KainXVIII wrote on 2024-10-09, 13:27:

@Joseph_Joestar do YOU hear any reverb effects on your machine? How its compared to Miles option? And if yes, where specifically on level i can test it

I didn't hear any reverb while I was testing the game, but I just walked around the first level a little bit.

Maybe the effect comes up later on? Once you're inside a stone room or something? I'm not very familiar with this game, so I have no useful comparison points to offer.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-10-09, 15:19:

KainXVIII wrote on 2024-10-09, 13:27:

@Joseph_Joestar do YOU hear any reverb effects on your machine? How its compared to Miles option? And if yes, where specifically on level i can test it

I didn't hear any reverb while I was testing the game, but I just walked around the first level a little bit.

Maybe the effect comes up later on? Once you're inside a stone room or something? I'm not very familiar with this game, so I have no useful comparison points to offer.

Thanks anyway!

If you want you can add these videos to the main post:

Race Driver: GRID (PC) (Gameplay) / OpenAL HW | X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0KdcDYjlm0

Soldier of Fortune II (PC) (Gameplay) / OpenAL HW | X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcgapMPsh2U

Soldier of Fortune (PC) (Gameplay) / DS3D HW (ALchemy) | X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9XitLGLW5s

Mass Effect (PC) (Gameplay) / OpenAL HW | X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66uWZdHIQME

Battlefield 2 (PC) (Gameplay) / OpenAL HW | X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T2otD2VXEE

saludos!

Darkness Knight wrote on 2024-10-11, 01:49:

If you want you can add these videos to the main post:

These are great, thank you!

I've added them all. Cheers!

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-10-11, 07:20:

These are great, thank you!
I've added them all. Cheers!

Thank you so much, here's another one:

Call of Duty (PC) (Gameplay) / DS3D HW (ALchemy) | X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTcblEiScbQ

Saludos!

Darkness Knight wrote on 2024-10-13, 00:11:

Thank you so much, here's another one: […]
Show full quote

Thank you so much, here's another one:

Call of Duty (PC) (Gameplay) / DS3D HW (ALchemy) | X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTcblEiScbQ

Saludos!

Nice, added that as well.

I also came to appreciate EAX, but only now after many, many years.
Back in the day I used only integrated sound because i could not afford a dedicated sound card. I had 2.0 genius speakers - one of the cheapest in my country - for years.
Only in 2007 I had enough money to buy a 5.1 system: Altec lansing 151i - I still use it today; it's not the best, the overall volume is pretty low, but it does the job. Back in 2007 I had ( and still have ) Abit AW9D-MAX and used the "dedicated"sound card Audiomax - actually a Realtek codec - until 2011 when i bought the 2600K. Because I switched to Vista it never occurred to me that I was missing on something crucial in games!
Only in 2015 when I assembled my first purpose built retro system with the Barton 3200 and Abit AN7 I heard for the first time EAX in Diablo II. I was hooked! I could hear the arrows flying past me! I put a Creative live in the system and I could not hear a difference so I continued to use the integrated sound storm. Later I put the Live in the tualatin system (which had only an AC97 codec on the Abit ST6 board) and I was amazed how much difference can be heard by using EAX .
Today I use EAX in all my Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP systems. That means all my socket 7/370/462/478/754/939/slot 1 systems have a Live card (or sound storm when available) in them.
Only recently i bought 2 Audigy 2 ZS cards and I will test them to see if EAX 4.0 sounds better then EAX 2.0.

nd22 wrote on 2024-10-17, 07:09:

I also came to appreciate EAX, but only now after many, many years.
Back in the day I used only integrated sound because i could not afford a dedicated sound card. I had 2.0 genius speakers - one of the cheapest in my country - for years.
Only in 2007 I had enough money to buy a 5.1 system: Altec lansing 151i - I still use it today; it's not the best, the overall volume is pretty low, but it does the job. Back in 2007 I had ( and still have ) Abit AW9D-MAX and used the "dedicated"sound card Audiomax - actually a Realtek codec - until 2011 when i bought the 2600K. Because I switched to Vista it never occurred to me that I was missing on something crucial in games!

I can relate to that, since I was using a Sound Blaster PCI 128 with its crappy software based EAX 1.0 throughout the early 2000s. It worked in some games, but the results were very unimpressive, and the sound would often become "scratchy" due to the poor software emulation.

In 2005, I finally upgraded to an nForce4 system with a Realtek on-board sound solution. That supported EAX 2.0, but the results were still pretty mediocre, and the drivers for that thing sometimes caused crashes in certain games. As you say, Vista and Win7 came soon after, and games began moving away from EAX, so I became less interested in it as well. I also bought a set of Logitech 5.1 speakers around that time (which I still have), but I was never really impressed by the surround sound capabilities of that Realtek chip.

Then, about 5 years ago when I once again became interested in retro hardware, I got an Audigy 2 ZS, put it into that nForce4 system (which I had kept) and compared it to the on-board Realtek. The difference was night and day. Finally, EAX in my favorite games like Splinter Cell sounded great, and positional audio was more precise than ever. Soon afterwards, I got an X-Fi Titanium which I'm still using to this day.

nd22 wrote on 2024-10-17, 07:09:

Only recently i bought 2 Audigy 2 ZS cards and I will test them to see if EAX 4.0 sounds better then EAX 2.0.

I think you'll notice the difference, especially in later games like Thief 3: Deadly Shadows and F.E.A.R. Those two have excellent EAX 4.0 implementations, and they are well worth playing.

I hope so! Fear, Quake 4, Doom 3, Farcry 1, Serious Sam 2 are some of my favorites games!
I played Diablo II version 1.12 (last version that works fine on 98SE and is installed on all my systems) last night and it still sounds awesome on Live and a 5.1 setup! I put in Audigy 2 ZS and could not hear a single difference! Yes, it sounds very good but Live sounds also very good!

nd22 wrote on 2024-10-17, 09:42:

I hope so! Fear, Quake 4, Doom 3, Farcry 1, Serious Sam 2 are some of my favorites games!
I played Diablo II version 1.12 (last version that works fine on 98SE and is installed on all my systems) last night and it still sounds awesome on Live and a 5.1 setup! I put in Audigy 2 ZS and could not hear a single difference! Yes, it sounds very good but Live sounds also very good!

I don't think there are any improvements in regards of previous EAX version on later cards, so Diablo II being EAX 2.0 game it should sound the same on Live! and Audigy 2 ZS as far as EAX goes. The Audigy 2 ZS does have better quality output though.

Diablo II does sound great, I was especially pleased how you can hear the muffled acts of heinous violence happening in the rooms around you as a summoner necromancer.

nd22 wrote on 2024-10-17, 09:42:

I hope so! Fear, Quake 4, Doom 3, Farcry 1, Serious Sam 2 are some of my favorites games!
I played Diablo II version 1.12 (last version that works fine on 98SE and is installed on all my systems) last night and it still sounds awesome on Live and a 5.1 setup! I put in Audigy 2 ZS and could not hear a single difference! Yes, it sounds very good but Live sounds also very good!

There will be a difference in Quake 4, Doom 3 and F.E.A.R. since all of those support EAX 4.0.

But yeah, as @Sombrero said, having an Audigy doesn't automatically improve EAX 1.0 and EAX 2.0 titles. In some cases, you might be able to choose a higher number of hardware voices in such games, since the SBLive supports 32 while the Audigy supports 64, but that's about it.

Sombrero wrote on 2024-10-17, 10:05:

Diablo II does sound great, I was especially pleased how you can hear the muffled acts of heinous violence happening in the rooms around you as a summoner necromancer.

Yup, due to Occlusion and Obstruction, both of which were introduced in EAX 2.0. Baldur's Gate 2 has something similar too.

Though I especially like how those effects were used in Thief II: The Metal Age, where leaning onto a closed door allows you to hear (muffled) voices of characters who are talking in the other room. Pretty sure there's at least one mission where you need to do that specifically.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-10-17, 10:31:

Yup, due to Occlusion and Obstruction, both of which were introduced in EAX 2.0. Baldur's Gate 2 has something similar too.

Aww man, the beamdog enhanced editions of BG do have some quality of life improvements I personally can't live without anymore, but they sure don't sound anywhere as nice as that. I really wish sound design would get even a fraction of the ridiculous lenghts developers are willing to go with graphical effects these days, music and soundscape are criminally underrated if you ask me.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-10-17, 10:31:

Though I especially like how those effects were used in Thief II: The Metal Age, where leaning onto a closed door allows you to hear (muffled) voices of characters who are talking in the other room. Pretty sure there's at least one mission where you need to do that specifically.

Cool! I've been sitting on big box release of Thief II for ages now but Thief Gold seems to be unobtanium around here, and me being all about physical releases I have to wait for that. I'm looking forward giving them a go eventually, I did play some of Thief 1 back in the day but me being the silly recent PS1->PC convert I don't think I had the patience for it yet.

Sombrero wrote on 2024-10-17, 11:28:

Cool! I've been sitting on big box release of Thief II for ages now but Thief Gold seems to be unobtanium around here, and me being all about physical releases I have to wait for that. I'm looking forward giving them a go eventually, I did play some of Thief 1 back in the day but me being the silly recent PS1->PC convert I don't think I had the patience for it yet.

It might be a bit easier to track down the Thief Collection pack, which has all three games on it. Think I got mine for something like 5 EUR locally.

I wrote a mini review of that here. The gist of it being that this gives you all three games in their retail versions (unpatched) but it still has the patches (and PDF manuals) available separately on the disc. Installs fine on Win9x too, despite the box only mentioning Win2K/XP.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-10-17, 11:37:

It might be a bit easier to track down the Thief Collection pack, which has all three games on it. Think I got mine for something like 5 EUR locally.

I've seen several of that Thief Collection, but when I say being all about physical releases I mean original big boxes. Getting dvd case releases when big box releases exist are a reason to suspect heresy and getting one part of a franchise as big box and the other as dvd case warrants immediate extermination.

Am I making things unnecessarily difficult for myself? Absolutely! Do I like to do so though? Absolutely! It's difficult being me sometimes.

Besides if I get the collection I'd also get Thief 3, which I'd then would be obliged to beat since I own it (another one of my rules), which in turn would expectedly result me soiling my pants once I reach that damn orphanage level and I'd like that to not happen.

Sombrero wrote on 2024-10-17, 12:05:

I've seen several of that Thief Collection, but when I say being all about physical releases I mean original big boxes. Getting dvd case releases when big box releases exist are a reason to suspect heresy and getting one part of a franchise as big box and the other as dvd case warrants immediate extermination.

For me, a physical copy is a physical copy, regardless of the packaging. But at the same time, I do understand the appeal of big box releases and why people collect them. That said, getting the original editions of games that didn't exactly sell a bajillion copies might not be easy.

Besides if I get the collection I'd also get Thief 3, which I'd then would be obliged to beat since I own it (another one of my rules), which in turn would expectedly result me soiling my pants once I reach that damn orphanage level and I'd like that to not happen.

Heh, I think the EAX implementation in that particular mission might be a bit too realistic. 😁

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-10-17, 13:20:

That said, getting the original editions of games that didn't exactly sell a bajillion copies might not be easy.

Lets take that not easy and replace it with nearly impossible, I just went ahead and actually made sure that there even was an original european big box release of Thief Gold and there only exist this "Premier Collection" rerelease big box. Only North America got original edition, no wonder I haven't seen one this side of the pond. Welp. And I just bet getting that NA trapezoid release from ebay would be cheap as chips.

Forget that nonsense about heresy and immediate exterminations, that's silly talk. Nothing wrong about getting a dvd case Thief Collection, in fact I'll start keeping my eye open for one right now.

Here 2 videos more:

F.E.A.R. (PC) (Gameplay) / DS3D HW (ALchemy) | X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w_YS2hnais

Battlefield Vietnam (PC) (Gameplay) / DS3D HW (ALchemy) | X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty [16:9/4K@60]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-rIVJgae44

I want to remember that all videos were recorded using a modified version of the driver (based on v2.17.0008С) that is why EAX works as it should. with correct volume and high audio quality... Listen to what the reverb sounds like in the FEAR Audio Test and you'll know what I'm talking about. saludos

Saludos!

Darkness Knight wrote on 2024-10-18, 02:27:

Here 2 videos more:

Thanks, I've replaced the old F.E.A.R. entry with your video. At this time, I think I have enough links in the first post. The goal was to showcase the different EAX versions, and there should be plenty of material for that now.

However, feel free to post any new videos in this thread (as a standard reply). I'm sure there are some people who don't have EAX hardware, but are interested to hear how their favorite games sound with it enabled.

Darkness Knight wrote on 2024-10-18, 02:27:

I want to remember that all videos were recorded using a modified version of the driver (based on v2.17.0008С) that is why EAX works as it should. with correct volume and high audio quality... Listen to what the reverb sounds like in the FEAR Audio Test and you'll know what I'm talking about. saludos

Out of curiosity, is this fix different from what DanielK did in his latest X-Fi driver pack? I know that Creative's official X-Fi driver had some bugs with OpenAL, and I was glad that they were not present with DanielK's drivers. That said, I never used EAX on anything newer than Windows 7. Are there additional issues with Win10/11?

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-10-18, 04:06:

Out of curiosity, is this fix different from what DanielK did in his latest X-Fi driver pack? I know that Creative's official X-Fi driver had some bugs with OpenAL, and I was glad that they were not present with DanielK's drivers. That said, I never used EAX on anything newer than Windows 7. Are there additional issues with Win10/11?

The last X-Fi Support Pack 8.0 (Refresh 3) from daniel_k is the worst package, it is based on the Gigabyte X-Fi driver for its integrated sound... On the other hand, these are typical problems in daniel_k's drivers mod:

- Mode control on the remote unit does not work (Titanium Fatality).
- No microphone effects.
- "What U Hear" does not work if you do not install the Data file from win xp... but if you install it, you will lose WaveRT.
- The total harmonic distortion (THD) is off the charts.
- The branch 2.40.XX overload the DSP signal, which causes distortion at high frequencies and when using EAX filters (exaggerated reverb). All modified drivers of daniel_k based on that version have this issue.

The drivers modified by "Antes533" have another purpose; they have fixes and improvements, and these are their main advantages:

- The APO (responsible for rendering the sound) has been replaced with one of the highest quality; Scene depth, stereo and FX effects have been improved.
- The stability of the driver in general has been improved.
- Compatibility with the latest versions of Windows.
- 88.2kHz and 176kHz modes restored.
- Harmonic distortion has been improved.
- Being based on the official v2.17 drivers, these do not overload the DSP signal (unlike the 2.40) so the EAX effects are heard correctly without exaggerated reverberation.
- Other undocumented changes.

So it would be a kind of definitive drivers, saludos!