Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-05-05, 16:42:
AWE64 cards also have something called "Creative 3D Stereo Enhancement Effect".
AWE64 Manual wrote:
The Creative 3D Stereo Enhancement (3DSE) effect allows you to eliminate speaker crosstalk which occurs when two speakers are placed close together. With this effect enabled, mono and stereo sounds produced by your speakers will have increased depth and breadth.
I always turn this off, so I have no idea how it works in games.
That's not an AWE64 exclusive feature, though. CT3DSE is just some analog filtering magic Creative Labs added as optional feature to their later cards. I wouldn't be surprised to find CT3DSE even on some Vibra16 series cards, but it is definitely on the CT3600, a very low end SB32 variant (the removed "AWE" from the name to point out the lowendness of the card).
As you just need to turn the magic "made it sound more spacy" filter on once to have it apply to all sound produced by the card, the feature will affect all games, whether they use digitized sound, OPL synthesis or wavetable synthesis. As usual for this kind of "3D spatialization", it makes especially mono sounds more appealing. On the other hand, it makes the position of different instruments in classic orchestra recordings, or polyphonic MIDI synthesis with careful stereo panning noticably less clear. It's thus a matter of taste whether you like CT3DSE on mono games (SB 2.0, Adlib), you can even use it for games with a bit of stereo support, but as soon as you want the best defined stereo positioning, as in hearing the direction to the source of shots that are hurting you, you better turn it off.