Since that topic ran its course another enthusiast already experimented with his own Sensaura card (Sensaura on Yamaha YMF 7x4 cards) which found Half-Life to be among those lacking support for A3D effects on other than actual A3D hardware.

Hmm...
The question is, how do they know it didn't work for Half Life?

Was it the splash screen and intro sound? Because with the stock a3dapi.dll, the splash screen and sound appeared for me in both Half Life and Counter Strike, but in Counter Strike console, it says "Initializing A3D...failed", so splash screen doesn't automatically means it worked i guess?

Or there may be some sounds that i should try to listen for, but i don't know what i should look for. I listened to A3D gameplay footage of Half Life on youtube and it's quite hard for me to hear the difference....it's not vastly different like EAX.

My point is that I have no idea how to know if it worked or not

Fair enough, but I would not use YouTube to observe any kind of surround effects since it is certain something gets lost in the streaming translation, especially "outdated" computer-specific quasi-surround. What I gather from Joestar's list is that, while some games (Unreal & Dark engines) seem to particularly like Sensaura and have special effects through it, in general A3D 2.0 games (which Half-Life is) only function properly on A3D 2.0 hardware. Joe's explored this field quite a bit, so I have no reason to doubt his results: if you read on in the linked topic you see he gets an A3D card and compares what sounds better on which hardware from his list...but it is anecdotal so you are free to take that however you decide (technical reasons make the difference not something observable via an audio recording file).

I see, thanks for the explanation! I will read your linked thread more thoroughly.

I guess it's you'll know it once you hear it kind of thing, so if I'm not hearing it, it probably isn't happening.

It is a pity because Half Life is my favourite, but at least we have a modern community created audio solution that seems to work very well!

I am unfamiliar with what modern upgrades do to implement surround sound effects, but I should think Half-Life would benefit from such at least since it was ported to the Source engine. Back in the 90s, Sensaura and A3D were among several implementations for computer game audio to get around stereo limitations; home computers were not yet expected to connect to surround sound setups as we know them today (and very few games supported more than 2 speakers until the 2000s), hence the HRTF approach Aureal used which may be comparable to the way today's soundbars use directional acoustics to simulate full surround [though A3D is probably best experienced with headphones]. For the original game on retro hardware: if Half-Life is one of your favorites and you wish to experience the quasi-surround as designed, it is a bit pricey but not difficult to find an A3D 2.0 card on the secondhand market (do your homework on how to tell which ones are 2.0-compliant); just understand the drivers were always finicky so getting it to work could be an adventure, but success is worth it.

BaronSFel001 wrote on 2025-08-05, 15:13:

I am unfamiliar with what modern upgrades do to implement surround sound effects, but I should think Half-Life would benefit from such at least since it was ported to the Source engine. Back in the 90s, Sensaura and A3D were among several implementations for computer game audio to get around stereo limitations; home computers were not yet expected to connect to surround sound setups as we know them today (and very few games supported more than 2 speakers until the 2000s), hence the HRTF approach Aureal used which may be comparable to the way today's soundbars use directional acoustics to simulate full surround [though A3D is probably best experienced with headphones]. For the original game on retro hardware: if Half-Life is one of your favorites and you wish to experience the quasi-surround as designed, it is a bit pricey but not difficult to find an A3D 2.0 card on the secondhand market (do your homework on how to tell which ones are 2.0-compliant); just understand the drivers were always finicky so getting it to work could be an adventure, but success is worth it.

Exactly - you need a vortex2 based card (au8830 not 8820) for A3D 2.0 to work properly. You would think 1.0 hardware would work with 2.0 games with some limitations (maybe it was supposed to?) but it doesn't seem to be the case.

On the bright side, I have seen OEM versions of Montego 2 with au8830 on Ebay for "regular" au8820 vortex prices, so if you really want one for a good price usually you just have to search around for a bit.

I believe this video is a good place to see what the latest achievements in the community are in terms of audio for Half Life 1:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR2abojkuow

Interesting about A3D 2.0 cards, I never thought you can still get them at any price lower than £100. I did see one sold for £20, but that guy was extremely lucky because the seller mislabeled it. Either that or he got scammed xD.

Anyways, gonna add au8830 to my ebay keyword searches, thanks for the suggestion!

randomdavid wrote on 2025-08-02, 20:31:

Long story short, I got my hands on 2 sound cards using the same audio chip, the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and the Terratec Sixpack 5.1

You're incredibly lucky with these CS4630 cards, they are much rarer than AU8830 cards. Finding any Vortex 2 shouldn't be a problem.