QSound is an upmix post processing effect, not an API to be coded for.
Sensaura is really awesome.
The Vortex2 2041's are the overall best rounded drivers, 2048 and 2050 are way buggy.

swaaye wrote:

The Aureal drivers are a bit buggy though. Especially that 2048 release that most people seem to think is best.

I've switched over to the 41 drivers quite some time ago. Recently used the Diamond drivers with the MX300 (and I have no idea what Vortex driver version they are based on) and they all sound great to me.

Release v1.02 for the MX300's are v2017.

Windows 95/98 Revision History ------------------------------ v1.00 - Based on Aureal 4.06.2011 drivers v1.01 - Based on […]
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Windows 95/98 Revision History
------------------------------
v1.00
- Based on Aureal 4.06.2011 drivers
v1.01
- Based on Aureal 4.06.2015 drivers
- Misc. bug fixes and performance improvements in the drivers
v1.02
- Based on Aureal 4.06.2017 drivers
- Additional CODEC support
- Changed stereo routing to front output (quad mode only)
- Disabled "Dac2" meter from the Monster Sound control panel

ZanQuance wrote:

QSound is an upmix post processing effect, not an API to be coded for.

I'm not sure that's true with later QSound. But the only implementation I know of is the Thunderbird chips. I bought a Philips Seismic Edge and a TB Santa Cruz (Sensaura) to play with several months ago. The Seismic Edge sounds really nice. Good EAX/DS3D implementation and a great headphone mode reminiscent of Audigy. Much more impressive than a SBLive for sure.

ZanQuance wrote:

Release v1.02 for the MX300's are v2017.

A nice, thank you. Those are the ones I used in my recent video showcasing Incoming.

They seem a bit old. Might switch to the 2041, although the games sounded great on the MX300 and I didn't encounter any issues.

Yeah I came to the conclusion that 2041 is best a couple of years ago when I was exploring different A3D games on a MX300 myself. Elite Force in particular has flipped channels if you use 2048. 2048 also has that horrible partially complete EAX emulation.

Ok will do 😀

philscomputerlab wrote:

Ok will do 😀

Oh let me add that I don't know if those older Diamond drivers might be fine too. I don't remember how much I tried them. 2041 seems solid though so I just go for them.

Cool. I liked the look of the interface. Interesting how Diamond didn't do any more releases.

Here is a list of driver versions I have on hand and the date they were compiled:
09/28/99 4.06.2050.01
10/17/99 4.06.2048.01
01/27/00 4.06.2046.01
10/07/99 4.06.2041.04
09/17/99 4.06.2040.07
07/28/99 4.06.2035.05
06/18/99 4.06.2031.06
04/25/99 4.06.2030.22
12/04/98 4.06.2015.06
[first driver release]
08/24/98 4.05.2000.33 <-33 internal driver revisions
06/02/98 4.05.2000.01

If QSound has an API it's news to me, I would love to get a hold of it if so. QSound interactive which the Phillips soundcards used is akin to how SBX works.
The Thunderbird avenger does have DS3D hardware support in the chip, see VLSI datasheet so this mixed with SBX-ish post processing is why it sounds so nice.
[edit]
Here is a nice blast from the past story from GDC 1999.

I can't speak for the PCI versions, but I've had nothing but trouble with the X-Fi Titanium on my AMD based system. On the first card I had I was able to install the drivers, but the line in only produced a bunch of static and switching between modes (which really is a terrible concept in the first place for a consumer card) routinely locked up the system. I got a second card some months ago to try again and at first it was detected by the PC, but when I tried to install the Daniel_K drivers it never was detected again after rebooting the computer.

I'm using an Audigy 2 ZS now which is much better. It's still not as hassle-free as onboard audio, as under Win7 x64 with Daniel_K drivers I've had some occasional issues with garbled audio after starting from standby, EAX effects still being present on the desktop after turning a game off or this bizarre line in setup where using the amplified signal path seems to give a bit of lag. I also don't like having to use an RCA to 3.5mm adapter to get digital audio, instead of TOSLINK, but that's manageable. I mainly bought the card to use with UT2004 (which uses OpenAL) and it works well enough there apart from occasional sound pops. Doom 3 unfortunately has this strange visual twitch which never was fixed so EAX is pretty useless there at times.

As far as A3D goes, in about any game I tried with Vortex 2 I got lots of pops with enabled wavetracing, which is quite annoying when you actually need to use headphones to get the full effect out of it. In one game it just made everything sound muffled, don't remember which one though. Live!'s EAX has been a more solid experience for me under 98, apart from terrible implementations like UT99; Half-Life has a nice and subtle benefit from it, for instance having strong reverb in elevator shafts.

You getting lots of pops with the Vortex2 under Win98? It's a known issue under XP but can be minimized. Win98 should run almost perfect. Muffled audio comes from the driver versions, in some earlier versions it's fixed and later ones not, only affects a few games though like Alice.

I must say, and I can only speak for W98, the Vortex 2 cards have been flawless with headphones. I played quite a few games and didn't encounter any pops or klicks.

98 SE, yes. I think I was using 2041 since that's what everyone seems to recommend. Games I tried were Unreal, Half-Life, Forsaken and probably a few others, all fully patched. They all had these occasional sound pops.

Very odd. Was this by any chance on an Intel 440BX machine? Or did you use a board with some other chipset? Thinking about it, I've only ever used 440BX chipset machines for A3D gaming.

440BX, yes.

Maybe it's even related to DirectX versions? If memory serves I had 9.0c installed at the time of testing but not sure if that has any relevance...

d1stortion wrote:

440BX, yes.

Maybe it's even related to DirectX versions? If memory serves I had 9.0c installed at the time of testing but not sure if that has any relevance...

Doubtful. Any other PCI cards maybe? To be honest I've had almost zero issues with these cards. Once I got a weird PCI related error, but the INF hacks from the Vogons driver site fixed that 😀

Just a NIC I think, certainly nothing that would hog the bus all the time. But even with a PCI 3D card you'd have to expect proper performance since these were still commonly used when Vortex2 was current...

Well, I will probably give it another shot sometime in the future 😀

I've heard occasional pops with Vortex 2 on 440BX with 98SE as well. I think it is just something that happens with 3D cards combined with PCI sound cards.

And yeah the Doom3 EAX4 twitch thing is strange. It comes and goes.....

Just be sure you are running the v2.25 A3DAPI with the 2041's and not with the later v3.3.678

The pops and clicks can be easily replicated in Alice by moving around and having the Cheshire cat talk at the same time. I think this might be related to the WaveTracing buffers not having the right period size, or the buffers aren't being indexed properly when being copied into the Vortex2.

The speaker swap issue in the 2048 and 2050 betas was identified back in 03' by the OpenVortex team. They are caused during while DMA is filling the FIFO buffer, when a period is missed then it doesn't shuffle out the speakers left/right data in the correct order and thus they swap.