Original Bioshock:
https://youtu.be/DBB1O85BfVo

(This might be blocked in some places because of a song in the game near the Neptune Lounge map.)

sharangad wrote on 2025-07-04, 22:21:

Original Bioshock:
https://youtu.be/DBB1O85BfVo

Creative's audio guide for that game suggests that you need to manually reduce the number of hardware voices on Audigy cards for optimal effect.

Creative Labs wrote:

5. What about other audio solutions?

Audigy sound cards are not capable of mixing as many 3D sources as X-Fi, so to avoid missing sounds you should modify the "Bioshock.ini" file. Change "MaxChannels=128" to "MaxChannels=60". You might want to make a backup of the file before you change it.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-07-05, 06:38:

sharangad wrote on 2025-07-04, 22:21:

Original Bioshock:
https://youtu.be/DBB1O85BfVo

Creative's audio guide for that game suggests that you need to manually reduce the number of hardware voices on Audigy cards for optimal effect.

Creative Labs wrote:

5. What about other audio solutions?

Audigy sound cards are not capable of mixing as many 3D sources as X-Fi, so to avoid missing sounds you should modify the "Bioshock.ini" file. Change "MaxChannels=128" to "MaxChannels=60". You might want to make a backup of the file before you change it.

I generally do that for everything with alchemy.
Didn't do that for bioshock.

NFS High Stakes:
https://youtu.be/MZcw9sImIq4

Is CtHelper.exe needed for anything? It's a background processes that comes with Audigy drivers and runs under logged in user. I noticed it has constantly opened handles to \Device\CTPROXY and \Device\EMUPIA. Wondering if it has something to do with EAX dying. Or if there's any other solution when it dies other than to reboot Windows.

UCyborg wrote on 2025-07-08, 21:48:

Is CtHelper.exe needed for anything? It's a background processes that comes with Audigy drivers and runs under logged in user. I noticed it has constantly opened handles to \Device\CTPROXY and \Device\EMUPIA. Wondering if it has something to do with EAX dying. Or if there's any other solution when it dies other than to reboot Windows.

I don't know. Creative's drivers work in weird ways. I seem to recall that back in the XP days their mixer app only worked with the specific version of the audio driver it was built against. So if you updated the driver, the old mixer wouldn't work. I don't know whether that's true for all XP drivers, but I noticed it with at least one specific driver version.

UCyborg wrote on 2025-07-08, 21:48:

Is CtHelper.exe needed for anything?

Supposedly, it helps the hardware to better interface with certain games that use EAX. At least that's what I vaguely remember reading on some support forum.

If you google cthelper.exe you will find that many people had issues with it in the past. It can be disabled on startup via msconfig and such, though I'm not sure what effect that would have on games.

Alright, will see how it holds up without CtHelper.exe. EAX works without it. \Device\CTPROXY is opened in games using ct_oal.dll in any way.

How do you people feel about CMSS effects on music? With music players, it does sound bad to me, but what about in games? Maybe GTA: San Andreas is just notoriously bad example with its radio and maybe I'm biased due to the fact that I put some of my own favorite tracks on the radio that I know well. But what about in-game music in general?

For one thing, started playing through Max Payne 1 again recently, I did like the punch CMSS added to bomb explosion underground in one of the first levels. It's not something that can be normally reproduced in other ways without bumping up the volume, which make other things sound unnatural to me.

UCyborg wrote on Yesterday, 19:22:

Alright, will see how it holds up without CtHelper.exe. EAX works without it. \Device\CTPROXY is opened in games using ct_oal.dll in any way.

How do you people feel about CMSS effects on music? With music players, it does sound bad to me, but what about in games? Maybe GTA: San Andreas is just notoriously bad example with its radio and maybe I'm biased due to the fact that I put some of my own favorite tracks on the radio that I know well. But what about in-game music in general?

For one thing, started playing through Max Payne 1 again recently, I did like the punch CMSS added to bomb explosion underground in one of the first levels. It's not something that can be normally reproduced in other ways without bumping up the volume, which make other things sound unnatural to me.

Definitely not for music. I'm not sure but on the Audigy I think it needs to be on for headphone virtualization ( openal /ds3d).

UCyborg wrote on Yesterday, 19:22:

How do you people feel about CMSS effects on music? With music players, it does sound bad to me, but what about in games?

I wouldn't use it for music, unless you really want to expand stereo to surround speakers. Personally, I don't like that, but some people seem to enjoy the effect.

As for gaming, most of the time I'm using a 5.1 speaker setup, so I keep CMSS turned off. For those rare instances when I switch to headphones, I do use CMSS since it can further enhance positional audio. Note that the X-Fi has a more advanced version of CMSS-3D compared to Audigy cards.