Nvidia has no counterpart to TA/TAN, but there was - not anymore - a CUDA 3D audio processing effort that then gave way to RTX cores being used as part of their VRWorks portfolio, which quickly led to Unreal Engine plug-in integration, but all of the audio stuff has been - as far as I can ascertain - completely and utterly abandoned after NVidia's second-gen RTX hardware and the overall failure of VR hardware after being introduced into the PC ecosystem, so there is no trace of it beyond archived elements from it's introduction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozhywx2YbzM

Intel has no GPU accelerated audio, but has used it's NPU hardware to accelerate audio through third-party tech, though it has fallen by the wayside and is no longer something they are pushing, with the demise of VR hardware and such efforts. The latest Razer headsets use 3D sound tech from Audioscenic, who was working with Intel's efforts into 3D sound for gaming.

https://www.youtube.com/@audioscenic/videos

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/develop/ext … s-and-games.pdf

https://cdrdv2-public.intel.com/854139/Audios … phi3D-Brief.pdf

Modern GPUs have enough horse power and flexibility to accelerate some advanced sound effect via general compute, it's not that different from GPU accelerated physics particles. Creative can't compete with that, so I don't see them designing a new DSP for gaming purposes (or any purposes really).

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2026-06-21, 19:26:

Modern GPUs have enough horse power and flexibility to accelerate some advanced sound effect via general compute, it's not that different from GPU accelerated physics particles. Creative can't compete with that, so I don't see them designing a new DSP for gaming purposes (or any purposes really).

Exactly. That would have been a total waste of time. I think the Sound Blaster brand could have been used on some kind of middleware to harness the compute\RT resources of GPUs to accelerate advanced audio features similar to what was done with Physx. If AMD and Nvidia aren't interested in promoting and actively supporting such features, then someone else could have, and Creative would have at least had some resources and brand recognition to reach game developers and possibly make it work.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2026-06-22, 20:06:

That would have been a total waste of time. I think the Sound Blaster brand could have been used on some kind of middleware

This is where I think you and others are wrong, and it is a massive squandered opportunity on the part of Creative. Had they started aggressively pursuing such an approach when it would have been most beneficial (1998/1999, if not somewhat earlier), and continued innovating and developing the idea, things could have been far different. The concept of dedicated sound hardware, with its own advanced capabilities specific to audio processing and modelling, could still be relevant today, with no platform developer willing to dare to even suggest that they would remove support for it. They could have been in a situation similar to the graphics companies; you couldn't imagine Microsoft (or Apple, or the relevant parties in the Linux world) now saying that, because of bloated, insecure, unstable graphics drivers, henceforth, OS support for graphics hardware will be limited to a simple frame-buffer device, and everything else will be done on the CPU, via their great software — no more video acceleration or scaling in hardware, no more pesky 3D features. The disaster that awaits Creative was pre-determined — by Creative and their own inept decisions — decades ago. Maybe that is the last bit of proof that we needed to finally admit that we should never have trusted them with the future of PC sound, that they were never really qualified to be in that industry, and that the "killer card" just happened to be a lucky guess that they still had to create by building off of Ad Lib's efforts (as additional evidence, we have the abject failure of their prior effort: the "Creative Music System"/Game Blaster).

640K!enough wrote on Yesterday, 05:17:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2026-06-22, 20:06:

That would have been a total waste of time. I think the Sound Blaster brand could have been used on some kind of middleware

This is where I think you and others are wrong, and it is a massive squandered opportunity on the part of Creative. Had they started aggressively pursuing such an approach when it would have been most beneficial (1998/1999, if not somewhat earlier), and continued innovating and developing the idea, things could have been far different. The concept of dedicated sound hardware, with its own advanced capabilities specific to audio processing and modelling, could still be relevant today, with no platform developer willing to dare to even suggest that they would remove support for it. They could have been in a situation similar to the graphics companies; you couldn't imagine Microsoft (or Apple, or the relevant parties in the Linux world) now saying that, because of bloated, insecure, unstable graphics drivers, henceforth, OS support for graphics hardware will be limited to a simple frame-buffer device, and everything else will be done on the CPU, via their great software — no more video acceleration or scaling in hardware, no more pesky 3D features. The disaster that awaits Creative was pre-determined — by Creative and their own inept decisions — decades ago. Maybe that is the last bit of proof that we needed to finally admit that we should never have trusted them with the future of PC sound, that they were never really qualified to be in that industry, and that the "killer card" just happened to be a lucky guess that they still had to create by building off of Ad Lib's efforts (as additional evidence, we have the abject failure of their prior effort: the "Creative Music System"/Game Blaster).

Of course, if Creative were given the opportunity to rewrite history starting in the mid to late 1990s, things would be different for them and the rest of the industry.

I was not going that far back, because if I did I would have preferred that Creative not even exist in the first place and that other companies would have taken computer audio in a better direction from the start.

I was talking more recently. Like, any time in the past 8-10 years since GPU compute (and ray tracing) power has been exploding, and GPUs have been available to be used for processing all kinds of complex things in real time. The hardware to do the work exists now, even if Creative destroyed any chance of dedicated sound hardware existing after gobbling up Aureal and doing almost nothing with their position through the 2000s and 2010s. So, since it exists, it would be cool if someone started doing something with it now at least. Creative could have, but they failed to even pick up the ball, yet again.

Ther's a review of the AE-X at ixbt, I'm attaching the photo of the PCB without the shield for reference.

Looking at it I see:

- Asmedia ASM3042 PCIe-USB bridge
- Realtek ALC4082 USB Codec
- ESS ES9039Q2M DAC
- Cirrus CS5361 ADC
- Comtrue CT5302 SRC/DSP chip
- The X-Amp discreete headphone amp

I get the architecture: a USB codec bolted to PCIe via a bridge, augmented with a high quality DAC and ADC. Not sure how the CT5302 fits in, is it the "Flagship Decoding Chip" that Creative shown in their marketing materials (attached)? Compared to the Audigy Fx Pro, it's basically a high-end version of this architecture.

GL1zdA wrote on Today, 11:00:

Ther's a review of the AE-X at ixbt, I'm attaching the photo of the PCB without the shield for reference. […]
Show full quote

Ther's a review of the AE-X at ixbt, I'm attaching the photo of the PCB without the shield for reference.

Looking at it I see:

- Asmedia ASM3042 PCIe-USB bridge
- Realtek ALC4082 USB Codec
- ESS ES9039Q2M DAC
- Cirrus CS5361 ADC
- Comtrue CT5302 SRC/DSP chip
- The X-Amp discreete headphone amp

I get the architecture: a USB codec bolted to PCIe via a bridge, augmented with a high quality DAC and ADC. Not sure how the CT5302 fits in, is it the "Flagship Decoding Chip" that Creative shown in their marketing materials (attached)? Compared to the Audigy Fx Pro, it's basically a high-end version of this architecture.

Here's a datasheet for the CT5302/CT7302 family. It said this is a "single chip dual channel audio digital to digital bridge with sample rate converter".

I think this chip (CT5302SN in case of AE-X) is responsible for handling the bit depth and sampling rates. I wonder if it's that all the digital audio streams going inside the card get resampled to the rate you specified in the OS via this chip, before going to their destinations.