VOGONS


Reply 20 of 53, by Kirben

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AurealDieHard wrote:

Microsoft does have drivers for the SQ2500 that do work better than the beat, drivers.

The first release of Windows XP included drivers for Vortex 2 based sound cards, which provided decent support. But Microsoft later released updated drivers (2 5.12.01.156), which removed many features (Aureal A3D support, hardware acceleration, Aureal wavetable and S/PDIF support), for some unknown reason.

I'm not sure what drivers were bundled with Windows XP Service Pack 1 onwards, but make sure to avoid those updated drivers.

Reply 21 of 53, by vetz

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AurealDieHard wrote:

hmm they are in the UK? do they sell to the USA?
btw, it looks to be a version 1 sq2500 thats been rebadged with another company.
no new or different tech, just the name differs thats all, but i still wouldnt mind having if they sold to the USA??

You can always send an email and ask the seller. Here is two pictures of my card. It came still sealed in the retail box brand new.

DSC_0075.jpg
DSC_0076.jpg

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Reply 22 of 53, by AurealDieHard

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ive used the 2048 and 2050 drivers for xp,
those work just right for the vortex2 chip
head on over to QuantexZone.com the guy there has a guide for Aureal Cards and can help you get them working right with all sorts of tips.
http://www.quantexzone.com/

Vetz.......thanks im on my way to getting that card.........btw love your sig, i used to have a compaq 5712 presario that i gutted out and threw in a athlon xp3200+ and a Aureal Vortex2..........ahhhh those were grand dayds!!!!!

Reply 23 of 53, by NamelessPlayer

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My understanding of the Aureal story is that they were basically Media Vision reborn under a new name, and suddenly burst onto the PC scene to start a 3D audio revolution that would continue on up until 2007 (when XAudio2 + X3DAudio and FMOD Ex started becoming dominant for PC games with inferior audio mixing; I'm still pissed about that).

They actually pioneered binaural HRTF mixing, though most people wouldn't have known the jargon. All they knew is that they could suddenly distinguish front and rear, and even high and low, with nothing more than a pair of conventional stereo headphones (and probably stereo speakers too). Aureal could have very well been the first company to know that games should have treated headphone users to something better than one-dimensional left-right panning.

But then Creative decided they were too much of a threat, so they sued Aureal...and Aureal countersued. While the courts ruled in Aureal's favor, it was ultimately a Pyrrhic victory as the legal fees apparently bankrupted them, and then Creative bought them out shortly afterward, effectively overturning the legal rulings anyway and killing off their biggest competitor.

I'm not sure how true or false the story is, but it is pretty sad. I get the feeling that had Aureal survived, PC gaming audio would not have had a major regression over the last 5 years once everyone got fed up with Creative. (And since Creative has all the good 3D audio tech under their iron grasp after their Aureal and Sensaura acquisitions, you see where this is going...)

Also, consider me an envious bastard due to the fact that you have an SQ3500 Turbo. How much did it cost you to get your hands on that thing? For that matter, are there any drivers out there that will make use of the DSP daughterboard, or is it just collector's dead weight since Aureal didn't have enough time to code drivers for it?

Reply 24 of 53, by AurealDieHard

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NamelessPlayer wrote:
My understanding of the Aureal story is that they were basically Media Vision reborn under a new name, and suddenly burst onto t […]
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My understanding of the Aureal story is that they were basically Media Vision reborn under a new name, and suddenly burst onto the PC scene to start a 3D audio revolution that would continue on up until 2007 (when XAudio2 + X3DAudio and FMOD Ex started becoming dominant for PC games with inferior audio mixing; I'm still pissed about that).

They actually pioneered binaural HRTF mixing, though most people wouldn't have known the jargon. All they knew is that they could suddenly distinguish front and rear, and even high and low, with nothing more than a pair of conventional stereo headphones (and probably stereo speakers too). Aureal could have very well been the first company to know that games should have treated headphone users to something better than one-dimensional left-right panning.

But then Creative decided they were too much of a threat, so they sued Aureal...and Aureal countersued. While the courts ruled in Aureal's favor, it was ultimately a Pyrrhic victory as the legal fees apparently bankrupted them, and then Creative bought them out shortly afterward, effectively overturning the legal rulings anyway and killing off their biggest competitor.

I'm not sure how true or false the story is, but it is pretty sad. I get the feeling that had Aureal survived, PC gaming audio would not have had a major regression over the last 5 years once everyone got fed up with Creative. (And since Creative has all the good 3D audio tech under their iron grasp after their Aureal and Sensaura acquisitions, you see where this is going...)

Also, consider me an envious bastard due to the fact that you have an SQ3500 Turbo. How much did it cost you to get your hands on that thing? For that matter, are there any drivers out there that will make use of the DSP daughterboard, or is it just collector's dead weight since Aureal didn't have enough time to code drivers for it?

I got the card from a Radio DJ in Dallas texas, he sold it to me for $110.
Back in 2000 i Believe.
He said he bought it New in Dallas from a Store?
he sent me the 2048 and 2050 drivers, along with a Vortex2 manual and that was it.
and i tried them and they work great under win98 and ME.
the card works great under thos OS's and under XP i have to do some fiddling around to get cetain things to work.
Quantexzone.com is the place i go to since late 1998 ive gone there to get tech tips and so on.
It wasnt the court cases that killed Aureal/, but stockholders and financial backing like "Diamond" Muktimedia and others that backed out, thinking things were gonna turn for the worse with Creative and that led to Aureal going under.
Yeah this Baby is sorta like the VooDoo 5 6000 rare and Obsolete, but she still works fine.
to this day since 1998 i have never and will never own a Creative product!!
Gaming has never been the same since Aureals departure 🙁

Reply 26 of 53, by ratfink

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What sort of experience? I got a few of them in the cupboard - seller is trustworthy in my experience if that's what you mean. Otherwise i ran a card exactly like it years ago and it was great for diablo2 [which uses the a3d, no idea how sopshisticated a use it makes of a3d tech]. For reasons I forget [probably it came to hand when I was building my current a3d pc] I now use an mx300 instead.

Reply 27 of 53, by vetz

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silikone wrote:

Does anybody have experience with this?

I bought this card from the same seller. It is talked about earlier in this thread and I've also posted photos. I have had no problems with it.

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Reply 28 of 53, by silikone

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Before I consider ordering it, I would like to know how it compares to a SQ2500. I'd rather not miss out on anything.

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Reply 29 of 53, by batracio

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I'm considering buying one of those cards, too. It has probably already been answered, but the standard Vortex2 SuperQuad has an optical S/PDIF output and revision A of AU8830 chipset. Vortex2 SQ 2500 has a coaxial S/PDIF output and revision B of AU8830 chipset (newer and faster, getting up to a 5-10% performace improvement in some games).

Reply 30 of 53, by Triver

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Hi guys,

I just stumbled upon this thread whilst searching for anything Aureal A3D related and it was pretty interesting to read (and look at, nice pics AurealDieHard I guess you won't ever consider selling the SQ3500 ? 😜 ).

So I might be soon a proud owner of a Diamond MX 300, can anyone give some information how good the card is (compared to other sound cards with the same chipset)?
Also since this hasn't really been answered since the topic started I would like to know if there is any sound card that fully supports A3D (1.0+2.0(+3.0)) and EAX (1.0+2.0) at the same time or do I have to use seperate cards for that?
On a related note, how good does the MX300 support EAX? I read that support for EAX 1.0 exists but no information to what grade or if there is support for 2.0.

And I found this site where a "EAX Unified Driver" is mentioned that supposedly emulates EAX 2.0 and 3.0 on cards that support 1.0-> http://members.optushome.com.au/kirben/drivers.html
Does anyone have experience with that one?

Last but not least I would like to know if there have been any efforts in the past to contact Creative to make XP supported drivers for sound cards with Aureal chipsets? I know they probably don't give a sh*t about Aureal technology (especially if they don't make any money with it) but I believe it's worth a try to ask them.
Or perhaps they would be so kind to hand the drivers over to the community? (I know, I'm dreaming here 🤣 )

edit:

AurealDieHard wrote:

i also have tweaks and other apps for Aureal as well to work in XP

Could you be a bit more specific here what those "tweaks and other apps" are?
Also I would appreciate it very much if you could upload all of your Aureal related software since it's really hard nowadays to even get the latest drivers (after 30min+ I found them on some korean ftp servers)

Reply 31 of 53, by hifidelitygaming

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Nobody has commented in awhile, I will just so there is a comment but don't consider my answers definitive. (finally back from months long travel to respond again)

My understanding is that the MX300 is VERY good for an Aureal card, it's the one that I chose to get, even though I haven't used it yet based off reading old reviews.

Supporting A3D and having Aureal positional audio are not the same thing, my Sensaura cards all supported A3D 1.0. Nothing was apparently allowed to emulate A3D 2.0 though that was kept proprietary. Therefore the only way to run A3D 2.0 or 3.0 is on proper Aureal hardware as that listed in this thread. I'm pretty sure all the cards support EAX 1.0 and probably EAX 2.0 as well because both those were commonly supported at the time by many cards, it was only higher levels that Creative made proprietary. That said, if the cards here, like by Aureal (or the MX300) using Aureal drivers did NOT support EAX 2.0 it's as close to guaranteed that nothing ever did because they were the best game in town.

EAX simulator/emulators may allow that however yes, but I have no experience. There is in theory no reason the API calls cannot be translated then simulated in software for instance. This goes for higher EAX too right up to 5.0.

Creative would never do anything for anybody. They are greedy assholes and don't even care about Creative owners to fix their problems under XP or anything else. Chance is below zero for them doing anything, and no chance they'd release code for us to use. They are just a monopoly and they want you to buy their new stuff which is even worse than their older stuff.

Reply 32 of 53, by Great Hierophant

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According to the Quantex Zone site, EAX 1.0 support was added in the last reference drivers for the Vortex 2 sound cards. That sites list of games supporting A3D seems to be exaggerated.

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Reply 33 of 53, by swaaye

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One thing you don't see mentioned much with the revered Aureal cards is that the drivers are quite buggy and unstable. You will get BSODs with some A3D games. It usually happens if you quit the game and try to run it again without a reboot. It seems A3DAPI.DLL can't initialize again without blowing up the Win9x kernel. I've seen something similar with NVIDIA drivers combined with DirectX8+ on 9x.

2048 is the first Vortex2 driver with EAX reverb, but it is so poor you'll want to turn it off. Also, driver 2048 and 2050 (the last available) both have a bug that causes reversed channels in some A3D games.

Reply 34 of 53, by tincup

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I have a MX300 in my Tualatin 1.4/V5500 rig using the v10101bw driver set. Runs nicely. I bought it back in the day but decided to replace it with another card after I read how many cpu cycles it hogged as compared to other cards [Turtle Beach Montego, and SBLive! principally]. But now that I'm running a cpu I could only have dreamed of back then audio quality/features trumps usage:)

Reply 37 of 53, by swaaye

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Yeah I can't say I've noticed any performance problems myself. I suppose that a CPU like a PII 350 would have trouble though.

Last edited by swaaye on 2013-01-18, 19:19. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 39 of 53, by swaaye

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It's just a popular Vortex 2 card. As for daughtercards, it has a waveblaster MPU-401 header, and a connection for a S/PDIF card called MX25.

I also have an OEM Turtle Beach Montego II. Same thing, but smaller. Both cards have good quality analog output.

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