wrote:Hi guys, have a question for your`s, the eax emulated (realtek 1150@official drivers + x-fi mb3) sounds with much reverberation/loudly in all games (w/eax support), in others don,t work (sc1, scpt) is normal? any suggestion/fix?.
Salu2 - Darkness Knight.
Are you using latest ALchemy version?
Also, you don't need all of this if you have mb3
You might need EAX unified for splinter cell
pcgamingwiki.com
wrote:Are you using latest ALchemy version? Also, you don't need all of this if you have mb3 […]
wrote:Hi guys, have a question for your`s, the eax emulated (realtek 1150@official drivers + x-fi mb3) sounds with much reverberation/loudly in all games (w/eax support), in others don,t work (sc1, scpt) is normal? any suggestion/fix?.
Salu2 - Darkness Knight.
Are you using latest ALchemy version?
Also, you don't need all of this if you have mb3You might need EAX unified for splinter cell
Hi, have this versions installed:
Realtek ALC1150 @ R2.76 x86
Common Audio Driver Interface 2.31.50
Creative ALchemy 1.45.03
Creative Audio Engine Licensing Service 1.00.02
Creative Audio Processing Object Interface Module 3.18.00
Creative Software AutoUpdate 1.41.07
Host OpenAL 2.02.76
Sound Blaster X-Fi MB3 1.00.04
I tried with EAX Unified, but no good results, the EAX works (exaggerated reberberation) but until a certain point, then no more sound (possibly buffer underrun)... the same for splinter cell (1). At least 3D Audio without EAX works ok, sources sound positioned correctly.
btw, here a "new" version: EAX Unified v4.0.0.1 taken from Splinter Cell: Double Agent.
P.D: The EAX is managed for the driver (realtek)? or the wrapper?
Salu2 - Darkness Knight.
Oh, thank you for the updated file.
Anyway, last driver from realtek is R2.79. It sounds weird, though perhaps ALC1150 is so new it still required some adjustments.
Then check some videos to see whether reverb you get is normal or not
Speaking of Splinter Cell instead.. it seems patch 1.3 screwed EAX. Odd.
pcgamingwiki.com
wrote:Oh, thank you for the updated file. […]
Oh, thank you for the updated file.
Anyway, last driver from realtek is R2.79. It sounds weird, though perhaps ALC1150 is so new it still required some adjustments.
Then check some videos to see whether reverb you get is normal or notSpeaking of Splinter Cell instead.. it seems patch 1.3 screwed EAX. Odd.
Yeah, in the version retail works up 1.2b. Btw I recorded a gameplay of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory using X-Fi MB3 utility, the EAX highly inacuratte but sounds cool (?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NC05KulXwQ
The issue is what the sound plays depending of YOUR position.
Salu2 - Darkness Knight.
So, I've read through the thread (and the woefully sparse info online), but it seems like the answer to this question is more or less "You sort of need to buy a Creative product to get EAX working." Is that about right?
Under Windows 8.1 with a Sound Blaster Z (and a dormant Realtek audio driver and Audigy), I find that Creative's official ALchemy distribution works very well, though I haven't tested every compatible game I own; the Thiefs, Splinter Cells, and Hitmans all have obvious echo effects, and Serious Sam sounds as terribly over-processed as it does on a real Audigy.
If I switch over to my "Windows XP" hard drive, then the Audigy renders all these games with EAX.
But strangely, none of these games work when I try the ancient ALchemy Universal. I'd expect some casualties, using such an old version of the program, but none? What's stranger is that I can at least enable the option in some games, but it just sounds like regular old DirectSound from there, so I know that something's at least going through. I confirmed that the Universal dsound.dll is being placed into the target folders, and I even tried using the official ALchemy's .dll--no dice. I also attempted to fill in the registry path alternative for some of these games, but I kind of failed to actually find many, and couldn't really tell if I filled in the information correctly... I also tested Universal on both the Realtek and Sound Blaster Z, but neither made a difference. I also did all testing with one version completely uninstalled so to avoid the possibility of conflicts, and tested on another Realtek motherboard (they spread like rabbits, man). Same incompatibility. I'm beginning to suspect that the Universal variant may not work (or may not work as well) on Windows 8 and higher...
Is this about the same experience everybody else had?
OpenAL is fully up to date on my system, and while the only games I have that support it are a "NewDarked" Thief 1 & 2, they do at least work just fine with it. (I also own Doom 3, but that's buried in a closet somewhere...)
Oh, and 3DSoundBack on the Realtek drivers were disastrous, no surprise.
Now of course, with my XP/Audigy setup, I'm set, but I kind of want to share the fun with my friends--one in particular had played Thief many times in the past, but she was really impressed when I showed her a comparison from the Thief she remembered and Thief with EAX.
Sadly, she has a Realtek driver on her mobo, and while setting her up with a Windows XP drive so she can make use of actual hardware should be pretty trivial, I'd pretty much be limited to X-Fi cards unless there's some other hardware-based alternative I'm not aware of. (And, I mean, when the software costs $30, and the real cards cost ~$30, I may as well get the real thing, right?)
Oh, and on that note, just to make sure, there aren't any versions of the X-Fi that do emulation like the Audigy LE/SE series, are there? I can't seem to find any info like this.
I also noticed that the official ALchemy from Creative also sounds a bit... off from the way that an actual Audigy does by default--namely that it's far too echoey... maybe if I tweaked some of those settings like the "buffers" this could change though. That's probably for another post/topic though--and one where I can show direct comparisons.
Thanks a million for reading this and especially if you happen to take the time to respond!
wrote:Speaking of Splinter Cell instead.. it seems patch 1.3 screwed EAX. Odd.
Hai.
I'm surprised somebody already bumped into that thread.
Interestingly, a GOG staff member replied to my support ticket, but the news wasn't very good;
He basically said: "We understand your problem, but this is the version of the game that the supplier had given us, and for legal reasons, we cannot regress the patch."
Shame.
At least he was very prompt and polite.
The first Splinter Cell?
When I mucked around with the different versions, I found that the GOG version had EAX completely disabled, meaning you physically couldn't enable it. The Steam, and retail version, had a working EAX button. As for what EAX does in the game, I never really looked into it 😊
wrote:Yeah, in the version retail works up 1.2b. Btw I recorded a gameplay of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory using X-Fi MB3 utility, the EAX highly inacuratte but sounds cool (?)
There are quite a few steps needed to get surround over headphones with X-Fi MB3, but I can confirm that SCCT has fully working surround sound through ALchemy on modern Windows.
wrote:The first Splinter Cell?
When I mucked around with the different versions, I found that the GOG version had EAX completely disabled, meaning you physically couldn't enable it. The Steam, and retail version, had a working EAX button.
That doesn't seem to be 100% true--while I don't own a Steam version to test, my retail has EAX working until you patch to 1.3, which is what that link to the GOG thread was about. Since GOG was only given the 1.3 patched version to distribute, well, no EAX.
I'm incapable of looking through the code or anything, but it seems to me like the 1.3 patch is the offender, not GOG.
I have no idea why Ubi Soft would have broken it, but maybe it had to do with the Kola Cell and Vselka missions you can only install if you're patched to 1.3? It could just be a bug too for all I know.
As for what EAX does in the game, I never really looked into it 😊
It does the usual; gives sound echo and reverberation where appropriate. It breathes life into the sound quite a bit, but it's got nothing on Chaos Theory's EAX implementation.
but I can confirm that SCCT has fully working surround sound through ALchemy on modern Windows.
wrote:Hi guys, have a question for your`s, the eax emulated (realtek 1150@official drivers + x-fi mb3) sounds with much reverberation/loudly in all games (w/eax support), in others don,t work (sc1, scpt) is normal? any suggestion/fix?
I don't have a surround system for my PC to test positional audio thoroughly, but I can at least confirm that the source of audio was the camera, not Sam in Chaos Theory. EAX was good to go in all of these under ALchemy on my system (but perhaps a bit too echoey, much like you said, Darkness Knight).
Of course it only works on the official ALchemy for me--Universal is pretty much useless.
The newest official version of ALchemy requires a Creative card... but maybe it will accept the X-Fi mb3 too???
Maybe you should try to install and run it if you haven't already, Darkness Knight.
http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/ … eative-alchemy/
I have all three version, Steam, GOG and retail. I never played on pre-1.3 but Steam and GOG are 1.3 anyway, so I can tell you that, all version to 1.3:
Steam: You can tick the EAX box and then tick the second box next to it.
Retail: You can tick the EAX box and then tick the second box next to it.
GOG: The EAX box is greyed out. You cannot tick it. This is unique to the GOG version.
I hope this clears it up.
Regarding ALchemy and X-Fi MB3, it's fully supported!
But without 5.1 system it's much harder to test if it's working. 5.1 over headphone (XBS surround) is better for testing, but nothing beats speakers as you straight away know if it works.
wrote:I have all three version, Steam, GOG and retail. I never played on pre-1.3 but Steam and GOG are 1.3 anyway, so I can tell you t […]
I have all three version, Steam, GOG and retail. I never played on pre-1.3 but Steam and GOG are 1.3 anyway, so I can tell you that, all version to 1.3:
Steam: You can tick the EAX box and then tick the second box next to it.
Retail: You can tick the EAX box and then tick the second box next to it.
GOG: The EAX box is greyed out. You cannot tick it. This is unique to the GOG version.
I hope this clears it up.
Oh dear, thread derailment...!
My apologies. It may very well be that I'm operating under a false assumption that the Steam version is 1.2b--of course it's really hard to confirm since I don't own it, but I actually got that impression from your very own video on the matter:
https://youtu.be/nB9BTbtNyDw?t=314
Of course it's almost 11 months old now, so I don't expect you to remember such asinine details perfectly, and you didn't even know for 100% sure in the video itself anyway.
The only reason I'm even concerning myself with the details so closely is because I've actually been working on a video series that sort of expands upon yours by throwing the console versions into the mix and tries to pick out what is the definitive one of them all.
You could say you inspired me. 😊
Hmm my memory is failing me lately... 😊
So you're saying if one installs patch 1.3 with the steam version, EAX might also get disabled? Hey that would make a lot of sense 🤣
You're right, GOG version is the only one that includes the mission pack with 3 bonus mission, and that packs needs 1.3. Now I do have the retail CDs, and also the retail mission pack, so I could check this out if I get around to it.
EDIT:
🤣 I totally forgot that deep in the bowls of my computerlab, I still had a setup for Splinter Cell 😁
On the machine I've installed the retail version + 1.3 patch + mission CD. I also have the retail DVD version, but didn't use it for this one.
I took some photos as evidence. EAX and virtualisation works. But on GOG, this is greyed out.
wrote:I took some photos as evidence. EAX and virtualisation works. But on GOG, this is greyed out...
Aw man, you did all that for the sake of posterity... pictures and everything! Thank you!
Well that's great to hear that it's possible to have 1.3 and EAX simultaneously!
Now the question is how to get it working reliably on an average person's computer...
Considering my EAX-less behaviour is the same across multiple hardware configurations, sound cards, and Operating Systems, I'm tempted to say it's probably the particular distribution of the patch I was using. The only place I could find and download the 1.3 patch was an old File Planet archive.
I wonder, if it's not too much to ask, could you see if you happen to have your old 1.3 patch somewhere? If it's too much trouble to upload, could you instead perhaps show me whichever special version of Chaos Theory or Splinter Cell 1 I can get this patch from?
Thank you very much for taking your time to look into this.
P.S. Sorry about the derailment on this topic.
wrote:So, I've read through the thread (and the woefully sparse info online), but it seems like the answer to this question is more or less "You sort of need to buy a Creative product to get EAX working." Is that about right?
No, please.
In the name of everything that's holy.. they only deserve to die.
They bought the shit out of their competitors (Aureal, Sensaura) to lock down as much as they could sound to their hardware..
Then when Microsoft decided to move everything in user space (because less kernel side stuff = less BSOD = profit, I don't blame them) and a decade of games were screwed.
And since they never gave damns about consoles (A3D worked there), when market moved to multiplatorm model of development (contrarily to the old one, where you had a preferred platform and then you had to port the game separately for every other), greatest common divisor (aka software middlewares) became the standard.
Them, if you are just interested to surround sound restoration in older games I don't even think a dedicated sound card is required.
Indirectsound is already quite good in that.
If EAX 2 is enough for you, then there's 3Dsoundback (which is not all that lame imo)
And last but not least, you can quite easily use latest ALChemy versions with the stuff I or MST posted.
With this, you already cover 98% of games more or less.
Then if they are newer, and they use openAL, and you either aren't still satisfied with generic hardware fallback, or you'd like EAX 5..
I guess a soundblaster would be the most orthodox solution, but I went with a Xonar and I can tell you that works too(Auzentech would have even been another alternative a couple of years ago.. but they seems to be no more unfortunately)
wrote:But strangely, none of these games work when I try the ancient ALchemy Universal. I'd expect some casualties, using such an old version of the program, but none? What's stranger is that I can at least enable the option in some games, but it just sounds like regular old DirectSound from there, so I know that something's at least going through. I confirmed that the Universal dsound.dll is being placed into the target folders, and I even tried using the official ALchemy's .dll--no dice. I also attempted to fill in the registry path alternative for some of these games, but I kind of failed to actually find many, and couldn't really tell if I filled in the information correctly... I also tested Universal on both the Realtek and Sound Blaster Z, but neither made a difference. I also did all testing with one version completely uninstalled so to avoid the possibility of conflicts, and tested on another Realtek motherboard (they spread like rabbits, man). Same incompatibility. I'm beginning to suspect that the Universal variant may not work (or may not work as well) on Windows 8 and higher...
Is this about the same experience everybody else had?
You should take into account that's based on the very first versions of ALchemy.
Different operating systems aside, I guess they was still struggling to make out efficient ways to hook games.
Download some old driver with of the time with the official one inside, and you'll see result will be the same (except that I guess creative had so much hardcoded and whitelisted their own cards that a soundblaster Z will be treated akin to realtek chips perhaps)
wrote:OpenAL is fully up to date on my system, and while the only games I have that support it are a "NewDarked" Thief 1 & 2, they do at least work just fine with it. (I also own Doom 3, but that's buried in a closet somewhere...)
Oh, and 3DSoundBack on the Realtek drivers were disastrous, no surprise.
Sadly, she has a Realtek driver on her mobo, and while setting her up with a Windows XP drive so she can make use of actual hardware should be pretty trivial, I'd pretty much be limited to X-Fi cards unless there's some other hardware-based alternative I'm not aware of. (And, I mean, when the software costs $30, and the real cards cost ~$30, I may as well get the real thing, right?)
Remember that latest version is this (contrarily to official stupid website)
For the remainder, see above.
wrote:I also noticed that the official ALchemy from Creative also sounds a bit... off from the way that an actual Audigy does by default--namely that it's far too echoey... maybe if I tweaked some of those settings like the "buffers" this could change though. That's probably for another post/topic though--and one where I can show direct comparisons.
Settings inside dsound.ini have really nothing to do with "calculations". I believe the only difference they could do is in performance and/or compatibility at most.
Anyway.. you said you have an Audigy (not sure which though).
I know that for some reasons (which imo can only either be onf of the usual cases of openAL misconfiguration or creative harcoding it), alchemy has been reported to process proper reverb only with original creative hardware (which is, not even after you bought MB3)(thanks ZanQuance!)
I have not a really established rationale behind these claims yet, but I guess there might be the possibility that if your board is one of those that processed EAX in software it may also fall under this issue.
wrote:Hai. I'm surprised somebody already bumped into that thread. Interestingly, a GOG staff member replied to my support ticket, but […]
wrote:Speaking of Splinter Cell instead.. it seems patch 1.3 screwed EAX. Odd.
Hai.
I'm surprised somebody already bumped into that thread.
Interestingly, a GOG staff member replied to my support ticket, but the news wasn't very good;
He basically said: "We understand your problem, but this is the version of the game that the supplier had given us, and for legal reasons, we cannot regress the patch."
Shame.
At least he was very prompt and polite.
Well, there's the game on sale on humble bundle these days. You could get it there, and then complain directly to the developer :p
By the way, I hope you read even the part regarding EAX unified (which for example in TRAOD is essential)
wrote:My apologies. It may very well be that I'm operating under a false assumption that the Steam version is 1.2b--of course it's really hard to confirm since I don't own it, but I actually got that impression from your very own video on the matter:
To be honest, my Double Agent Steam version was unpatched (and I couldn't play multiplayer, when servers were still up for these reason).
So I wouldn't be surprised if this attitude also applied to the original SC.
pcgamingwiki.com
Alright, I goofed. I should have noticed these options those old posts highlighted (and I did to a degree):
But the problem was I misinterpreted these as being fixes to the X-Fi MB3, so I didn't think it would work on integrated audio chips without that. Anyway, thanks for having me review that more closely! I understand why such a thing isn't linked to on the pcgamingwiki article (talk about skating on thin ice), but for almost a year, that article was about all I had to go on. Until I bumped into this thread, I thought I was pretty much out of luck. Funny to think you have been indirectly helping me for such a long time though (and possibly other helpful contributors to the page). Anyway, I'll be sure to try out that fix.
wrote:No, please. In the name of everything that's holy.. they only deserve to die. They bought the shit out of their competitors (A […]
wrote:So, I've read through the thread (and the woefully sparse info online), but it seems like the answer to this question is more or less "You sort of need to buy a Creative product to get EAX working." Is that about right?
No, please.
In the name of everything that's holy.. they only deserve to die.
They bought the shit out of their competitors (Aureal, Sensaura) to lock down as much as they could sound to their hardware..
Then when Microsoft decided to move everything in user space (because less kernel side stuff = less BSOD = profit, I don't blame them) and a decade of games were screwed.
And since they never gave damns about consoles (A3D worked there), when market moved to multiplatorm model of development (contrarily to the old one, where you had a preferred platform and then you had to port the game separately for every other), greatest common divisor (aka software middlewares) became the standard.
I won't dispute their deserving to die; I always suspected that Creative bullied their way to the top (though I never exactly sat down and studied this). Who said I was sending the money their way though? I was just going to buy an old used X-Fi from my local PC store. Now that you've showed my a new alternative, I'll hold off on that.
Indirectsound is already quite good in that.
If EAX 2 is enough for you, then there's 3Dsoundback (which is not all that lame imo)
Indirectsound will probably be very useful for me someday (especially if Mr. John-Paul Ownby adds in the EAX support that he has as a goal!), but right now I'm still on a 2.1 speaker system for my PC. Thankfully, I happen to love its actual sound quality.
3DSoundBack may work fine for others, but for me it just wasn't happening at all; the best of my results was from a Dell motherboard (an Optiplex something-or-other ~2008) with an old Realtek audio chip running under Windows 7. Unfortunately the thing is toast as of about 5 months ago, but on something as old as that, 3DSoundBack still wasn't working right; objects would be too loud at too far of a distance, and instead of echo or reverb, it tended to muffle and occlude sound. This was only for some of the games that it worked on though. Every other Realtek sound device I tested on just didn't work besides perhaps letting me enable an EAX option in a game on occasion--the sound was literally no different than vanilla DirectSound. Tested on a Dell laptop (~2013), Acer laptop (~2015) and my main rig--an ASUS mobo (2014)--all running Windows 8/8.1, and while I don't recall the hardware/driver on the other computers, I can at least say provide what was on my main rig:
Realtek® ALC892 8-Channel High Definition Audio (with updated driver, of course).
I'd love to just chalk this up to user error, but how? The UI for 3DSoundBack is practically non-existent! There aren't any options to screw up!
You should take into account that's based on the very first versions of ALchemy.
Different operating systems aside, I guess they was still struggling to make out efficient ways to hook games.
Download some old driver with of the time with the official one inside, and you'll see result will be the same (except that I guess creative had so much hardcoded and whitelisted their own cards that a soundblaster Z will be treated akin to realtek chips perhaps)
Oh believe me, I noticed how old the Universal variant is. My point of that paragraph wasn't so much to ask "why isn't this working?" but more to ask "what are the chances that this doesn't affect the sound of all of the first three Thief games, all of the first four Hitman games, all of the first four Splinter Cell games, both of the Serious Sam games..." I really figured at the very least one would work.
Again, I'd love to chalk it up to user error, but I confirmed a dsound.dll in the directory every time, and some games would allow me to enable an EAX option--but the sound wouldn't work. This occurred on more than one computer as well.
And furthermore, when I used the new official ALchemy with my Sound Blaster Z, well... you know.
Remember that latest version is this (contrarily to official stupid website)
For the remainder, see above.
Oh, I know. Again, that pcgamingwiki article has been very helpful to me.
Settings inside dsound.ini have really nothing to do with "calculations". I believe the only difference they could do is in performance and/or compatibility at most.
Aw, that's a shame; I really like how the EAX effects could be adjusted to a degree on my legacy machine.
Anyway.. you said you have an Audigy (not sure which though).
I know that for some reasons (which imo can only either be onf of the usual cases of openAL misconfiguration or creative harcoding it), alchemy has been reported to process proper reverb only with original creative hardware (which is, not even after you bought MB3)(thanks ZanQuance!)
I have not a really established rationale behind these claims yet, but I guess there might be the possibility that if your board is one of those that processed EAX in software it may also fall under this issue.
I'm using an Audigy 1. I got it specifically for the Gameport for old joysticks as any newer cards required some kind of adapter.
I really need to sit down and make a video comparison of this stuff, but the difference between the Audigy and ALchemy is very noticeable with Thief 1 & 2--not only are the echoes a little bit stronger under ALchemy, but sounds underneath, above or behind Garret are muffled. Even his footsteps. I made sure every relevant setting in my OSes were stereo, but no dice (it doesn't sound like I'm missing channels of audio though, to be honest--it sounds more like a full volume "muffle"... if that makes sense). The audio sounds a lot more believable on an the Audigy under Windows XP. (same computer, just a different OS). Strangely enough, the software under Windows 8.1 processes it this way regardless if Thief is Newdarked or vanilla, running with ALchemy or OpenAL. Who knows, maybe it is latching onto some sound processing path in my mobo...
Somewhat related, on my legacy PC, the Audigy sounds more echoey than a Sound Blaster Live! on most games, but I always figured that was down to driver differences or EAX revisions.
Well, there's the game on sale on humble bundle these days. You could get it there, and then complain directly to the developer :p
🤣 thanks. [joking]I think the bigger problem is that it's an Uplay version of Splinter Cell 1. That's just not right, man.[/joking]
By the way, I hope you read even the part regarding EAX unified (which for example in TRAOD is essential)
Yeah I took care of that some time ago. Thanks anyway.
I didn't realize I'd ever be speaking to the same well-researched fellow on this matter that contrubited so heavily to that pcgamingwiki article. Thanks again, you've done a lot more for me than just contained in this thread. I'll be sure to report my findings on the "Creative card requirement remover" program.
wrote:I understand why such a thing isn't linked to on the pcgamingwiki article (talk about skating on thin ice), but for almost a year, that article was about all I had to go on.
To be honest, it's just that it seems a dirty solution, and I never resolve to think to a neat one, similar to how ALchemy Universal was done.
wrote:Indirectsound will probably be very useful for me someday (especially if Mr. John-Paul Ownby adds in the EAX support that he has […]
Indirectsound is already quite good in that.
If EAX 2 is enough for you, then there's 3Dsoundback (which is not all that lame imo)Indirectsound will probably be very useful for me someday (especially if Mr. John-Paul Ownby adds in the EAX support that he has as a goal!), but right now I'm still on a 2.1 speaker system for my PC. Thankfully, I happen to love its actual sound quality.
3DSoundBack may work fine for others, but for me it just wasn't happening at all; the best of my results was from a Dell motherboard (an Optiplex something-or-other ~2008) with an old Realtek audio chip running under Windows 7. Unfortunately the thing is toast as of about 5 months ago, but on something as old as that, 3DSoundBack still wasn't working right; objects would be too loud at too far of a distance, and instead of echo or reverb, it tended to muffle and occlude sound. This was only for some of the games that it worked on though. Every other Realtek sound device I tested on just didn't work besides perhaps letting me enable an EAX option in a game on occasion--the sound was literally no different than vanilla DirectSound. Tested on a Dell laptop (~2013), Acer laptop (~2015) and my main rig--an ASUS mobo (2014)--all running Windows 8/8.1, and while I don't recall the hardware/driver on the other computers, I can at least say provide what was on my main rig:
Realtek® ALC892 8-Channel High Definition Audio (with updated driver, of course).
I'd love to just chalk this up to user error, but how? The UI for 3DSoundBack is practically non-existent! There aren't any options to screw up!
I don't think there should be any difference between chips.
Anyway, I said it's not all that lame, but I didn't mean it's perfect either (and the UI is minimal but it seems more than enough for what you have to do)
I'd say it suffers from the same problems you can see in ALchemy Universal.
Which is, it was their first attempts and they didn't try lots of game to check every possibly working injecting method.
wrote:My point of that paragraph wasn't so much to ask "why isn't this working?" but more to ask "what are the chances that this doesn't affect the sound of all of the first three Thief games, all of the first four Hitman games, all of the first four Splinter Cell games, both of the Serious Sam games..." I really figured at the very least one would work.
Again, I'd love to chalk it up to user error, but I confirmed a dsound.dll in the directory every time, and some games would allow me to enable an EAX option--but the sound wouldn't work. This occurred on more than one computer as well.
And furthermore, when I used the new official ALchemy with my Sound Blaster Z, well... you know.
I don't know the magic behind the kooking process, but I'd say the custom libraries either load too late to replace the system one, or didn't account for all the necessary functions to passthrough/process/support.
jonpol perhaps could enlighten us
wrote:Anyway.. you said you have an Audigy (not sure which though).
I know that for some reasons (which imo can only either be onf of the usual cases of openAL misconfiguration or creative harcoding it), alchemy has been reported to process proper reverb only with original creative hardware (which is, not even after you bought MB3)(thanks ZanQuance!)
I have not a really established rationale behind these claims yet, but I guess there might be the possibility that if your board is one of those that processed EAX in software it may also fall under this issue.I really need to sit down and make a video comparison of this stuff, but the difference between the Audigy and ALchemy is very noticeable with Thief 1 & 2--not only are the echoes a little bit stronger under ALchemy, but sounds underneath, above or behind Garret are muffled. Even his footsteps.
The guy I talked to was using an Audigy 4.
So imo there may still be a possibility, that your card is between those not whitelisted by Creative to work with proper reverb engine under ALchemy.
And an even smaller one (in the case the hardcoded boards theory wasn't right) that you forgot some setting or openAL pissing.
wrote:I'm using an Audigy 1. I got it specifically for the Gameport for old joysticks as any newer cards required some kind of adapter.
I was going to link you to the custom driver page (where I had a hell of time to find gameport driver threads).
But then I noticed they seem to be now bundled with "Support Packs". And I noticed there's a 64 bit one too!
Can you confirm?
wrote:Well, there's the game on sale on humble bundle these days. You could get it there, and then complain directly to the developer :p
🤣 thanks. [joking]I think the bigger problem is that it's an Uplay version of Splinter Cell 1. That's just not right, man.[/joking]
So.. what's bad with it? 😖
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wrote:wrote:My point of that paragraph wasn't so much to ask "why isn't this working?" but more to ask "what are the chances that this doesn't affect the sound of all of the first three Thief games, all of the first four Hitman games, all of the first four Splinter Cell games, both of the Serious Sam games..." I really figured at the very least one would work.
Again, I'd love to chalk it up to user error, but I confirmed a dsound.dll in the directory every time, and some games would allow me to enable an EAX option--but the sound wouldn't work. This occurred on more than one computer as well.
And furthermore, when I used the new official ALchemy with my Sound Blaster Z, well... you know.
I don't know the magic behind the kooking process, but I'd say the custom libraries either load too late to replace the system one, or didn't account for all the necessary functions to passthrough/process/support.
jonpol perhaps could enlighten us
My ears were buzzing!
It was a bit hard for me to follow the quotes through multiple posts, but if I understand the situation it is: The official ALchemy works for Licentious Howler with Creative hardware, but the unofficial ALchemy Universal doesn't work (at least not with Realtek hardware, and possibly not with actual Creative hardware either). Is that correct?
I sadly don't have anything particularly enlightening to add, but I can at least offer up a thought. There are two related but separate tasks that something like ALchemy needs to do to work:
If I understand what ALchemy Universal is, it makes sense that #1 would work exactly the same as whatever version of the official ALchemy was used to make it. #2, however, seems like a much harder problem to me and I wouldn't be too surprised if it had issues.
Let me use EAX and IndirectSound as an example: I can act like EAX is really happening (so that the application in question thinks that it is) relatively easily (which takes care of #1), but I also have to know whether EAX should be supported (which I do through a configuration file) and then I have to actually emulate it (which the currently-released versions of IndirectSound don't do at all).
For ALchemy Universal to work it would have to detect whether the audio hardware in question supports EAX (which was easy in DirectSound in the pre-Vista days, but I guess now probably uses OpenAL) and then it would have to know how to translate the intercepted DirectSound calls to control EAX into something that would enable it on the hardware in question (which, again, I assume probably uses standard OpenAL calls but I don't actually know this). It is here where ALchemy Universal is most likely breaking down for you.
I'm not an expert with OpenAL by any means (I'm actually not a big fan, if truth be told, and although I've read the documentation I've never actually used it), but it has "extensions" (based on the OpenGL idea), and there are "standard extensions" as well as Creative-specific ones. If you have the OpenAL SDK installed you can run some sample programs here:
$(OpenAL SDK)/samples/bin/
I just tried EFX10ShowWin64.exe with both my onboard audio hardware and my NVIDIA HDMI audio hardware, and I was, in fact, able to enable "EAX reverb" on both (although the initial window says that EAX 2.0 is supported and EAX 3.0 and 4.0 are emulated, which makes sense). You could try that and see whether it works for you with your version of OpenAL? It could be that some combination of OpenAL version, drivers, and/or hardware is not working for you? Or it could be that EAX is "emulated" and doesn't actually make an audible difference (like what IndirectSound does). I was able to actually hear reverb on my hardware, for what it's worth.
Additionally, however, there must be some way that ALchemy is detecting whether you have a legitimate Creative card or not, and it's not hard for me to imagine that whatever ALchemy Universal does to circumvent this check has edge cases that don't always work (especially since it was made without source code by tweaking bytes in the binary, if I understand correctly).
All of the above are just random thoughts and speculation on my part, however. I don't really know much about ALchemy, universal or otherwise, beyond what I can assume based on my experience developing IndirectSound. Hopefully at least some of this was interesting or useful 😊
There were two problems actually, which I guess might not be clear.
The first, it's just.. this curiosity: what allows modern ALchemy to perfectly hook games, while older versions/3Dsoundback often fails?
Universal version has nothing to do with this, if not that it's just one of the aforementioned older versions
I'm not expecting any Universal versions (there are new one tbh) any different from "normal" editions.
Official X-Fi MB3 software behaves just the same and it's not about tinkering with bits
The second issue, instead, much more important (and completely unrelated to the previous question) is:
did Creative hardcoded their boards, or are we just misconfiguring OpenAL (which is quite easy imo).?
Your assumptions regarding EMULATED OpenAL EAX sound plausible.
It'd be cool to test what happens with GSDX (which reports actual hardware EAX 3/4 support), but it doesn't play well with dsound.dll replacements..
(and there are even a lot of inconsistencies between openal-info32 and ALCapsViewer.. but I guess that's another matter..)
Also, EFX10ShowWin64 only shows a single software device here.
My Realtek and Asus boards only have 32 bit openAL dlls and I'm surprised it shows you something. And ALchemy is one too afaik.
For the records then, ALCapsViewer report no EFX support at all for Realtek HD Audio.
trivia: I already had 11 unique Visual C++ Redistributable installs here. But it seems 2005 x64 was the only one I had missing, of every one ever released. And that made the aforementioned program to crash
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About Creative ALchemy and Realtek 3D Sound Back.
Both should do the same, but first one is dedicated to work with Creative hardware, second with Realtek chip based sound cards and maybe other too.
For me Realtek 3D Sound Back is not working. It was created for WinVista. There is possibility to run it on Win7 (Vista comatibility mode) but it do not worked for me.
Creative ALchemy was dedicated to work with Creative hardware, but in fact this solution does not use any Creative based hardware. In short Creative limited it's solution for i'ts customers by checking if there is any Creative compatible hardware - it will work, if not - sorry, it won't help you.
This is why Daniel Kawakami patched oryginal ALchemy 1.00.08 to work with any hardware, not only Creative. It is not different ALchemy. It's the same but without hardware-check, so he called it as "universal". There were no "universal" editions released for newer ALchemy editions. Currently "Creative ALchemy Universal 1.00.08" should be forgotten becouse it does not work with current Win7 for example. You should use latest Creative ALchemy 1.45.03, not outdated 1.00.08. And if you do not have Creative based sound hardware, you can cheat ALchemy a little to force him to think that indeed you have Creative hardware without having it at all.
To sum it up: forget about "Realtek 3D Sound Back 0.1 Beta" and "Creative ALchemy Universal 1.00.08". Both are outdated and non-working nowadays. Use latest Creative ALchemy, currently v1.45.03. If you do not have compatible Createive hardware, then try to cheat it by solutions mentioned by mirth. Notice, that without cheat simply it would not give you any sound playback. It will not pop any messagebox like "sorry you have no compatible software". But you can find dsoundlog.txt file created within the same directory where game, and dsound.dll exists, where you can read if there was any problem or nor. Sample message that indicates there was some problem is "Failed to initialize Creative ALchemy, falling back to dsound.dll". The good one is "Using Creative Software 3D Library". That's all.
wrote:For me Realtek 3D Sound Back is not working. It was created for WinVista. There is possibility to run it on Win7 (Vista comatibility mode) but it do not worked for me.
If it doesn't work for you it doesn't mean it doesn't work at all.
Imo, similarly to ALchemy universal it pretty much depends on which game you try. Some are tricky, others are more loose.
I had some games (and RightMark iirc) working with them under 7.
wrote:Creative ALchemy was dedicated to work with Creative hardware, but in fact this solution does not use any Creative based hardware. In short Creative limited it's solution for i'ts customers by checking if there is any Creative compatible hardware - it will work, if not - sorry, it won't help you.
You are confusing normal program runtime with the DRM system that wraps the whole thing.
When you run your or other patcher, you are just facing with the later, similarly to a normal buyer that just acquired X-Fi MB3 license.
You are not forcing him to think that you have Creative hardware or anything specific.
wrote:The good one is "Using Creative Software 3D Library". That's all.
The good one is "Using Native OpenAL Renderer".
If and only if then, you can claim it's working. And that was indeed the point of my mumbling and ZanQuance observation.
It's not happening and we can't claim it's 100% what you would get under XP.
Now: biased code that actually check only for SoundBlasters (in game mode btw), or just people again misconfiguring openAL?
That's the question.
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Hi everyone.
After reading this interesting thread I decided to join the forum and add my little contribute.
I own an X-Fi Platinum, which I used years ago with Windows XP. After analog outputs broke, I moved to a Xonar DX.
Recently I've decided to replay Tomb Raider The Angel of Darkness and I tried the Asus eax emulation (Asus GX). Unfortunately it emulates only Eax 2.0 and since the game uses 3.0 the sound was buggy (missing samples, no reverb). The game recognized some kind of hardware acceleration but eax option was disabled.
Then I came to this thread and I tried Alchemy 1.45.03 with the unlocker tool and I was finally able to make Eax working. As reported in some previous posts, it sounds too loud, the echo is unrealistic and not as good as I remembered on the X-Fi Platinum. So I picked up the old Creative and build a PC to test if my memories were right and they were! So I made a comparison. You can find it on this other thread, together with other considerations.
http://www.tombraiderforums.com/showthread.php?t=212300
Yesterday I decided to put the defective Creative X-Fi Platinum on my main computer, as a second audio card (digital signals and front panel headphone output still work) and surprisingly Alchemy worked much better with the x-fi than with the Xonar DX. The game sounded like on windows XP. So I assume that there's still something hw based that works on windows 7 and this makes the X-Fi sound good and Xonar DX sound bad.
I tested Alchemy also with a notebook Realtek chip and with an X-Fi HD USB and they both sound bad like the Xonar DX.
Is there a way to improve EAX software emulation?
Sorry for bad English. Corrections are appreciated! 😀
wrote:Recently I've decided to replay Tomb Raider The Angel of Darkness and I tried the Asus eax emulation (Asus GX). Unfortunately it emulates only Eax 2.0 and since the game uses 3.0 the sound was buggy (missing samples, no reverb). The game recognized some kind of hardware acceleration but eax option was disabled.
EAX 3 (and a bit 4) works. You just have to enable them
wrote:I tested Alchemy also with a notebook Realtek chip and with an X-Fi HD USB and they both sound bad like the Xonar DX.
I noticed in your thread that you seem to wander a bit names and generations. This list may help you.
wrote:Is there a way to improve EAX software emulation?
Exactly what I was asking above.
Btw thanks for reposting it here.
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