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Best Sensaura Implementation

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Reply 60 of 67, by Gahhhrrrlic

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ZanQuance wrote:

Here's my sensaura/a3d dll swapper setup, the batch files are set for c:\a3d\ so just extract the files there and put the bat files on the desktop for ease of use 😀
It has every Sensaura dll I could find

😲

https://hubpages.com/technology/How-to-Maximi … -Retro-Computer

Reply 61 of 67, by Gahhhrrrlic

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I seem to have gotten rid of the wicked reverb in the UT opening cinematic. The 3D sounds appear to work in the game itself. Something about how it sounds is unfamiliar to me in a good way so I think it's working. The sounds are definitely quieter and a bit scratchy at times but maybe the UT version has something to do with that. I would still play in A3D compared to normal because of how well defined everything is. It definitely helps identify where things are... when you can hear them.

HL still broken. I have concluded it's the game and not the audio that's to blame. I need to patch to a higher version and check again.

Tried Thief 1, Thief 2 and System Shock demos. They all appear to use A3D but nowhere was this more obvious than in Thief 1, probably because it has a tutorial and opens in a quiet room with a dude upstairs walking circles around you - you can immediately tell it's working. I tried with my Live card and the positional sound seems to reduce to panning the volume between the left and right channels.

The Minerva utility is pretty cool but it puts a bunch of question marks next to HW 3D, as though it cannot tell if A3D is really supported. Despite this, the test suite completed with all hardware accelerated features seeming to work fine.

When I have time, I will do a proper exhaustive test of all games with their correct patches and everything. Now I'm a bit too busy to do more than screw around like I have been but even in 30 minutes I can learn quite a bit about the capabilities of this card. When my Vortex 2 arrives it will be interesting to see if it's even worth installing. I still haven't made up my mind which 2 of the 3 cards (Santa Cruz, Live, SQ2500) I want to pair for this machine but am leaning towards Live + Santa Cruz. I may ditch the live though if the SQ2500 is a better compliment for all around everything.

https://hubpages.com/technology/How-to-Maximi … -Retro-Computer

Reply 62 of 67, by eeJay

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Hi Gahhhrrrlic; the link you posted doesn't seem to work.
Also, would it be possible for you to link to the Minerva tool/demo somewhere?
I've tried using the Wayback Machine to get it, but no luck ...

Reply 63 of 67, by Gahhhrrrlic

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eeJay wrote:

Hi Gahhhrrrlic; the link you posted doesn't seem to work.
Also, would it be possible for you to link to the Minerva tool/demo somewhere?
I've tried using the Wayback Machine to get it, but no luck ...

It was actually Zanquance's last post where the Minerva tool was included: quite a remarkable piece of diagnostic equipment. You should get his download as it pretty much makes mine redundant. He has all the combos of the drivers that are known to exist in the universe! 😲

https://hubpages.com/technology/How-to-Maximi … -Retro-Computer

Reply 64 of 67, by Gahhhrrrlic

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I found a very cool article that talks in detail about 3D sound technology that I thought worth sharing for anyone who's interested. One thing it does not seem to cover however is chaotic wavetracing and A3D 2.0 compatibility. It seems to call out Aureal as being the leader in this area despite its algorithms being less sophisticated. I mean this despite the obvious fact that its drivers and implementation in games is much better. Just talking about the tech itself.

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/sound-technology/

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Reply 65 of 67, by Gahhhrrrlic

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I finally got Half-Life fully working. It seems it's been just forever. FOREVER. There are so many permutations that affect success:

First you have to have the correct version of the game. Mine is 1.1.1.10.
Then you have to have the correct card drivers. In this case the 4081 drivers.
Then you have to have the correct OS. XP will work, which is why it took my so damn long to notice but XP does not have VXD drivers and will not allow reflections so you have to use 98 if you want the full feature set.
Then you have to put the correct blend of dll files in your system directory from different eras. Thanks to Zanquance for that. audio3D 2008, a3d 2009 (audio3d 2009) and a3dapi 225 in the system directory.
Then you have to make sure the damn speakers stick on the correct config. So many times it just refused to go into anything but stereo mode until I rebooted or reinstalled the drivers.
Finally you have to make sure HL doesn't glitch out and refuse to enable the features.

After all that BS I finally got the full feature set working on 4 speakers (5.1 just seems to be broken on this card unless maybe DVDs?)
Adding EAX does not seem to make any noticeable difference to be honest. It doesn't hurt anything either though. Maybe the a3d is just too awesome for me to notice the subtleties of EAX?
So what you get from the Santa Cruz when it's fully working is: Occlusions (objects attenuate sound), Wavetracing (you can hear sounds bounce off walls), HRTF for good positional, doppler and probably some other stuff that's fairly subtle. It sounds really good. I'm wondering... just wondering... if the reason people still prefer a Vortex 2 card for A3D effects is simply because it's damn near impossible to get the SC to work 100% in the first place. Side by side, I'd love to see which is better with 4 speaker sound. Sensaura is theoretically supposed to be better and while the actual implementation may not be, again I don't know if there's ever been an apples-apples comparison.

Now... with the exact same setup, Q3 seems to be working but UT does not. UT has been a total enigma. I have no freakin clue why it doesn't work. I guess I'll just try a different version of UT? Or maybe just randomly try different dll files? If only I could get UT to work, most other games are no problem at all.

https://hubpages.com/technology/How-to-Maximi … -Retro-Computer

Reply 66 of 67, by eeJay

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Hi guys.
I own a few Sensaura-capable cards: Terratec DMX Xfire 1024, DMX 6fire 24|96, Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and Diamond Monster MX400.
Today, I was playing around with the DMX 1024. It allows you to toggle MacroFX on and off through its control panel. If enabled, MacroFX makes things sound too distant in some cases (for example in UT).
I remember someone mentioning the same issue in this topic with their TB Santa Cruz.
I also remember having this issue with the Diamond Monster MX400.
Is it possible that TB Santa Cruz and MX400 have MacroFX enabled by default? And no option in their control panels to turn it off?

Anyways, for DMX 1024, the following reg keys seem to be used for controlling MacroFX:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Sensaura\crlds3d; keyname: MacroFX, value 0 or 1.
HKEY_USERS\DEFAULT\SOFTWARE\Sensaura\crlds3d; keyname: MacroFX, value 0 or 1.

Maybe these could be used to toggle MacroFX on other cards as well?
I will try it some day and report.

Br

Reply 67 of 67, by foil_fresh

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Just for anyone googling in the future:

i'm currently trying out a Hercules Fortissimo III 7.1 - CS4624-CQ - i found that in UT the distant sounds were cut off and even closer sounds were not very loud. other sound effects and music were fine.

after flubbing about in the audio options in windows and hercules driver UI, I opened console and typed preferences to bring up the unreal engine advanced settings - in sound I changed the sample rate to 44100hz from 22000 hz and suddenly all sound effects using sensaura started working nicely.

i'm missing a few EAX effects in NFS3 - going thru bridges and tunnels just doesnt sound reverb-y enough. I'm using 6.09 drivers in Win98se. i think i've got 6.07 somewhere but cant find it.

if anyone with even earlier drivers can upload, i would love to test them out and see if things are better/worse in the older games.

other testing - Q3 sounded nice, unreal gold also worked with the above 44khz fix. red alert 2 had no audio clipping and stereo was working as it should.

so far, this card sounds quite nice. it's apparently the first 7.1 surround card on the market in 2002 (not that i need that feature, i just like that it has toslink output and lots of internal headers). i havent bothered with DOS drivers yet...