And here's doom 3 on the Audigy RX. It's a bit long, a playthrough of the first two levels:

https://youtu.be/kzOWqKrP8y8

UCyborg wrote on 2025-05-26, 17:29:

These Audigy drivers remind me of old ATI drivers. Several days ago I was testing something on Win11, the OS just blue screened when I disabled sound card in Device Manager.

Though to be fair, ATI liked to crap out during actual gaming, not testing odd scenarios.

I was playing a bit of Drakan, EAX effects are so subtle that they might as well not be there. On Audigy RX at least. I've read anecdotes X-Fi's EAX sounds different. In Drakan, with software based EAX, I could at least tell reverb was there. Then go and figure how it was intended...what a mess!

UCyborg wrote on 2025-06-08, 08:38:

I was playing a bit of Drakan, EAX effects are so subtle that they might as well not be there. On Audigy RX at least.

I can't speak for Drakan, as I haven't tested its EAX implementation extensively. However, there are other games from that era (late 90s, very early 2000s) where EAX only sounds correct if you play them under Windows 9x using VxD drivers for the sound card.

Notable examples include Baldur's Gate 2 and Need for Speed 4: High Stakes. Phil showcases the latter in this video around the 7:21 mark.

Never mind, I'm misremembering...brain playing tricks on me again...

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-06-08, 09:04:

However, there are other games from that era (late 90s, very early 2000s) where EAX only sounds correct if you play them under Windows 9x using VxD drivers for the sound card.

Weren't those just the problems of the era? Plenty of shit was bugged back then.

UCyborg wrote on 2025-06-08, 11:24:

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-06-08, 09:04:

However, there are other games from that era (late 90s, very early 2000s) where EAX only sounds correct if you play them under Windows 9x using VxD drivers for the sound card.

Weren't those just the problems of the era? Plenty of shit was bugged back then.

A few games made before 2001 seemingly expect VxD drivers for EAX functionality, as that was the norm back then. At least that's what tests conducted on period-correct hardware infer.

You could say it was a developer oversight to focus on VxD so much, but WDM drivers were still relatively "new" at that time, and people mostly used them for professional tasks (e.g. music production) and not for gaming. Thing is, WinXP can't use VxD drivers at all, meaning you're stuck with WDM. So those few games will never sound 100% correct when using EAX under WinXP and up. And no, Creative's ALchemy doesn't solve this.

sharangad wrote on 2025-05-31, 04:34:

And here's doom 3 on the Audigy RX. It's a bit long, a playthrough of the first two levels:

https://youtu.be/kzOWqKrP8y8

might be totally wrong here but i remember the reverb effects being much stronger on a 2zs. that has the visual twitch bug unless (possibly) using old XP beta drivers though. all the "fixes" that i've seen out there use openal soft only so not relevant for trying to use actual audigy cards.

auron wrote on 2025-06-08, 11:56:

sharangad wrote on 2025-05-31, 04:34:

And here's doom 3 on the Audigy RX. It's a bit long, a playthrough of the first two levels:

https://youtu.be/kzOWqKrP8y8

might be totally wrong here but i remember the reverb effects being much stronger on a 2zs. that has the visual twitch bug unless (possibly) using old XP beta drivers though. all the "fixes" that i've seen out there use openal soft only so not relevant for trying to use actual audigy cards.

I remember it being stronger, but at that time I had an x-fi extreme music.

UCyborg wrote on 2025-06-08, 08:38:

UCyborg wrote on 2025-05-26, 17:29:

These Audigy drivers remind me of old ATI drivers. Several days ago I was testing something on Win11, the OS just blue screened when I disabled sound card in Device Manager.

Though to be fair, ATI liked to crap out during actual gaming, not testing odd scenarios.

I was playing a bit of Drakan, EAX effects are so subtle that they might as well not be there. On Audigy RX at least. I've read anecdotes X-Fi's EAX sounds different. In Drakan, with software based EAX, I could at least tell reverb was there. Then go and figure how it was intended...what a mess!

I haven't heard any special effects in Drakan on X-fi (+win10) until i realized that EAX effects were disabled in my Creative audio control panel (in game mode) for some reason 🤣. After turning it back on (you can also increase effect amount with +1 or more dB) i can definitely hear reverb in the first cave under the tavern.

Is that how it's supposed to work on X-Fi? The only EAX settings Audigy has apply system wide, so chosen preset is applied to any sound that is played by any program, which is not something you normally want (probably). Also, EAX doesn't work in Drakan if disabled in Riot Engine Options dialog or if you load a saved game made while EAX was disabled.

I also noticed in Half-Life 1.1.1.0, current EAX effect is apparently not stored in the save file, so if you load a save made while effect was active where you were standing, it won't be heard after load until you pass another trigger in the environment activating it. Like I said, old shit's bugged!

UCyborg wrote on 2025-06-08, 17:00:

I also noticed in Half-Life 1.1.1.0, current EAX effect is apparently not stored in the save file, so if you load a save made while effect was active where you were standing, it won't be heard after load until you pass another trigger in the environment activating it. Like I said, old shit's bugged!

can confirm that, but that game to me is otherwise still a solid implementation, especially for an "early" title.

UCyborg wrote on 2025-06-08, 17:00:

Is that how it's supposed to work on X-Fi? The only EAX settings Audigy has apply system wide, so chosen preset is applied to any sound that is played by any program, which is not something you normally want (probably). Also, EAX doesn't work in Drakan if disabled in Riot Engine Options dialog or if you load a saved game made while EAX was disabled.

Seems so.

I see, does this dialog update in real time when you're playing EAX enabled title, seeing it has Active Preset box? Or maybe that applies if you've set global EAX effect in another place?

UCyborg wrote on 2025-06-08, 19:23:

I see, does this dialog update in real time when you're playing EAX enabled title, seeing it has Active Preset box? Or maybe that applies if you've set global EAX effect in another place?

It did on an X-fi back in the day.

On the Audigy RX it's already at max:

Has anyone got Alchemy working on Win11? I can't get a single game working with it.

sharangad wrote on 2025-06-09, 02:26:

Has anyone got Alchemy working on Win11? I can't get a single game working with it.

Why use this program at all?
Copy dsound.dll to the folder with the game executable file.
That's it.
Read the dsoundlog.txt file that appears after launching the game
If there is an inscription "Using Native OpenAL Renderer" then everything worked.

sharangad wrote on 2025-06-09, 02:26:

Has anyone got Alchemy working on Win11? I can't get a single game working with it.

I don't have Win11, but ALchemy works fine on Win10 LTSC.

One thing to note, ALchemy targets retail games, and uses their registry entries for detection. For that reason, GOG/Steam versions of games might not be automatically detected. You can try adding them manually though.

shevalier wrote on 2025-06-09, 05:00:

Why use this program at all? Copy dsound.dll to the folder with the game executable file. That's it. Read the dsoundlog.txt file […]
Show full quote

sharangad wrote on 2025-06-09, 02:26:

Has anyone got Alchemy working on Win11? I can't get a single game working with it.

Why use this program at all?
Copy dsound.dll to the folder with the game executable file.
That's it.
Read the dsoundlog.txt file that appears after launching the game
If there is an inscription "Using Native OpenAL Renderer" then everything worked.

Doesn't work, the log file either says using openal or some error. In both cases the games don't detect eax support.

Nfs hot pursuit [2s]3[/s] and thief deadly shadows demos don't detect it. I don't know whether it's because they're demos. But I remember the Nfs hp2 demo did support it way back then.

Also I've applied the reg key tweak to load dsound.dll from the local folder instead of from system32 (something win11 does to known dlls).

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-06-09, 05:07:

sharangad wrote on 2025-06-09, 02:26:

Has anyone got Alchemy working on Win11? I can't get a single game working with it.

I don't have Win11, but ALchemy works fine on Win10 LTSC.

One thing to note, ALchemy targets retail games, and uses their registry entries for detection. For that reason, GOG/Steam versions of games might not be automatically detected. You can try adding them manually though.

I added the games manually based on the folders and used manual settings for buffers. Nfs for instance doesn't start up unless I know the number of voices down to 32. Maybe my settings are wrong.

For thief, I added the game and its system folder.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-06-09, 05:07:

sharangad wrote on 2025-06-09, 02:26:

Has anyone got Alchemy working on Win11? I can't get a single game working with it.

I don't have Win11, but ALchemy works fine on Win10 LTSC.

One thing to note, ALchemy targets retail games, and uses their registry entries for detection. For that reason, GOG/Steam versions of games might not be automatically detected. You can try adding them manually though.

I no longer have disc based versions of these.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-06-09, 05:07:

sharangad wrote on 2025-06-09, 02:26:

Has anyone got Alchemy working on Win11? I can't get a single game working with it.

I don't have Win11, but ALchemy works fine on Win10 LTSC.

One thing to note, ALchemy targets retail games, and uses their registry entries for detection. For that reason, GOG/Steam versions of games might not be automatically detected. You can try adding them manually though.

The GOG version has EAX patched out somehow, I remember someone complaining about it somewhere.

sharangad wrote on 2025-06-09, 05:37:

The GOG version has EAX patched out somehow, I remember someone complaining about it somewhere.

Yeah, I've seen this in a few of their releases, including Splinter Cell.

At least for that one, there's an Xdelta patch which restores it.