this case, because I specifically stated that it isn't percievable...only that there is a measurable advantage to dedicated sound cards in this field.

The cable comparison is silly because it's an incomplete arguement. At 5 feet, the cheap and expensive cables are the same. As you increase the length, the differences start surfacing. Saying there is no difference is simply wrong. Are monster cables overpriced and inappropriate fo the average person? yes. Are they electrically superior to cheap cables with smaller conductors? yes. Does it matter for average joe? no.

 

[Lonbjerg]

You might be using your pc tethered to a surround reciever thru HDMI, but most of us still use speakers with standard analog stereo inputs. SNR will always be an issue as long as there is a D/A conversion taking place. I digress in this case, because I specifically stated that it isn't percievable...only that there is a measurable advantage to dedicated sound cards in this field.

The cable comparison is silly because it's an incomplete arguement. At 5 feet, the cheap and expensive cables are the same. As you increase the length, the differences start surfacing. Saying there is no difference is simply wrong. Are monster cables overpriced and inappropriate fo the average person? yes. Are they electrically superior to cheap cables with smaller conductors? yes. Does it matter for average joe? no.

I bet you that my 7.1 SB 750's have better sound than any TV out there...digital or not

 

[imaheadcase]

There is a difference between environmental sounds and 5.1-7.1 setups.

Just because something supports 5.1 does not mean it has environmental audio.

Just saying, because people tend to get that confused.

The problem with audio now is simply developers don't have a reason to enhance effects in games. Whats they point when fast CPUs now they can use software without much overhead. They would rather spend that time/money into game development..or the very leaset soundtrack.