Since that topic ran its course another enthusiast already experimented with his own Sensaura card (Sensaura on Yamaha YMF 7x4 cards) which found Half-Life to be among those lacking support for A3D effects on other than actual A3D hardware.

Hmm...
The question is, how do they know it didn't work for Half Life?

Was it the splash screen and intro sound? Because with the stock a3dapi.dll, the splash screen and sound appeared for me in both Half Life and Counter Strike, but in Counter Strike console, it says "Initializing A3D...failed", so splash screen doesn't automatically means it worked i guess?

Or there may be some sounds that i should try to listen for, but i don't know what i should look for. I listened to A3D gameplay footage of Half Life on youtube and it's quite hard for me to hear the difference....it's not vastly different like EAX.

My point is that I have no idea how to know if it worked or not

Fair enough, but I would not use YouTube to observe any kind of surround effects since it is certain something gets lost in the streaming translation, especially "outdated" computer-specific quasi-surround. What I gather from Joestar's list is that, while some games (Unreal & Dark engines) seem to particularly like Sensaura and have special effects through it, in general A3D 2.0 games (which Half-Life is) only function properly on A3D 2.0 hardware. Joe's explored this field quite a bit, so I have no reason to doubt his results: if you read on in the linked topic you see he gets an A3D card and compares what sounds better on which hardware from his list...but it is anecdotal so you are free to take that however you decide (technical reasons make the difference not something observable via an audio recording file).

I see, thanks for the explanation! I will read your linked thread more thoroughly.

I guess it's you'll know it once you hear it kind of thing, so if I'm not hearing it, it probably isn't happening.

It is a pity because Half Life is my favourite, but at least we have a modern community created audio solution that seems to work very well!

I am unfamiliar with what modern upgrades do to implement surround sound effects, but I should think Half-Life would benefit from such at least since it was ported to the Source engine. Back in the 90s, Sensaura and A3D were among several implementations for computer game audio to get around stereo limitations; home computers were not yet expected to connect to surround sound setups as we know them today (and very few games supported more than 2 speakers until the 2000s), hence the HRTF approach Aureal used which may be comparable to the way today's soundbars use directional acoustics to simulate full surround [though A3D is probably best experienced with headphones]. For the original game on retro hardware: if Half-Life is one of your favorites and you wish to experience the quasi-surround as designed, it is a bit pricey but not difficult to find an A3D 2.0 card on the secondhand market (do your homework on how to tell which ones are 2.0-compliant); just understand the drivers were always finicky so getting it to work could be an adventure, but success is worth it.

BaronSFel001 wrote on 2025-08-05, 15:13:

I am unfamiliar with what modern upgrades do to implement surround sound effects, but I should think Half-Life would benefit from such at least since it was ported to the Source engine. Back in the 90s, Sensaura and A3D were among several implementations for computer game audio to get around stereo limitations; home computers were not yet expected to connect to surround sound setups as we know them today (and very few games supported more than 2 speakers until the 2000s), hence the HRTF approach Aureal used which may be comparable to the way today's soundbars use directional acoustics to simulate full surround [though A3D is probably best experienced with headphones]. For the original game on retro hardware: if Half-Life is one of your favorites and you wish to experience the quasi-surround as designed, it is a bit pricey but not difficult to find an A3D 2.0 card on the secondhand market (do your homework on how to tell which ones are 2.0-compliant); just understand the drivers were always finicky so getting it to work could be an adventure, but success is worth it.

Exactly - you need a vortex2 based card (au8830 not 8820) for A3D 2.0 to work properly. You would think 1.0 hardware would work with 2.0 games with some limitations (maybe it was supposed to?) but it doesn't seem to be the case.

On the bright side, I have seen OEM versions of Montego 2 with au8830 on Ebay for "regular" au8820 vortex prices, so if you really want one for a good price usually you just have to search around for a bit.

I believe this video is a good place to see what the latest achievements in the community are in terms of audio for Half Life 1:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR2abojkuow

Interesting about A3D 2.0 cards, I never thought you can still get them at any price lower than £100. I did see one sold for £20, but that guy was extremely lucky because the seller mislabeled it. Either that or he got scammed xD.

Anyways, gonna add au8830 to my ebay keyword searches, thanks for the suggestion!

randomdavid wrote on 2025-08-02, 20:31:

Long story short, I got my hands on 2 sound cards using the same audio chip, the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and the Terratec Sixpack 5.1

You're incredibly lucky with these CS4630 cards, they are much rarer than AU8830 cards. Finding any Vortex 2 shouldn't be a problem.

ott wrote on 2025-08-06, 06:43:

randomdavid wrote on 2025-08-02, 20:31:

Long story short, I got my hands on 2 sound cards using the same audio chip, the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and the Terratec Sixpack 5.1

You're incredibly lucky with these CS4630 cards, they are much rarer than AU8830 cards. Finding any Vortex 2 shouldn't be a problem.

I don't know if it's a regional thing but I have the opposite problem where I live (UK), the CS4630 cards are relatively more plentiful and cheaper compared to the Vortex 2s.

Anyways, I tried my cards on Unreal Tournament, and oh boy, what a massive difference it makes right out of the box without any custom dlls.

I'm still not 100% sure if all the features are working, but the sound is clearly a lot more immersive. I can hear the reverberation quite clearly and it's not massively overdone like EAX. Maybe the chaotic wavetracing feature is working too, not sure what to look for.

So far it's a good initial impression.

Oh, and these effects work on Windows XP too which is a cool surprise! Again, not too sure if only a subset of the effects work or all of them.

randomdavid wrote on 2025-08-10, 22:57:

Anyways, I tried my cards on Unreal Tournament, and oh boy, what a massive difference it makes right out of the box without any custom dlls.

I'm still not 100% sure if all the features are working, but the sound is clearly a lot more immersive. I can hear the reverberation quite clearly and it's not massively overdone like EAX. Maybe the chaotic wavetracing feature is working too, not sure what to look for.

Press tilde (~) to open the UT console, then type s_wavetracing and see what you get in response. On a Vortex 2 card, the result looks like this. I was using Unreal Gold in that example, but it should be the same for UT.

From what I remember, all UE1 games sounded pretty good on Sensaura cards, especially with headphones.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-08-11, 06:37:

From what I remember, all UE1 games sounded pretty good on Sensaura cards, especially with headphones.

Whereas I gathered from your test list back then that id Tech games, including Half-Life which uses the id Tech-derived GoldSrc engine, prefer effects available only on Aureal hardware. Dark Engine seems to work on either depending on software configuration. My interest in A3D actually involves neither of those, but I am interested in plenty of others among the wealth of games supporting A3D 2.0.

I tried s_wavetracing and just got Unrecognised Command, not sure what's going on here.

Actually I'm not even sure what my copy of Unreal Tournament is exactly, I just acquired this disc and played with it. I'm not really an expert in Unreal games.

I found a thread of someone successfully enabled Sensauna 3D with wavetracing on Half Life

A3D 2.0 and EAX cards together in one machine? (also CS4624 & CS4630 differences, and Sensaura 3D config)

So I'm going to attempt this. Will report the findings.

It worked! I think I got wavetracing to work in Half Life and Counter Strike on Windows 98!

I followed the steps mentioned in the above thread
Re: A3D 2.0 and EAX cards together in one machine?

To get it working: Use the Audio3D.dll 2008 version, replace the Audio3D.dll in windows\system with the ver 4.12.01.2008. Use th […]
Show full quote

To get it working:
Use the Audio3D.dll 2008 version, replace the Audio3D.dll in windows\system with the ver 4.12.01.2008.
Use the Audio3D.dll 2009 64kb renamed as A3D.dll and also place in the windows\system dir.
For most games stick with using the A3DAPI.dll version 2.25, and if the game needs A3D 3.0 then place the updated A3DAPI.dll into the games directory itself and leave 2.25 alone in the windows\system dir.

Now
- Counter Strike says "Initializing A3D....ok"
- In both CS and HL, I can hear new reverb and occlusion effects which weren't there before, especially during the intro train sequence and when Gordon enters the test chamber. The occlusion is affected by walls as well, the sound realistically becomes muffled when covered by a wall.

I think this means chaotic wavetracing is on!

However there are a few quirks.
All the effects work well on the Santa Cruz, but the volume is a bit quiet. It makes everything sounds far away. The main char's footsteps are almost inaudible in both games. The game's music is not affected so whenever it comes on, it overpowers everything else.

The Terratec has some other issues. It doesn't have the problem with the low volume. However, in CS, the gun sounds are cut off. In HL, the occlusion effect completely cuts off the sound if Gordon's head is turned the other way. For instance, at the intro sequence, I couldn't hear the announcer until I turn my head around.

I'd say the Terratec sounds broken, while the Santa Cruz works but with very quiet sounds.

I'm not sure what can be done to fix these, please let me know! Super excited!

Edit: it seems this does not work at all on XP, which is a shame. In CS I got "Initializing A3D...failed"

Not sure if there is a fix, since chaotic wavetracing in those cases tries latching onto A3D effects but is not true A3D. As you have already been able to discern, different hardware has different quirks. Both Joestar and I, for separate reasons, came to the conclusion there is no substitute for an actual A3D 2.0 card in those games...but that doesn't mean some enhanced effects in Sensaura hardware can't be unlocked, which you have succeeded in (and there is probably no better Sensaura card than Turtle Beach Santa Cruz).

BaronSFel001 wrote on 2025-08-12, 14:10:

Not sure if there is a fix, since chaotic wavetracing in those cases tries latching onto A3D effects but is not true A3D. As you have already been able to discern, different hardware has different quirks. Both Joestar and I, for separate reasons, came to the conclusion there is no substitute for an actual A3D 2.0 card in those games...but that doesn't mean some enhanced effects in Sensaura hardware can't be unlocked, which you have succeeded in (and there is probably no better Sensaura card than Turtle Beach Santa Cruz).

It would be a huge pity if there is no way to improve this for Half Life, it's so close to being perfect on the Santa Cruz, just gotta find a way to balance out the volumes. Perhaps a workaround is to find a way to lower the music volume so it won't overpower everything, and ideally raise the volume of everything else.

I will continue researching to see if there is anything else that can be done.

Please let us know if you build on that success, but until then general consensus is that there is no such thing as an all-in-one card that can cover both A3D 2.0 & advanced DirectSound 3D extensions [at least not until the community creates one] which is why I use separate hardware for each in my setup.