I thought the Audigy2 supported the lot? Though I can't say I've really looked into it, my MX300 is just fine for all my needs.

Targaff wrote:

I thought the Audigy2 supported the lot? Though I can't say I've really looked into it, my MX300 is just fine for all my needs.

What is the highest A3D version supported by Audigy2? What's the highest EAX supported by MX300? See, it's such things that I'm thinking about. I'm actually looking for any sound card that support Aureal 3D 2.0 and a relatively new version of EAX. For example, is there any sound card that supports both A3D 2.0 and EAX Advanced HD?

See, most new sound cards currently in the market support both EAX and A3D. However, while they support the latest version of EAX, they only support A3D 1.0. I wonder why they don't support A3D 2.0. Why? Is it so difficult to support A3D 2.0?

Probably because Creative sued Aureal for patent infringement, lost the case, and, being a bad loser, bought up Aureal including the A3D technology. See the A3D Wikipedia page for more details.

Sometimes I wonder how PC audio would be like if Creative actually made their stuff themselves instead of ripping it out of their dead competitors. We could have cheap, high quality MIDI (E-MU), compatibility with ISA cards (Ensoniq), superior 3D sound (Aureal), and Dolby Digital encoding in hardware (Sensaura), but nooo, Creative had to ruin the fun for everyone 😠 [/rant off]

5u3 wrote:

Sometimes I wonder how PC audio would be like if Creative actually made their stuff themselves instead of ripping it out of their dead competitors. We could have cheap, high quality MIDI (E-MU), compatibility with ISA cards (Ensoniq), superior 3D sound (Aureal), and Dolby Digital encoding in hardware (Sensaura), but nooo, Creative had to ruin the fun for everyone 😠 [/rant off]

Share your hatred here. 😉 I only use Creative for DOS (ISA) sound cards, due to SB compatibility, but otherwise...

I wonder about A3D though. Why there are so few cards, especially modern cards, that support A3D 2.0? It seems that today's cards (HDA X-Mystique 7.1) typically support A3D 1.0, EAX 1.0, and EAX 2.0, but older cards like Diamond MX300 supports A3D 2.0. Isn't it odd?

The question is: what if I play A3D 2.0 games with A3D 1.0 sound card? Also, I never quite notice the A3D version in games I played; are there quite many games out there that support A3D 2.0? Is lack of A3D 2.0 support a big drawback? And if that's the case, why modern sound cards did not support A3D 2.0?

Same question for EAX. It seems that only Creative-spewed sound cards support EAX higher than 2.0. Why then, many modern sound cards only support EAX 2.0?

The HDA X-Mystique 7.1 is an example: it has Dolby Live feature (encoding 3D sound API-generated sound channels into Dolby Digital signal --in real time, like nVidia SoundStorm), so you can enjoy a game's 3D sound through S/PDIF connector. However, it only support EAX 2.0. The question is why? And is it such a big drawback for a sound card to not support EAX above version 2.0?

Share your hatred here. I only use Creative for DOS (ISA) sound cards, due to SB compatibility, but otherwise... […]
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Share your hatred here. I only use Creative for DOS (ISA) sound cards, due to SB compatibility, but otherwise...

I wonder about A3D though. Why there are so few cards, especially modern cards, that support A3D 2.0? It seems that today's cards (HDA X-Mystique 7.1) typically support A3D 1.0, EAX 1.0, and EAX 2.0, but older cards like Diamond MX300 supports A3D 2.0. Isn't it odd?

The question is: what if I play A3D 2.0 games with A3D 1.0 sound card? Also, I never quite notice the A3D version in games I played; are there quite many games out there that support A3D 2.0? Is lack of A3D 2.0 support a big drawback? And if that's the case, why modern sound cards did not support A3D 2.0?

Same question for EAX. It seems that only Creative-spewed sound cards support EAX higher than 2.0. Why then, many modern sound cards only support EAX 2.0?

The HDA X-Mystique 7.1 is an example: it has Dolby Live feature (encoding 3D sound API-generated sound channels into Dolby Digital signal --in real time, like nVidia SoundStorm), so you can enjoy a game's 3D sound through S/PDIF connector. However, it only support EAX 2.0. The question is why? And is it such a big drawback for a sound card to not support EAX above version 2.0?

The problem with A3D 2.0 is that it was only supported by Aureal's Vortex 2 chips. The algorithims are based in hardware, and it was too expensive to license it and support it in competitors' chips. Also, supporting it in software caused too much of a performance hit during the day.

Like A3D 1.0, which most non-Aureal chips support in software, Creative only made EAX up to version 2.0 available to the public. Versions 3.0+ Creative kept to their own products to encourage consumers to buy them, and patents kept the rest away. Today, EAX 1.0-2.0 is supported in software by virtually all chips these days. I hear that even Creative's X-Fi cards do not have hardware support for the older standards. EAX is strongly tied to the audio cards first supporting them (EAX 3.0 - Audigy, EAX 4.0 Audigy 2, EAX 5.0 X-Fi.)

I don't think that in these days of motherboard audio and few PCI slots that EAX is very important these days. However, be advised that the latest HD codecs from Realtek have a bug in their emulation of EAX 1.0-2.0.

Great Hierophant wrote:

The problem with A3D 2.0 is that it was only supported by Aureal's Vortex 2 chips. The algorithims are based in hardware, and it was too expensive to license it and support it in competitors' chips. Also, supporting it in software caused too much of a performance hit during the day.

But how about today? With fast CPU and such, there shouldn't be problems in emulating A3D 2.0 in software, right?

By the way, is there any software emulator for A3D 2.0?

Great Hierophant wrote:

I don't think that in these days of motherboard audio and few PCI slots that EAX is very important these days.

How many games out there actually requires EAX above than 2.0, then? My impression is that there are not too many of them, but I could be wrong.

Update: I just remember about some utility called Aureal A2D, which can run A3D games on non-A3D sound cards. Of course it is CPU-hungry, but with today's CPU, I guess it won't matter. IIRC it can A3D 2.0 games too.

So I guess the problem is setteld with A3D. Even without A3D sound card, we can still play A3D games --although in more CPU-consuming way.

How about EAX higher than version 2, though? (EAX 3, EAX 4, EAX Advanced HD, etc). Is there any way to play them without Creative sound cards?

There aren't any cards that do A3D 2.0 as well as a Vortex 2. Creative's cards wrap A3D 1.x to EAX.

swaaye wrote:

There aren't any cards that do A3D 2.0 as well as a Vortex 2. Creative's cards wrap A3D 1.x to EAX.

Does it mean lower audio quality, higher CPU usage, or both?

I think higher CPU usage won't be much problem these days, so if wrapping A3D 1.x to EAX only means higher CPU usage (but no degradation in "surround" quality), then it's okay.

Also, how many games actually support EAX higher than 2.0? Many sound cards (including nVidia SoundStorm) only support EAX up to 2.0. What if we play an EAX 4.0 game, for instance, with EAX 2.0 sound card? Is EAX that important?

It means it won't sound right, most likely. A3D 1.0 isn't nearly as neat as 2.0 anyway.

Lots of games use EAX higher than 2.0. EAX is by far the most popular standard and is supported by almost every modern game.

EAX 3 on up adds more than just new reverb too. It does obstructions, for example. http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/sound-tec … logy/index.html

I don't think EAX is critical but it definitely can add to the game's atmosphere.

swaaye wrote:

It means it won't sound right, most likely. A3D 1.0 isn't nearly as neat as 2.0 anyway. […]
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It means it won't sound right, most likely. A3D 1.0 isn't nearly as neat as 2.0 anyway.

Lots of games use EAX higher than 2.0. EAX is by far the most popular standard and is supported by almost every modern game.

EAX 3 on up adds more than just new reverb too. It does obstructions, for example. http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/sound-tec … logy/index.html

I don't think EAX is critical but it definitely can add to the game's atmosphere.

And I guess EAX higher than 2.0 are only supported by Creative-made cards, ain't them?

What non-Creative card will do if we run games whose EAX is higher than 2.0? Will they use DirectSound 3D instead? Will they use the CPU to "emulate" EAX? How severe the sound degradation will be if we run EAX games (higher than 2.0) with non-supporting cards? I'm asking this because there's a lot of nice, non-Creative, 7.1 cards out there. Some of them even support Dolby Digital Live (while no Creative card does). Alas, none of them support EAX higher than 3.0.

I imagine it's unique to every game. I believe though that many probably fall back to plain DS3D sound placement. Maybe EAX2 emulation. Some audio chips do EAX2 emulation (Realtek, for example).

EAX 3+ aren't open standards like EAX2.

Concerning all those nice things discussed about today's sound cards, what choices do we have for nowaday's life? What are the best brands after Creative(don't know if it's the top)? I'd like to see a list...

While we're at it, does anyone know where to find list (or some sort) of EAX-supporting games, and the EAX version they support? I wonder if there are too many games that support EAX higher than 2.0. If there are only few games, then I don't see the incentive of buying Creative cards anyway (since the only benefit of buying Creative cards is the support for EAX higher than 2.0).

Creative has a list of games that support EAX but I don't think I've ever seen a list differentiating between different versions of EAX. I haven't gotten around to listing EAX on my compatibility list so don't expect anything from me for quite awhile. 😀

If you think the only thing going for Creative cards is EAX then you are sorely mistaken. Do your research. Off the top of my head

SNR
OpenAL
onboard cpu
onboard memory (whooptydoo!)
Not integrated into motherboard and higher quality parts meaning better sound quality.
Alchemy sound wrapper that according to Creative Labs will only work on Audigy/X-Fi cards (so only these cards will be able to have hardware accelerated DirectSound (not just EAX).

DosFreak wrote:

Alchemy sound wrapper that according to Creative Labs will only work on Audigy/X-Fi cards (so only these cards will be able to have hardware accelerated DirectSound (not just EAX).

I thought DirectSound hardware acceleration is also provided by other cards? Or maybe I'm mistaken?

Vista doesn't support hardware DirectSound. Only software. Only way around it is to wrap DirectSound to OpenAL. So far only Creative has offered to do this.

DosFreak wrote:

Vista doesn't support hardware DirectSound. Only software. Only way around it is to wrap DirectSound to OpenAL. So far only Creative has offered to do this.

Well actually Vista is less of my concern than EAX higher than 2.0. There are a lot of nice cards out there --many of them support Dolby Digital Live (like nVidia SoundStorm), so you can channel a game's 3D sound through S/PDIF connector. Alas, the EAX version they support is merely than 2.0.

On the other hand, I haven't had any creative cards since EAX 2.0. So far, I ain't got no problem with 3D sound (although I mostly play old games like WarCraft III or Dungeon Siege anyway) . I wonder if EAX higher than 2.0 is actually worth it....