I want to have 3D Audio.
I own a PCI Audigy SE, but no PCI slot...
My motherboard has a Realtek ALC1150.
Any ideas of what I should do? Buy new soundcard PCI-E? Use Realtek "Soundback 3D" ? Buy PCI adapter and put the Audigy SE in it?
Also, I know this is Windows forum, but any 3D Audio is available on Linux too?
What inputs do your amp/receiver/speakers have?
If you're using a receiver with HDMI, you don't typically need a sound card and you can just output digital audio using your video card.
If you're using speakers or a receiver with analogue 5.1 inputs, you can just use those. This is rare on receivers, though some of the older higher end models had it (e.g Cambridge Azur 540r) but quite common on those PC speaker kits.
If you're using a receiver with optical inputs, chances are you can only get stereo down the optical cable. In this case you'd need a sound card that supported Dolby Digital (or DTS) encoding.
Things get more complicated if you want EAX/ALchemy support.
No idea on Linux, not a Linux gamer.
play-old-pc-games.com
Yep, you got my question way wrong.
The only line relevant at all was this one:
"Things get more complicated if you want EAX/ALchemy support."
I want to know how to use 3D Audio, not how to use audio in general.
Well to be fair 3D audio is just another term for surround sound, you don't need EAX for that of course.
play-old-pc-games.com
wrote:Well to be fair 3D audio is just another term for surround sound, you don't need EAX for that of course.
This is incorrect, something like 5.1 surround sound is only ever 2D, there is no way to emit audio from a different height.
However, using sound cards (or software) that can downmix using HRTF to headphones and games that support them will allow the perception of sounds coming from all directions (including up and down) even though it only uses 2 channel audio.
the aureal vortex 2 was 3d
What version of Windows? Vista or above I'm assuming?
In which case I wouldn't bother with the Audigy, nice card for 9x/XP but I'd prefer something designed specifically for way newer OS's handle sound
Motherboard: X-FI MB3
or any PCI-E Soundblaster will give you the HRTF via SBX or Alchemy, but I think neither are ideal solutions to the 3D audio problems we have today.
Raw audio data needs to be sent from the game to a 3D audio API for proper processing, but now a days everything is being pre-mixed into multi-channel formats, so the post processing HRTF like SBX does is the best that can be done for those types of games. Alchemy is good for almost all older DS3D games.
For both Windows and Linux anything using OpenAL can benefit from OpenAL Soft's HRTF.
