The Sound Blaster X-FI can use EAX 1, 2, 3, and 4 and Soundfont 1.0, 2.0, and 2.1, (though Soundfonts aren't exactly standard), as well as EAX 5, and Soundfont 2.4 if that's what you mean?

AdamP wrote:

The Sound Blaster X-FI can use EAX 1, 2, 3, and 4 and Soundfont 1.0, 2.0, and 2.1, (though Soundfonts aren't exactly standard), as well as EAX 5, and Soundfont 2.4 if that's what you mean?

No, I mean which older sound blasters and other sound cards is it compatible with.

I'm not aware that it's compatible with any older Sound Blasters. It may be compatible with other cards that use the X-FI chip, such as the Auzentech X-FI cards, but I don't have drivers for them so I can't test.

I doubt it has "sb emulation drivers" like the Live! for example... here is what the Device Manager on my pc with an Auzentech X-Fi looks like:

and the resources are a bunch of addresses and IRQ16 (win7/pro x64)

I'm pretty sure that X-Fi cards were intended for XP/Vista/Win7 use, where you'd have to run DOS games through an emulator or VDM anyway. In other words, there's no point for Creative to have a legacy Sound Blaster emulation driver like the Win9x days when it needs to be part of the DOS emulator.

Besides, you buy an X-Fi for Windows games that use DirectSound3D and OpenAL hardware acceleration (along with EAX), not DOS games that rely on FM and "wavetable" synthesis used on the sound cards of the day.

The X-Fi has no backwards compatibility. It doesn't even have a gameport.

EAX and DirectSound 3D don't work on Windows 7 or Vista.

If you're using an X-Fi on 7 or Vista you must install a driver component called ALchemy that translates EAX and DirectSound 3D calls into OpenAL.

http://www.creative.com/soundblaster/technology/alchemy/

This can cause issues when you install a game that supports EAX but also installs its own OpenAL driver (Codemaster's GRID for example). Sometimes this can be fixed by replacing the OpenAL dll that came with the game with Creative Labs' OpenAL dll. Sometimes the only way is to disable EAX or 3D sound in the game.

ALchemy works fine in my experience with every game I've tried (at least with versions in the 1.35 range; 1.42 might have issues with Thief 1/Gold and 2), though the occasional game needs a bit of fiddling with the buffer and duration values (but mostly duration). At the very least, it's far better than no DirectSound3D at all.

I still don't know what Microsoft was thinking, killing off DS3D entirely and giving us something far inferior like XAudio2 + X3DAudio as a replacement...worse off, the whole gaming industry has bought into it. I'm not asking for EAX necessarily, just a proper 3D sound space.

Is it true that hardware audio makes a comeback with Windows 8?

Interesting.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectSound#cite … offloadingW8-10

I wonder if hardware audio support is intended for the gimpy ARM devices they want to run the OS on.

I don't expect it to come back to PC gaming because
1)OpenAL has always been available
2)majority of users have azalia audio
3)mature middleware audio libraries with robust CPU audio support
4)silly fast CPUs with many cores

I can confirm the X-Fi has terrible backwards support. It can do wavetable... of sorts but, well, how can I say this... It is far worse than what the AWE 32 sounded like. It is anemic, at best. I can, however, load gigantic soundfonts (I think I fit a 200 mb one into memory) but even then, it didn't quite beat the AWE and, well, it can't touch my SC-55 or Roland MT-32.

As far as FM-synth, it has none.

What I do find it useful for is modern era stuff, as it sounds great. It also has wonderful positional audio via headphones. The most useful aspect, though, is the Drive Bay that you can optionaly use with it that has all sorts of inputs plus midi ports. Interesting to point out is that the midi ports on the drive bay fully support sysex messaging and throughput. I have yet to encounter a single program that has issues with it on my MT-32.

I still, though, despite this, prefer to use a pure DOS machine where possible.

Has anyone tried the Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi in WindowsXP?

Is it compatible with older games that expect creative cards for "Accelerated Hardware Audio" ?

Yeah I use both the PCIe and PCI versions with XP occasionally. They work great. I use Daniel_K's X-Fi Support Pack 4.0 for XP thru Win10.

PCIe is in my main XP rig and never missed a beat.
Surround sound over optical is a world of pain if not impossible, but that's true for all creative cards