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First post, by BEEN_Nath_58

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Recently I Started getting into retro games, like Far Cry, GTA Vice City, FEAR, Half-Life, etc.
These games have options for enabling EAX or A3D on HL. But I cannot run EAX or A3D on my machine because of DSound3D incompatibility. So I want to experience A3D or EAX on my PC. Is there a way to do it?
One of my friend has a Creative card and he uses some software named Alchemy to get EAX but it didn't work for him in Vice City.

Is there any way for integrated Realtek chips to get EAX or A3D?

previously known as Discrete_BOB_058

Reply 1 of 6, by synrgy87

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Alchemy will work okish most of the time on modern systems but for older systems your best bet is getting a creative card like an X-fi but also running an older OS, A3D same thing some older cards support either emulation in software but not on modern systems.

both closed source proprietary software / hardware Creative are unlikely to open source it.

Reply 2 of 6, by BEEN_Nath_58

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synrgy87 wrote on 2020-04-29, 13:49:

Alchemy will work okish most of the time on modern systems but for older systems your best bet is getting a creative card like an X-fi but also running an older OS, A3D same thing some older cards support either emulation in software but not on modern systems.

both closed source proprietary software / hardware Creative are unlikely to open source it.

What about DSOAL, IndirectSound and 3DBack Sound? Can I used them?

previously known as Discrete_BOB_058

Reply 3 of 6, by synrgy87

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Discrete_BOB_058 wrote on 2020-04-29, 14:46:
synrgy87 wrote on 2020-04-29, 13:49:

Alchemy will work okish most of the time on modern systems but for older systems your best bet is getting a creative card like an X-fi but also running an older OS, A3D same thing some older cards support either emulation in software but not on modern systems.

both closed source proprietary software / hardware Creative are unlikely to open source it.

What about DSOAL, IndirectSound and 3DBack Sound? Can I used them?

You can try, experimenting to see what works with what game etc and how well.

I found this on reddit:

"For anyone who will ever read this, I just bought the Audigy RX and I used the custom drivers from "Daniel_K" found here: http://danielkawakami.blogspot.com/2017/01/sb … rt-pack-62.html

Once installed, just open Creative ALchemy, add your EAX supported games and it works! 100% hardware EAX like the good ol' days! Well, if the old cards used the same effects processors as the Audigy RX then yeah, but if not, hardware EAX is still better than software/emulated!

but you do need a supported card.

Reply 4 of 6, by BEEN_Nath_58

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synrgy87 wrote on 2020-04-29, 15:39:
You can try, experimenting to see what works with what game etc and how well. […]
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Discrete_BOB_058 wrote on 2020-04-29, 14:46:
synrgy87 wrote on 2020-04-29, 13:49:

Alchemy will work okish most of the time on modern systems but for older systems your best bet is getting a creative card like an X-fi but also running an older OS, A3D same thing some older cards support either emulation in software but not on modern systems.

both closed source proprietary software / hardware Creative are unlikely to open source it.

What about DSOAL, IndirectSound and 3DBack Sound? Can I used them?

You can try, experimenting to see what works with what game etc and how well.

I found this on reddit:

"For anyone who will ever read this, I just bought the Audigy RX and I used the custom drivers from "Daniel_K" found here: http://danielkawakami.blogspot.com/2017/01/sb … rt-pack-62.html

Once installed, just open Creative ALchemy, add your EAX supported games and it works! 100% hardware EAX like the good ol' days! Well, if the old cards used the same effects processors as the Audigy RX then yeah, but if not, hardware EAX is still better than software/emulated!

but you do need a supported card.

DSOAL and IndirectSound workd, but I couldn't configure DSOAL properly. For the most, I remember it gave me proper EAX effect once on GTA Vice City. After a restart few hours later, that didn't work. I ran different files before that and that probably did the trick. But I didn't get any proper guide on it.

Regarding ALchemy, I cannot use it as I don't use a PCIe/PCI sound card.

previously known as Discrete_BOB_058

Reply 6 of 6, by BEEN_Nath_58

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synrgy87 wrote on 2020-04-29, 22:53:
Discrete_BOB_058 wrote on 2020-04-29, 18:53:

Regarding ALchemy, I cannot use it as I don't use a PCIe/PCI sound card.

Could always throw one in if you have a slot free.

Even ALchemy has problems. GTA VC,3 doesn't still recognise the card even if you have it installed. They actually need mss32 to dsound to openal/xaudio2/xact3 conversion in order to run.
When you use the card, the game will leave to check for dsound.dll and see if a card exists

A3D emulation by SB cards are broken too.
They can be restored only by modern wrappers like dsoal.

previously known as Discrete_BOB_058