Barley wrote on 2025-07-12, 14:24:

Right. According to https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … ith_EAX_support Colin McRae: Dirt only has an X in the EAX 5.0 column, while Quake 4 has an X in the 4.0 and 5.0 columns. So what happens if I use an Audigy RX card with Colin McRae: Dirt? Do I get no EAX effects at all?

Doesn't look like anyone here has tested that yet. Try it, and let us know if it works. I can amend the wiki page if it does. For reference, with EAX 5.0 enabled on an X-Fi card, it shows up in the options menu like so:

If EAX 4.0 is supported, I imagine it should appear there too.

Thanks. F1 2010 and Race Driver: Grid are two other titles that only have an X under EAX 5.0 that I am curious about. I would test it myself but don't have the games (yet) 😀.

Barley wrote on 2025-07-12, 14:55:

Thanks. F1 2010 and Race Driver: Grid are two other titles that only have an X under EAX 5.0 that I am curious about. I would test it myself but don't have the games (yet) 😀.

Colin McRae Dirt Demo runs and shows EAX 5.0 in OpenAL 3D High mode. I don't know whether EAX is working though. Surround appears to be.

https://youtu.be/hKu00OkDzqw

The other two games I'll check out later.

Generally, if the game uses the EAGL library there's some sort of fallback to an earlier version.

F1 2010 doesn't have a demo and the GRID demo doesn't seem to support hardware accelerated audio. That might just be the demo. There's no OpenAL file or anything in there.

I don't own these three games and I tried just the demos.

sharangad wrote on 2025-07-12, 10:20:

NFS High Stakes: CMSS On and Off https://youtu.be/pabOQ_4ZH2w

Unfortunately I didn't try selecting the same track for each go, but the difference is audible. There're quick jump chapters in the video details.
I think it's safe to say stereo music loses something with CMSS turned on.

You're right, it's a shame, music can be big part of the atmosphere. Creative surely won't lift a finger to improve any of this tech, so things may just stay as they are unless someone improves OpenAL Soft + DSOAL. I have a hunch it's more on OpenAL Soft then DSOAL.

I once made Creative ALchemy's dsound.dll wrap to soft_oal.dll, Mafia had the same glitches as if DSOAL's dsound.dll was wrapping.

a driver fix for openal bug with xfi titanium pcie-express card introduced in 2.4x drivers ? Thanks

willow wrote on 2025-07-18, 20:28:

a driver fix for openal bug with xfi titanium pcie-express card introduced in 2.4x drivers ? Thanks

If you're using WinXP or Win7, you can follow my guide. It uses the older 2.17.0008 driver which doesn't have the OpenAL bug.

But if you're on Win10 or Win11, you may instead want to try DanielK's X-Fi pack, or alternatively Antes533's modified drivers. Both of them fix the OpenAL bug, but do so in different ways.

Bioshock original with working EAX
EAX wasn't working in the earlier video. It is in this:
https://youtu.be/K-cZkhtvpnM?si=KmgVxTasH2KTwVQ4

The song at the beginning had been stripped out by YouTube because of copyright issues.

sharangad wrote on Yesterday, 01:57:

Bioshock original with working EAX
EAX wasn't working in the earlier video. It is in this:
https://youtu.be/K-cZkhtvpnM?si=KmgVxTasH2KTwVQ4

I played through it a few years back on my X-Fi Titanium, and I really liked the EAX implementation.

Sound propagation through the environment was very realistic, and positional audio was superb on my 5.1 setup. Due to the nature of BioShock's setting, there are a lot of places where occlusion and reverb are used really well.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on Yesterday, 03:15:

sharangad wrote on Yesterday, 01:57:

Bioshock original with working EAX
EAX wasn't working in the earlier video. It is in this:
https://youtu.be/K-cZkhtvpnM?si=KmgVxTasH2KTwVQ4

I played through it a few years back on my X-Fi Titanium, and I really liked the EAX implementation.

Sound propagation through the environment was very realistic, and positional audio was superb on my 5.1 setup. Due to the nature of BioShock's setting, there are a lot of places where occlusion and reverb are used really well.

Yeah the sound is messed up on the Audigy.

Also, I think my recording levels are too high. OBS keeps resetting it every single time.

The footsteps are missing.