AndreaColombo86 wrote on 2025-08-10, 18:03:

Has anyone tried this with Diablo II? Does it work / does it sound good?

https://forum.median-xl.com/viewtopic.php?t=59898

Don't have Diablo II I'm afraid.

AndreaColombo86 wrote on 2025-08-10, 18:03:

Has anyone tried this with Diablo II? Does it work / does it sound good?

https://forum.median-xl.com/viewtopic.php?t=59898

I did, a few years back. It was ok, you get more precise positional audio and a bit of reverb in appropriate places. There are some occlusion effects too.

See this post by @Sombrero for more info.

Anybody tried EAX 5.0 in Mass Effect? Is it good?

AndreaColombo86 wrote on 2025-08-11, 15:37:

Anybody tried EAX 5.0 in Mass Effect? Is it good?

Only g0t an Audigy RX and a possibly dead Extreme Music (PCI, might work in my retro machine). I no longer have my PCI-E Fatality Pro gamer with 64 MB of XRAM. Can't test EAX5 at the moment. Someone else will have to do it.

In games that do not support EAX such as Age of empires 2, does a Creative card - audigy 2zs for example - helps or is useless?

nd22 wrote on 2025-08-11, 18:13:

In games that do not support EAX such as Age of empires 2, does a Creative card - audigy 2zs for example - helps or is useless?

Without EAX support, that’s just another sound card. You’d probably get better sound quality from a modern external DAC.

nd22 wrote on 2025-08-11, 18:13:

In games that do not support EAX such as Age of empires 2, does a Creative card - audigy 2zs for example - helps or is useless?

Back in the day, Creative had some presets for older games that didn't support EAX. I haven't tested that thoroughly, but I remember that there was one such preset for Diablo 1, as an example.

That said, I think (not sure) that these presets were only included when using SBLive cards with their original drivers.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-08-11, 18:53:

nd22 wrote on 2025-08-11, 18:13:

In games that do not support EAX such as Age of empires 2, does a Creative card - audigy 2zs for example - helps or is useless?

Back in the day, Creative had some presets for older games that didn't support EAX. I haven't tested that thoroughly, but I remember that there was one such preset for Diablo 1, as an example.

That said, I think (not sure) that these presets were only included when using SBLive cards with their original drivers.

I remember using those presets back in the day, I'd also apply the same pre-set with similar games, eg if Red Alert had a preset I'd apply that to any RTS's that didn't have a preset.
I think you can still make profiles. But I haven't done any of this for years though.
Even leaving things at default as I do now an Audigy sounds better then basic onboard AC97 audio, especially if you enable say CMMS. Which is why I still tend to put them in every build.
EAX support for games that have it, and decent sound card for games that don't. It's still a Win/Win

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-08-11, 18:53:

nd22 wrote on 2025-08-11, 18:13:

In games that do not support EAX such as Age of empires 2, does a Creative card - audigy 2zs for example - helps or is useless?

Back in the day, Creative had some presets for older games that didn't support EAX. I haven't tested that thoroughly, but I remember that there was one such preset for Diablo 1, as an example.

That said, I think (not sure) that these presets were only included when using SBLive cards with their original drivers.

I know about Diablo 1 preset and I use it in my Pentium 2 system where I have a Live card.
Recently I finished testing socket A and I kept my favorite system assembled: XP 3200 with geforce 7600gt on Abit AN7. I wanted something more than sound storm so I installed an Audigy 2ZS which has EAX 4.0 so is more than enough for the time period this PC covers. I specifically did not installed a Live card because I think that sound storm and Live are very similar: both have EAX 2.0 support so it would not constitute an upgrade.
I am going to try Live to see if indeed Diablo 1 sounds better than on sound storm.

I’ve just tried Baldur’s Gate 2 on my Sound Blaster Live! using the 2004 driver for Windows XP. I can confirm that the occlusion effect is present.

However, I could not hear it in the Temple of Lathander, the one with the spinning 3D orb that makes a noise. No matter where in the viewport the sphere was, I could not hear a difference between Environmental Audio turned on or off.

AndreaColombo86 wrote on Today, 16:51:

I’ve just tried Baldur’s Gate 2 on my Sound Blaster Live! using the 2004 driver for Windows XP. I can confirm that the occlusion effect is present.

However, I could not hear it in the Temple of Lathander, the one with the spinning 3D orb that makes a noise. No matter where in the viewport the sphere was, I could not hear a difference between Environmental Audio turned on or off.

I only briefly tested occlusion in Baldur's Gate 2 with SBLive + WDM drivers, so I can't say for sure how well that works across the entire game. For best results, I recommend playing it on a Win9x rig using VxD drivers. Back in the day, VxD was the norm for gaming, so the developers likely targeted that while testing EAX.

By the way, if you're using a 5.1 speaker setup for EAX under Win9x, you need an Audigy. I gave up on SBLive cards because they always have CMSS turned on (hardcoded), which messes up positional audio on surround speakers. With Audigy cards, you can turn CMSS off at your leisure.