MattRocks wrote on 2026-01-13, 13:30:

Doom3 has its own software sound engine for effects. The sound engine does not rely on any hardware for audio effects.

This is true for the retail release, but I'm not sure if it still applies after EAX support was added in patch 1.3.

Per Creative's patch notes Doom 3 uses fully hardware based 3D (sound) mixing. Now, I'm no programmer, and I can't look at the source code to confirm this, but that's what Creative officially stated back in the day.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-01-13, 13:43:

MattRocks wrote on 2026-01-13, 13:30:

Doom3 has its own software sound engine for effects. The sound engine does not rely on any hardware for audio effects.

This is true for the retail release, but I'm not sure if it still applies after EAX support was added in patch 1.3.

Per Creative's patch notes Doom 3 uses fully hardware based 3D (sound) mixing. Now, I'm no programmer, and I can't look at the source code to confirm this, but that's what Creative officially stated back in the day.

Creative Labs were really very good at marketing, and a lot of strong business lessons can be learned from how they positioned themselves and made their products aspirational.

Patch 1.3 does not change the audio engine - what is adds is EAX reverb after mixing the audio.

Id could have trivially applied more reverb if that is the effect they were aiming for, so it's not an Id design - it's a Creative Labs marketing intervention.

After Patch 1.3 is applied, it can be said Doom3 supports EAX but it's not actual EAX processing. It's more like a post-process add-on effect chosen by users of EAX cards, not by the game studio.

Before patching, EAX reverb is set (in control panel) and applies globally. After patching, EAX reverb is set by Doom3 and applied to various Doom3 scenes.

But, another lesson learned: If you divide the Windows community into "have" and "have-not" then you'd piss off Windows developers and they will disable your hardware 😉

MattRocks wrote on 2026-01-13, 14:04:

Id could have trivially applied more reverb if that is the effect they were aiming for, so it's not an Id design - it's a Creative Labs marketing intervention.

For what it's worth, in those same patch notes Creative states that the RoE expansion maps would be designed with EAX in mind. And having played it a few years back, I would say that their statement has some merit.

On a similar note, after having completed OG Doom 3 and its expansion on an X-Fi Titanium hooked up to 5.1 speakers, I then fired up the BFG Edition to try its "Lost Mission" bonus campaign. With that same hardware setup, the BFG Edition (which doesn't support EAX) sounded flat and lifeless to my ears. Its positional audio was also far less precise than OG Doom 3 with EAX. While this is purely anecdotal, it is what I've experienced on my hardware. Creative also states that the Doom 3 software mixer tops out at 5.1 surround, while their OpenAL mixer can go up to 7.1, but I had no way of testing that.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-01-13, 15:18:

MattRocks wrote on 2026-01-13, 14:04:

Id could have trivially applied more reverb if that is the effect they were aiming for, so it's not an Id design - it's a Creative Labs marketing intervention.

For what it's worth, in those same patch notes Creative states that the RoE expansion maps would be designed with EAX in mind. And having played it a few years back, I would say that their statement has some merit.

On a similar note, after having completed OG Doom 3 and its expansion on an X-Fi Titanium hooked up to 5.1 speakers, I then fired up the BFG Edition to try its "Lost Mission" bonus campaign. With that same hardware setup, the BFG Edition (which doesn't support EAX) sounded flat and lifeless to my ears. Its positional audio was also far less precise than OG Doom 3 with EAX. While this is purely anecdotal, it is what I've experienced on my hardware. Creative also states that the Doom 3 software mixer tops out at 5.1 surround, while their OpenAL mixer can go up to 7.1, but I had no way of testing that.

I also remember some Unreal maps released by Creative Labs, and the difference is that nobody played those. There’s a lesson in those Unreal maps: people were buying video games first, and audio experiences second. Game studios understood this and didn’t want audio that distracted from their core selling points.

BFG sounds flatter than OG because the Doom 3 developers were doubling down on what actually sold games (faster pacing, brighter visuals, and less audio distraction). This mattered even more at the time of BFG's release because dominant platforms by then were consoles, laptops, and smaller fixed-format systems that didn’t have replaceable sound cards or enthusiast audio setups.

I’m not against EAX; I’m against looking for EAX where it was never intended to be a defining feature. Neither OG nor BFG are good demonstrators of EAX.

MattRocks wrote on 2026-01-13, 15:56:

BFG sounds flatter than OG because the Doom 3 developers were doubling down on what actually sold games (faster pacing, brighter visuals, and less audio distraction). This mattered even more at the time of BFG's release because dominant platforms by then were consoles, laptops, and smaller fixed-format systems that didn’t have replaceable sound cards or enthusiast audio setups.

Out of curiosity, I just fired up OG Doom 3 on my WinXP machine, with the aforementioned X-Fi Titanium and a 5.1 surround speaker setup. When EAX is turned off, positional audio is much less precise, even in the original version of the game. So that isn't specific to the BFG Edition.

With EAX turned on, when starting a new game and talking to one of the NPCs at the launchpad, I (mostly) hear their voice from the front center speaker if I'm facing them directly. But if I turn around and start walking away from them, then their voice shifts to the rear speakers, and gradually gets quieter as I move further away. With EAX off, this doesn't happen, and the NPC voice always comes from the left/right speakers. I also checked the console, and the OpenAL mixer isn't used if EAX is disabled, so the inferior results definitively come from the game's own software mixer. This reminds me of the instances when I was playing through the campaign with EAX on, and I could literally hear an enemy spawning behind me (as they do in this game) on my rear speakers, which allowed me to react instantly. You don't get that level of precision with EAX off.

EDIT - I just googled this, and it turns out you need to manually add seta s_numberOfSpeakers "6" to DoomConfig.cfg if you want to use 5.1 speakers with the software mixer. In contrast, the OpenAL mixer seems to automatically detect your speaker setup based on Windows sound settings. After editing the speaker number manually, I do get the NPC voice from the front center and rear speakers with the software mixer, but the positioning is still not as precise as with the OpenAL mixer, and the voice doesn't fade as smoothly when I move away. So turning EAX on does provide some benefits here.

MattRocks wrote on 2026-01-13, 15:56:

I’m not against EAX; I’m against looking for EAX where it was never intended to be a defining feature. Neither OG nor BFG are good demonstrators of EAX.

While I do agree that there are better games to showcase EAX, I personally like its implementation in Doom 3. At the very least, it improves positonal audio, as noted above. Though I will acknowledge that the added reverb/occlusion might not be to everyone's taste. Ultimately, it comes down to personal preference.

Was Resurrection of Evil able to make better use of EAX ? I have never tried this one yet on PC

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-01-13, 09:22:

Doom 3 can use up to 128 hardware voices on X-Fi cards, while being limited to 64 on Audigy cards. That might account for some of the differences, but there could be other factors as well.
X-RAM will also be utilized on X-Fi cards, but I don't think that would matter much in this case.

The 128 audio streams in X-Fi have nothing to do with this.
This is about changing approaches to programming.
The game developer initialises all sounds in the game/level at once, including the menu.
In real time, effects are applied to them with zero latency and CPU load.
When the source appears in the audible zone, the finished sound appears immediately.
X-Fi owners get the coveted 60 FPS, while the rest get 20 FPS and save up money to buy X-Fi.

The gaming industry could not go that far, so 127 active streams have never been used anywhere.

PS Something like this, but with sound effects.
https://www.reddit.com/r/silenthill/comments/ … entire_town_is/

shevalier wrote on 2026-01-14, 06:41:

The gaming industry could not go that far, so 127 active streams have never been used anywhere.

Do you have some concrete evidence for this statement? Or is that just your opinion?

Having 128 voices on X-Fi cards was heavily marketed as a feature of EAX 5.0 games like Prey and Battlefield 2.

SansPlomb95 wrote on 2026-01-14, 06:30:

Was Resurrection of Evil able to make better use of EAX ? I have never tried this one yet on PC

In my opinion, yes.

Especially during the first few levels which take place in cave like environments.

shevalier wrote on 2026-01-14, 06:41:

X-Fi owners get the coveted 60 FPS, while the rest get 20 FPS and save up money to buy X-Fi.

The gaming industry could not go that far, so 127 active streams have never been used anywhere.

I think you're actuality thinking of xram, for storing audio samples on board. The 128 audio sources can stream off the PCI bus as well as work with xram. I had an extreme music (128 sources, no xram) back in the day with no slowdown. I have an Audigy RX now with only 64 3d audio sources and no xram and don't experience any slowdown in doom 3 or anything else.

Now I need to get back to being unwell.

The Internet Archive seems to be experiencing some problems right now, so I'm not sure if these links will be properly accessible, but here are Creative's pages for Prey and Battlefield 2. I'll quote the relevant bits:

Prey wrote:

Up to 124 full-feature & quality simultaneous per-source effect voices can be played (60 max for Audigy based cards, 124 max for Sound Blaster X-Fi based cards)

Battlefield 2 wrote:

Battlefield 2 features vehicles with complex dynamic sound modelling - each tank or jeep can be playing several audio samples at once. When you take into account that the game can cater for up to 64 players, it's easy to understand how the sound system can quickly become saturated on 32 or 64 voice audio solutions. So it's only with a true 128 voice audio processor that you will hear Battlefield 2 in full glory!

I doubt Creative and the developers would lie about this, and risk getting sued by the consumers. Especially since it was a key feature of their flagship product at the time.

sharangad wrote on 2026-01-14, 08:05:

shevalier wrote on 2026-01-14, 06:41:

X-Fi owners get the coveted 60 FPS, while the rest get 20 FPS and save up money to buy X-Fi.

The gaming industry could not go that far, so 127 active streams have never been used anywhere.

I think you're actuality thinking of xram, for storing audio samples on board. The 128 audio sources can stream off the PCI bus as well as work with xram. I had an extreme music (128 sources, no xram) back in the day with no slowdown. I have an Audigy RX now with only 64 3d audio sources and no xram and don't experience any slowdown in doom 3 or anything else.

Now I need to get back to being unwell.

The vast majority of X-Fi cards do not have X-RAM.
The first 2 megabytes are DSP cache.
For example, the SB0460 has only 2 MB of memory chip (K4S161622H or HY57V161610ETP is 512K x 16-bit x 2-bank SDRAM).

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-01-14, 07:37:

shevalier wrote on 2026-01-14, 06:41:

The gaming industry could not go that far, so 127 active streams have never been used anywhere.

Do you have some concrete evidence for this statement? Or is that just your opinion?

Having 128 voices on X-Fi cards was heavily marketed as a feature of EAX 5.0 games like Prey and Battlefield 2.

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/multimedia/creative-x-fi.html
This dude always hung out with Dara O'Tool (Creative's manager) and the rest of their CEOs.
With the advent of the X-Fi era (effectively the decline of Creative), when PR funding was reduced, he began to write more candid posts on forums.
Than in his own reviews.

X-Fi 128 active voices (124 or 128, whatever) is marketing slop.
Even now, developers rarely use that many voices. PS4 games typically used 32 voices.

ott wrote on 2026-01-14, 13:05:

X-Fi 128 active voices (124 or 128, whatever) is marketing slop.
Even now, developers rarely use that many voices. PS4 games typically used 32 voices.

Again, I'd ask for concrete evidence for such claims.

Not that I know any better mind you. I just have my doubts that both Creative and the game developers would lie about such a thing in their official marketing materials.

shevalier wrote on 2026-01-14, 12:31:

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/multimedia/creative-x-fi.html This dude always hung out with Dara O'Tool (Creative's manager) and […]
Show full quote

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/multimedia/creative-x-fi.html
This dude always hung out with Dara O'Tool (Creative's manager) and the rest of their CEOs.
With the advent of the X-Fi era (effectively the decline of Creative), when PR funding was reduced, he began to write more candid posts on forums.
Than in his own reviews.

Nothing in that article backs up the claims you made that no game ever used 128 voices.

Unless you mean that the author of said article stated that elsewhere, in which case please provide a source.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-01-14, 13:12:

shevalier wrote on 2026-01-14, 12:31:

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/multimedia/creative-x-fi.html This dude always hung out with Dara O'Tool (Creative's manager) and […]
Show full quote

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/multimedia/creative-x-fi.html
This dude always hung out with Dara O'Tool (Creative's manager) and the rest of their CEOs.
With the advent of the X-Fi era (effectively the decline of Creative), when PR funding was reduced, he began to write more candid posts on forums.
Than in his own reviews.

Nothing in that article backs up the claims you made that no game ever used 128 voices.

Unless you mean that the author of said article stated that elsewhere, in which case please provide a source.

I have already written to you personally about how to view the number of buffers (audio streams in Creative terminology) used by X-Fi.
I understand that memory is expensive these days, but not that expensive.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-01-13, 17:23:

Out of curiosity, I just fired up OG Doom 3 on my WinXP machine, with the aforementioned X-Fi Titanium and a 5.1 surround speake […]
Show full quote

MattRocks wrote on 2026-01-13, 15:56:

BFG sounds flatter than OG because the Doom 3 developers were doubling down on what actually sold games (faster pacing, brighter visuals, and less audio distraction). This mattered even more at the time of BFG's release because dominant platforms by then were consoles, laptops, and smaller fixed-format systems that didn’t have replaceable sound cards or enthusiast audio setups.

Out of curiosity, I just fired up OG Doom 3 on my WinXP machine, with the aforementioned X-Fi Titanium and a 5.1 surround speaker setup. When EAX is turned off, positional audio is much less precise, even in the original version of the game. So that isn't specific to the BFG Edition.

With EAX turned on, when starting a new game and talking to one of the NPCs at the launchpad, I (mostly) hear their voice from the front center speaker if I'm facing them directly. But if I turn around and start walking away from them, then their voice shifts to the rear speakers, and gradually gets quieter as I move further away. With EAX off, this doesn't happen, and the NPC voice always comes from the left/right speakers. I also checked the console, and the OpenAL mixer isn't used if EAX is disabled, so the inferior results definitively come from the game's own software mixer. This reminds me of the instances when I was playing through the campaign with EAX on, and I could literally hear an enemy spawning behind me (as they do in this game) on my rear speakers, which allowed me to react instantly. You don't get that level of precision with EAX off.

EDIT - I just googled this, and it turns out you need to manually add seta s_numberOfSpeakers "6" to DoomConfig.cfg if you want to use 5.1 speakers with the software mixer. In contrast, the OpenAL mixer seems to automatically detect your speaker setup based on Windows sound settings. After editing the speaker number manually, I do get the NPC voice from the front center and rear speakers with the software mixer, but the positioning is still not as precise as with the OpenAL mixer, and the voice doesn't fade as smoothly when I move away. So turning EAX on does provide some benefits here.

MattRocks wrote on 2026-01-13, 15:56:

I’m not against EAX; I’m against looking for EAX where it was never intended to be a defining feature. Neither OG nor BFG are good demonstrators of EAX.

While I do agree that there are better games to showcase EAX, I personally like its implementation in Doom 3. At the very least, it improves positonal audio, as noted above. Though I will acknowledge that the added reverb/occlusion might not be to everyone's taste. Ultimately, it comes down to personal preference.

Probably. Here's some points/tests to consider:

• OpenAL is a dedicated sound mixer library, and it probably is better than Doom3 hand-rolled code.
• OpenAL is a generic sound mixer for any sound card.
• Creative distributed OpenAL with EAX, but you can enable OpenAL and disable EAX.

seta s_useOpenAL "1"
seta s_useEAXReverb "0"

shevalier wrote on 2026-01-14, 13:15:

I have already written to you personally about how to view the number of buffers (audio streams in Creative terminology) used by X-Fi.
I understand that memory is expensive these days, but not that expensive.

Ok, let me put it this way.

Provide a verifiable test which disproves the claims of Creative and the Prey developers that their game can use 124 hardware voices simultaneously when played on an X-Fi card. Unless you can do that, I think I will instead believe their official statements.

MattRocks wrote on 2026-01-14, 13:15:

[…]
Show full quote

• OpenAL is a dedicated sound mixer library, and it probably is better than Doom3 hand-rolled code.
• OpenAL is a generic sound mixer for any sound card.
• Creative distributed OpenAL with EAX, but you can enable OpenAL and disable EAX.

Maxim Liadov: Our readers would like to know when X-Fi patch for UT 2004 will be released.

Darragh O'Toole: As you know, we have a patch that was custom designed by Creative for UT2004, this features custom sound sets implemented using our developer tool ISACT for streamlined implementation of 3D audio in game. This allows us to take advantage of the higher voice count and generate higher quality sounds for two aspects of the game. Firstly, it allows the music to respond to the situation, so when your health goes down, the soundtrack switches to one of a series of levels from upbeat, to mid-tempo to panic stations (in a similar vein to the initial aims of Direct Music but which was based on Midi). Secondly, it allows the in-game sounds to use up to 24 bit stereo samples, replacing the low quality 8-bit, 11kHz sounds that most games use to preserve resources. Just as we were about to release this, Epic updated the game so we need to tweak the patch for the new version. We are in the final stages and hope to have it available for download sometime in March. Some of the new weapons sounds will definitely remind you that your subwoofer is still working!
http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/multimedia/crea … -interview.html
Only Creative Lab knew how to write this code (optimised for OpenAL and X-FI).
That was enough for a couple of projects.
And that's it.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-01-14, 13:21:

shevalier wrote on 2026-01-14, 13:15:

I have already written to you personally about how to view the number of buffers (audio streams in Creative terminology) used by X-Fi.
I understand that memory is expensive these days, but not that expensive.

Ok, let me put it this way.

Provide a verifiable test which disproves the claims of Creative and the Prey developers that their game can use 124 hardware voices simultaneously when played on an X-Fi card.

Re: EAX appreciation thread
Right here on this screenshot, you can clearly see how many buffers Prey uses. 🤣
Re: EAX appreciation thread
PS.

Unless you can do that, I think I will instead believe their official statements.

I am disappointed.