VOGONS


First post, by hifidelitygaming

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

The first time I played Thief the Dark Project, Thief 2 The Metal Age and System Shock 2 on a win98 system with a Sensaura card I was utterly and completely blown away. The accuracy of the 3d positional audio was such that I could hear EXACTLY where others were - whether they were one floor above me, two floors above me, three floors above me, one/two below me, etc. Behind one wall, two walls, etc.

I forget the exact card I used, but it was Sensaura, and it displayed a Sensaura logo and sound when it booted up Thief:DP. (it didnt display this for T2 or SS2 but the sound was obviously different and better than the soundblaster/creative awe32 crap in terms of positional accuracy)

Now i'm TOLD that it's either the same effect (or some might argue even better) for Aureal Vortex 2 A3D 2.0 cards. Has anyone tried both and could comment?

I am trying to build up an Ultimate Dark Engine Games rig, since the games are SO bitchy about anything modern (dual core and similar) and am trying to see whether to track down an A3D card or a Sensaura card, and which one. (Or even whether to track down both and decide myself being possible) Running XP would be nice (the state of Sensaura cards is very confusing to me - some say there are no XP cards, yet the Hercules GameTheater XP apparently ran it in the original 1.0 driver but it was removed afterwards.. plus it's listed as supported in semi modern 7.1 cards by some manufacturers, which cost the same/less as finding an old GameTheater) however if A3D is actually better then i'm more interested in A3D even if it means having to run win98.

If someone could recommend which cards provide the best Sensaura and A3D experience that's a plus as well. 😀

Reply 1 of 9, by leileilol

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

The only Sensaura hardware i've ever used was an onboard SoundMAX Cadenza which I thought was kind of neat since it worked with DOS games.

The "Sensaura" splash does get annoying though and adds a couple seconds to startup times. I didn't capture much Sensaura footage to show it off but here's a video using one

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 2 of 9, by keropi

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

I vaguely remember that I have seen the white-square with red letters sensaura logo when I was using my 192-XG back then... check the thread about the card here: Yamaha WaveForce 192XG infos and drivers

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 3 of 9, by hifidelitygaming

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

I loved the splash, it let me know things were about to be kewl. 😁 But then listening on good headphones I could hear the 'swoop' around me of the upper sound circling my head counterclockwise and the one below my feet circling me clockwise... for positional accuracy Sensaura was incredible. (although it may have had some other errors due to how Dark Engine games were programmed) If you want to be chilled to the bone play the fan mission The Inverted Manse on Thief 2 Metal Age sometime with a Sensaura card and prepare to sleep at night with the lights on afterwards.

There were Sensaura-only effects such as ZoomFX simulating a 'crowd' or a more spread out soundfield that were superior to A3D (which i'm told excelled at point sources but couldn't do diffuse sounds as well) and also "near head" effects called MacroFX which simulated things very close to your head... both of them were excellently done although I don't think Sensaura had any of the wavetracing/EAX type environmental audio... there was some kind of echo/reverb reflections but i'm not sure if it was straight EAX 1.0 I was hearing or what at the time. It's possible both cards/implementations had their strengths.

I do know that the Creative Xfi implementations of their taken over Sensaura technology may leave something to be desired... I can't remember if the Xfi I listened to was pre Sensaura integration or post Sensaura integration, but what I understand even post-Sensaura they still use the crappy Creative Head Related Transfer Function with it's accordingly poor positional accuracy (at least to mine ears, maybe my head is shaped differently but alot of people say that so I doubt it's just me) which in turn ruins the simulated early reflections and other cool stuff as well. It's really asinine that Creative forcibly took over both Aureal and Sensaura and basically just forced them off the market.. they could have made an EAX 5.0, A3D 3.0, Sensaura supporting card running everything and give a choice of head models for whichever sounds the most accurate to you... instead they bought it just to remove it from the market, and further removed it from drivers of competitors as well demanding they issue new drivers with those features basically removed. 🙁

I'll probably end up trying one of each and then posting my review/commentary in the future. 😜

Reply 7 of 9, by NamelessPlayer

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

I'm reasonably sure that it just uses DirectSound3D, so any of the major sound cards of the day could provide convincing 3D sound depending on what they did with the sound data; it just presents 3D coordinates for every sound in the game environment and lets the sound card driver sort it out.

Needless to say, I'm pissed that modern games actually opt for software-mixed audio using XAudio2 + X3DAudio or FMOD Ex and sound worse than games released as much as ten years ago that used DirectSound3D (or 6-8 years ago using OpenAL, which works similarly to DS3D). Chances are Creative eating up Aureal and Sensaura had a lot to do with this.

As for the merits of Creative's current binaural tech (CMSS-3D Headphone), I wouldn't want to play a 3D game without it. Especially in DS3D and OAL titles, it's like having an aural wallhack. However, I don't have extensive experience with Aureal or Sensaura-based cards to compare with yet. It doesn't help that you can no longer get the full Sensaura Virtual Ear even if you wanted to, and Aureal Vortex2 driver support for anything later than Win98SE is quite dreadful thanks to Creative's non-support. (Whenever I get around to building my Win9x box, my Turtle Beach Montego II is certainly going to be the primary sound card, if for no other reason than my wanting to know what the big deal about Aureal was. I suspect it's not so much the wavetracing as much as binaural mixing for headphone users, long before everyone else tried it.)

That reminds me...does anyone out there have the full version of Sensaura Virtual Ear that lets you create custom HRTFs? I recall my parents' crappy old Compaq desktop having a SoundMAX codec that may support it.

Reply 8 of 9, by Gahhhrrrlic

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Sorry for the bump but as System Shock is my favourite game of all time, and the issue seems unresolved, I thought I'd ask anyway if anyone has gotten A3D support working in the game with a genuine Aureal card.

I know that there is an HRTF implementation available for SS2 that works through OpenAL but I don't know if this is "better" than A3D or just close to it. Either way, I would totally want to try A3D in SS2 if it could be made to work, and not through some wrapper but using an SQ2500 or the like.

Any knowledge on this?

Also, this sensaura tech seems even better than a3d. Which card is the best implementation of it?

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

Reply 9 of 9, by unix_junkie

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

You may try Yamaha 7x4 series PCI cards (Labway or Xwave made).

I have good experience using both Yamaha 724 and Yamaha 754.

There're three preconditions to be met, though:

  1. You should be running Windows 9.x (Thief series runs well on Windows 2000 and XP, but there's no Sensaura support in the drivers).
  2. Be sure to use DirectX 7-compatible VxD drivers (version 4.07.1040 or 4.12). Both WDM (v5.x) or AC97 (v6.x) drivers lack Sensaura support.
  3. Use the original Thiev v1.14. Both the patched version (1.33) or Thief Gold (1.37) add support for EAX, so while they both enable you to turn HW-accelerated audio on, there's no longer any Sensaura splash at startup.

If your motherboard's BIOS has a Video RAM Cacheable flag (under Advanced Chipset Features), be sure to set it to Disabled. I've experienced constant lockups the very moment the game started (Thief TDP/Thief Gold, Windows 9.x, 3dfx Voodoo4):

video-ram-cacheable.png
Filename
video-ram-cacheable.png
File size
592.46 KiB
Views
1114 views
File license
CC-BY-4.0