First off, you guys have the best info on this topic bar none. I've come across it many times when researching EAX support for older games on modern Windows/Hardware. I snagged a PCI-E X-Fi Titanium (the Fatility something, remember that guy? 🤣). And was impressed with how much better the EAX sounded in games compared to using either just Alchemy or something like Creatives MB5 software etc.
IDK if this has been posted here, but the also the latest version of ALchemy (1.45.20) has been cracked to work on systems without a creative card / hardware.
The person that made it said this.
" I made a generic patcher for Alchemy a while back, only posted it on one forum though so it was probably pretty easy to miss...
Only tested with the 1.45.20 version, but it uses signature searching rather than offsets so should work with other versions too."
https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file … nt&comment=2040
That's the comment with a working download link to the "crack" that removes the requirement for Creative hardware. You can download Alchemy 1.45.20 at the top of the page.
I've used it before with zero problems. Did second opinion scans using Hitman Pro and system came back completely clean. The crack it's self though will most likely cause Microsoft Defender and other AV's to play it cautious and flag the exe you use to crack Alchemy, but you can delete the exe after you use it to crack Alchemy (see the readme).
Anyways. I've decided to give my PCI-E X-Fi Titanium one more try with Daniel K's latest and last driver release (he said he's done making creative drivers). The last release just came out a few days ago.
https://danielkawakami.blogspot.com/2021/08/f … port-packs.html
"X-Fi Support Pack 8.0 (Refresh 3)"
About to play some Condemned and see how it goes. My main problem last time with this card on Windows 10 was it getting stuck in Game Mode and not changing unless I rebooted. About to see if that happens when I quit Condemned.