If you have the spare slots just have both like I do. I have an MX-300 card and it has an IO expansion header on the back of the card, this exposes SPDIF which I have connected to the digital CD header of an Audigy Platinum. Speakers are connected to the Audigy and all Aureal audio is piped over digitally so there is no additional audio hiss.

This will give you the best of both worlds. You have EAX as it has the most support, but the games that support A3D 2.0 will have their best sound.

Yeah, if it's an option, use both. If not, I'd go with EAX. My impression is that it's more commonly used. At least the games I like use that over A3D.

EAX can be used on WIndows XP or Windows Vista+ with API wrapper, but Aureal 3D is only Win9x.

im running both cards on one my win98 systems. I drive the output of the aureal into the line in on the audigy 2zs. So the best of both worlds.

Thanks everyone.

I am sure I have another PCI slot free as it's an ATX motherboard so a fair few slots. So might connect both.

Do I have to connect both cards together? If so, is that Speaker Out from one to Line In on the other? Then presumably just select in game which sound card to use I assume?

Sorry if it sounds dumb, I've just never ran two sound cards together.

This machine will only ever have Win98SE on it, I have a handful of Thinkpad laptops for XP gaming where compatibility and DOS are not factors in the same way

A3d does spatial audio. Early eax does reverb.

Vortex2 still does eax. I kinda see it as a no brainer for around 2000 games.

Eax gets good later on, f.e.a.r. is a good example. But around 2k games, supp for a3d 2.0 is great, kinda a bitch to get it working with everything, some games work with this driver, others with that, some games have to be lower version, cus later ones patched it out....

But when it does work, its great.

Eax also nice to have, but adding some reverb to the sound, just cant compare to positional audio on headphones.

I have both in my computer. You don't have to choose. With that said, the difference between EAX and A3D in most games is pretty trivial. The Vortex 2 with digital out sounds really good, but not as a good as digital out from my Audigy 2ZS. The vortex 2 does have pretty decent SB pro emulation and onboard midi - if light DOS gaming appeals to you and you don't have a dedicated ISA card. The Creative cards can also do SB16 emulation with the appropriate drivers though. There are good reasons to choose either card, but for me, if I had to choose one, my Audigy 2ZS sounds better in all but a one or two games. A3D is an interesting techology that rarely if ever saw its full potential realized, and was never as widely supported as EAX was.

Vortex 2 doesn't really support EAX. There is only beta support in the buggy 2048 driver that you don't really want to use and it doesn't sound very good anyway.

Own both a Vortex 2 and a Live/Audigy. The best compatibility and excitement.

The Sensaura based cards like ones that used the CS4630 also do nice EAX. And so does nForce APU/Soundstorm. Actually so do the Philips Thunderbird based cards (Qsound tech). They all sound a little different so interesting experiences. But you will run into the occasional game compatibility quirks with these options.

Sensaura 3D also had good positional audio for headphones, which is supposedly was integrated into CMSS for X-Fi cards. So it's an interesting choice too.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-01-02, 13:30:

Sensaura 3D also had good positional audio for headphones, which is supposedly was integrated into CMSS for X-Fi cards. So it's an interesting choice too.

Would I be best off then going straight to an X-Fi card and not bothering with the Vortex 2? Though I guess Win98SE compatibility might be iffy at best

Geon106 wrote on 2022-01-02, 19:24:

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-01-02, 13:30:

Sensaura 3D also had good positional audio for headphones, which is supposedly was integrated into CMSS for X-Fi cards. So it's an interesting choice too.

Would I be best off then going straight to an X-Fi card and not bothering with the Vortex 2? Though I guess Win98SE compatibility might be iffy at best

Iffy? Not at all. Non-existent. The X-fi launced in late 2005 and while Win98 extended support lasted until mid-2006, in reality back then hardware manufacturers dropped support very early after XP released. Hardware released in 2004 was already iffy with Win98.

The last creative card with drivers for windows 98 is the audigy 2. Game compatibility is very good if you use the VXD driver.

mothergoose729 wrote on 2022-01-02, 23:59:

The last creative card with drivers for windows 98 is the audigy 2. Game compatibility is very good if you use the VXD driver.

Would the Audigy 2 be a better choice than the Aureal Vortex 2 for late 90s 3D gaming?

Geon106 wrote on 2022-01-08, 18:34:

mothergoose729 wrote on 2022-01-02, 23:59:

The last creative card with drivers for windows 98 is the audigy 2. Game compatibility is very good if you use the VXD driver.

Would the Audigy 2 be a better choice than the Aureal Vortex 2 for late 90s 3D gaming?

Unless you plan on heavy "headphone" usage, I wouldn't bother with an Aureal at all (I know this is heresy!) Sound Blaster Live! through Audigy 2 are all great choices for Windows 9X. I don't even bother with EAX on the Sound Blasters. Since the Sound Blasters are more readily available, cheaper, less finicky drivers, and still sound great, there's no point for me to have a Vortex card (I sold mine off a few years ago).

Meatball wrote on 2022-01-08, 18:40:

Geon106 wrote on 2022-01-08, 18:34:

mothergoose729 wrote on 2022-01-02, 23:59:

The last creative card with drivers for windows 98 is the audigy 2. Game compatibility is very good if you use the VXD driver.

Would the Audigy 2 be a better choice than the Aureal Vortex 2 for late 90s 3D gaming?

Unless you plan on heavy "headphone" usage, I wouldn't bother with an Aureal at all (I know this is heresy!) Sound Blaster Live! through Audigy 2 are all great choices for Windows 9X. I don't even bother with EAX on the Sound Blasters. Since the Sound Blasters are more readily available, cheaper, less finicky drivers, and still sound great, there's no point for me to have a Vortex card (I sold mine off a few years ago).

Hmm. Well I'd do a mix of headphones and speakers. I would want hardware acceleration such as EAX or A3D.

It seems EAX is more widely supported, but on a handful of A3D titles, A3D sounds better.

Maybe I'll try my Audigy 2 and try and compare

Build 2 PCs and get both. I do that, and for Sensaura as well (Game Theatre XP).

kolderman wrote on 2022-01-08, 19:31:

Build 2 PCs and get both. I do that, and for Sensaura as well (Game Theatre XP).

Well my mid 90s DOS/Win95 machine has an AWE32. This providing excellent compatibility.

This one is my 97-2001 PC where DOS is less of an issue but want some nice hardware acceleration for games to sound at their best

For anything mid-2001 onwards i have a Thinkpad T500 laptop with XP

Some people have said putting both sound cards in, I might try this though not sure how to connect them both and if games will be able to work out which to use for what.

Right think I've got a solution in place.

I've installed the Audigy 2 above the Vortex 2 and connected a 3.5MM audio cable from the Vortex2 to the Audigy Line In via a splitter cable(more on this in a mo). I've then got the Audigy Line Out running to a 3 in 1 out Audio Splitter along with where I split the Vortex2.

So the audio splitter has Audigy on Input 1 and Vortex2 on Input 2. My speakers then connect to the Output of the audio splitter.

In Windows I've made 3x hardware profiles:

- Original Configuration, both cards are active and I can in software choose my preferred card. Ideal for games that let you pick a soundcard
- EAX, this just has the Audigy 2 active. The AV2 is disabled in device manager
- A3D, this just has the Vortex2 active. The Audigy is disabled in device manager

So I can load which API I'm looking to use on start up or load both

Now I read a downside is the Audigy replaces the A3D.dll file with its own, the Vortex2 cannot use this file. Putting the Vortex2 file in its place causes crashes for the Audigy. To get around this on my desktop I have 2 folders, Audigy A3D and Vortex2 A3D. In these folders is each sound cards A3D.dll file respectively. Also on my desktop is a shortcut to C:\Windows\System with hidden files set to be shown. If booting to a different Hardware Profile (or if on the Original Configuration but changing games to one that needs the other), I simply copy and paste the file required for that card into that shortcut.

I tested it and indeed only the enabled card gives audio or whichever is selected on the Original Configuration. I loaded up Thief on my EAX boot with the Audigy as this game I previously played with A3D and got the splash screen, this time no splash screen but EAX was working and it sounded great! Maybe a bit too much reverb but the general 3D positioning was decent.

Only issue I've encountered is the line is quite noisy so I might move the audio leads away from the power sockets. This was on headphones by the way though I've ordered some Creative T20 Gigaworks II speakers which I'm looking forward to trying 😁

nice work, I would prefer dual booting 9X myself. I would just install a3d on one partition and the EAX on the other partition to avoid having to manipulate files everytime I wanted to use somthing. I've done this Successfully using BootMGR as a boot manager and R-LOEW patches so 98se doesn't complain about multiple primary partitions on the same Disk. Of course one could always use 2 physical disks and not use any patches, and juse use any bootmanager. Since you're having to reboot anyways to select a differnt configuration this way is just more hassle free.