Sorry for late replies, some bad mojo popped up in my life. Posting from my phone, PCs are packed away currently.

The CS4630 was stated to have full acceleration, and the CS4624 was stated to have partial acceleration, not entirely sure what is and isn't.

Sensaura sounds really good, but A3D 2.0 is more "clean" on the HRTF so positional audio feels more accurate. The Santa Cruz is my second favorite soundcard for 3D audio, but contends very well for the first place.

But it isn't perfect, when I was testing it eariler this month I found Quake3 worked better on Aureal Vortex 2's than the Santa Cruz. Reflections were all over and messed up.

All the other games sounded really good, Half-Life was really awesome sounding, and the EAX 2.0 support on the Santa Cruz made it easy to play many games without a card swap.

It's a fantastic all rounder card, I highly recommend it for gaming. But the DOS emulation is horrid, possibly the worst ever 😉 Stick with a real PCI YMF262 based card for that area.

Does the "partial acceleration" in CS4624 means it will sound different? I red the technical sheet for Terratec SixPack (CS4630) and Terratec DMX Xfire 1024 (CS4624) and they look identical - they have the same Sensaura powered enchancements (MacroFX, EnvironmentFX, MultiDrive and A3D 1.0).
And for DOS compatibility I'm concerned only for dosbox. I have no need to have realDOS driver loaded.
The one thing is uncertain - I'll probably give up on buying Terratec SixPack (CS4630) because it has only WDM drivers so i wouldnt be able to play dosboxed games.
Still I have enormous curiousity how big differences there are between CS4630 i CS4624. I'm hesitating between these two models, but CS4624 is more favorable for its VXD drivers. As I wrote earlier MIDI and FM will be played by YMF724 streamed by S/PDIF to CS4624 which will make SoundBlaster wave playback.
Can I help in anyway to make any tests of CS4624 for You? Because it seems It'll be my choice and I will buy it in a couple of days 😀

From what I can research via my phone, the differences aren't major besides the CS4630 being a bigger brother to the CS4624, more DMA channels and higher mips. The real difference would be the supported driver microcode to accelerate any Sensaura features on the DSP. Do the CS4624 include the same osp? microcode files like the Santa Cruz drivers do?

not the same but 3/4 are the same, especially cwcs3d***.osp files are identical. I unpacked SixPack (CS4630) drivers and DMX Xfire (CS4624) and they are 100% same .osp, so it looks like the Sensaura3D files are untouched and fully supported on CS4624 card! 😁

ZanQuance wrote:

Sorry for late replies, some bad mojo popped up in my life. Posting from my phone, PCs are packed away currently. […]
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Sorry for late replies, some bad mojo popped up in my life. Posting from my phone, PCs are packed away currently.

The CS4630 was stated to have full acceleration, and the CS4624 was stated to have partial acceleration, not entirely sure what is and isn't.

Sensaura sounds really good, but A3D 2.0 is more "clean" on the HRTF so positional audio feels more accurate. The Santa Cruz is my second favorite soundcard for 3D audio, but contends very well for the first place.

But it isn't perfect, when I was testing it eariler this month I found Quake3 worked better on Aureal Vortex 2's than the Santa Cruz. Reflections were all over and messed up.

All the other games sounded really good, Half-Life was really awesome sounding, and the EAX 2.0 support on the Santa Cruz made it easy to play many games without a card swap.

It's a fantastic all rounder card, I highly recommend it for gaming. But the DOS emulation is horrid, possibly the worst ever 😉 Stick with a real PCI YMF262 based card for that area.

Ah, thanks for the clarification, seems I'll have to give it a try!

No problems, using an ISA card in DOS, both cards connected to the same receiver through a passive mixer 😀

Hope you get that bad mojo sorted 😀

another question:
in the download library I found "Aureal AU8830 9x 4.06.2048 EAX 3.00 Wrapper". How does the EAX 3 wrapper works? My DMX Xfire has full EAX 2.0 support - will it sound better with this EAX 3.0 wrapper?

and another:
do You know how to be sure that sensaura is running correctly in Neverwinter Nights on Windows XP? Of course with Chaotic WaveTracing turned on!

ZanQuance wrote:

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 […]
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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.

Ok. I've setup the driver as You said. Everything works as it should 😀 But there is one thing that concerns me - is Sensaura3D only frontal HRTF? I tested A3D 2.0 demos and it works but only in frontal. Theres no under/overhead effect. I thought Sensaura3D is spherical HRTF?

And the second thing - If I would not want to emulate A3D - are there any games which uses Sensaura3D without Vortex2 .dll files replacement?

Is it set to headphone mode? You should have the same HRTF as A3D.

Only two games were made at the time with Sensauras Game Coda API with proper Sensaura but the title escape me at the moment, no time to check them.

Yes, I'm pretty sure that I've selected Headphone mode in soundcard panel. I don't know if A3D2.0 demo apps work as they should, but the demos have no change on turning reflections ON/OFF, and occlusion sounds just like volume turn up/down without wall density filtration (steel/concrete/wood). I think that I also didn't hear the occlusion effect in Half-Life. Finally, the A3D Rooms demo just wont start up.

As for under/overhead effect - when I'm using the A3D 2.0 Player demo, and choose rotation of sound source over and under head, the sound in headphones just turns the volume up and down alternately on left and right speakerphone. When the point is over/under the head the sound suddenly jumps to another speakerphone. I'm 100% sure there is no HRTF going on there. So it looks like HRTF only working around the head in horizontal plane, not in vertical. Another thing that "Reflections" option is totally greyed out in A3D 2.0 Player.

Maybe I must try this on WDM drivers?

Are there any other app-demos where i could test sensaura/a3d features?

I would be very grateful if You could check the same demos on your CS4630 and wrote back how the demos sounds with your card 😀

I can't test right now since everything of mine is packed away, been moving again 🙁 I do know that the A3D demos aren't going to showcase the Sensaura API properly.

Also which soundcard are you using? The Santa Cruz I have worked really well with the vxd drivers, and I think the wdm worked well also and only lack the sb emulation mode option in the control panel.

For A3D demos switch the 2009 64kb A3D.dll "audio3d.dll" to the 2006/2008 audio3d.dll versions the sensaura logo should show up in the A3D demos then. I know there are some games and apps that work better with various versions, so give that a try.

When everything is working it sounds very close to Aureals quality and you do get 360 degrees of hrtf. However Reflections in the A3D player won't adjust anything in the Sensaura API.

Best games I've tested were Half-Life, Alice, Unreal, Deus-ex, Thief A3D alpha version, System Shock 2, Unreal Tournament 2000, Star Trek: Elite Force, and Bioshock under win XP for EAX.

All sounded great, some games didn't detect A3D 2.0 or those that did didn't sound right, such as, Descent3, Nascar Racing 3/Legends, Alice without my hex patch, and Quake 3 (distorted reflections).

I'll post again when I can.

I'll give a try to test some driver combinations and write back if I find something which is worth to mention 😀

Thank You very, very much for Your effort. I really appreciate that. Best regards! 😀

kaputnik wrote:

ZanQuance, how true to the original would you say the A3D 2.0 emulation is in practice? Could the Santa Cruz replace the real thing without any major sacrifices? Wondering if I should keep looking for a A3D 2.0 card to replace the Live! in my main retro rig, or just be happy with the Santa Cruz?
Beginning to look like that sound card haul was a real jackpot 😁

Trying to answer some more questions now that my PC is temporarily hooked up again.
Yeah the Santa Cruz can easily replace the Vortex 2 in most everything. It supports DS3D, EAX, and does a good job with A3D 1.0. The A3D 2/3.0 is hit and miss as some titles don't detect the presence of an A3D 2.0 card, but those that just look for the A3DAPI.dll seem to work well enough. I think the ones that don't work look for the actual Vortex 2 card ID or something, not really sure. But in those cases I just choose DS3D or EAX.
The Santa Cruz HRTF sounds very good, and can be customized with the Virtual Ear setup to fit your custom Ear shape. It also has some mature XP drivers, so it's a fantastic all-rounder. The DOS TSR OPL3 emulation really sucks though.
The card is a win-win for me, but I like the Vortex 2 a bit more, for reasons.

Doppler wrote:

Are there any other app-demos where i could test sensaura/a3d features?

Here is some Sensaura stuff I uploaded for Phil a while back.
Drivers, apps, and misc.