I'll do some testing with this app too and report.

I am about about to install Win10 x64 because i want to install steam to play a few things and wonder what are the best drivers to use for the X-Fi Titanium? latest official Creative or modded 2.17.0008C? I remember not being able to install Daniel_K's driver under Win10 because it was not signed.

OM606 wrote on 2026-02-01, 12:00:

I am about about to install Win10 x64 because i want to install steam to play a few things and wonder what are the best drivers to use for the X-Fi Titanium? latest official Creative or modded 2.17.0008C? I remember not being able to install Daniel_K's driver under Win10 because it was not signed.

DanielK's latest X-Fi driver pack installs without any issues for me.

However, I'm using Win10 LTSC 21H2. Not sure if that makes any difference.

Maybe that makes a difference. I think it was 22H2. I'll go with LTSC as well this time and try the latest Daniel_K's driver.

It wouldn't be surprising if things related to Creative drivers / Audigy control panel are buggier on Win11. Though Win10 / Win11 on their own, vague terms considering the number of builds. I've been messing with Audigy Rx on a temp Win11 23H2 install with December 2023 cumulative update.

I have a question on this - I've read that in terms of positional accuracy (HRTF) EAX was not as good as (for example) A3D. But it's not clear what version of EAX is referred to in these comparisons. Was positional accuracy poor in EAX 2.0 as well? What about EAX 3.0 / 4.0?

xtreger wrote on 2026-02-10, 16:36:

I have a question on this - I've read that in terms of positional accuracy (HRTF) EAX was not as good as (for example) A3D. But it's not clear what version of EAX is referred to in these comparisons.

Period correct reviews from the late 90s state that A3D offers better sound positioning than EAX when using headphones. While EAX offers more precision than A3D when using surround speakers. This has been my experience as well

However, that may have changed with the advent of X-Fi cards. Specifically, using X-Fi CMSS-3D Headphone with its Elevation Filter and MacroFX can offer excellent positional audio. I don't think it's quite on pair with A3D 2.0 and its wavetracing stuff, but it can sound really good in certain games.

xtreger wrote on 2026-02-10, 16:36:

Was positional accuracy poor in EAX 2.0 as well? What about EAX 3.0 / 4.0?

It's more important how much effort the developers put into positional audio than which EAX version the game uses. For example, the original Deus Ex (an EAX 1.0 game) sounds great on my 5.1 speakers. The positional audio is fairly precise, which is very noticeable at the start of the first level (Liberty Island) when the patrol bot is walking around you.

That said, EAX 5.0 with its PurePath tech can deliver some amazing stuff, when used properly. Play Quake 4 or Battlefield 2 on an X-Fi card, and hear it for yourself.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-02-10, 16:59:

Period correct reviews from the late 90s state that A3D offers better sound positioning than EAX when using headphones. While EA […]
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xtreger wrote on 2026-02-10, 16:36:

I have a question on this - I've read that in terms of positional accuracy (HRTF) EAX was not as good as (for example) A3D. But it's not clear what version of EAX is referred to in these comparisons.

Period correct reviews from the late 90s state that A3D offers better sound positioning than EAX when using headphones. While EAX offers more precision than A3D when using surround speakers. This has been my experience as well

However, that may have changed with the advent of X-Fi cards. Specifically, using X-Fi CMSS-3D Headphone with its Elevation Filter and MacroFX can offer excellent positional audio. I don't think it's quite on pair with A3D 2.0 and its wavetracing stuff, but it can sound really good in certain games.

xtreger wrote on 2026-02-10, 16:36:

Was positional accuracy poor in EAX 2.0 as well? What about EAX 3.0 / 4.0?

It's more important how much effort the developers put into positional audio than which EAX version the game uses. For example, the original Deus Ex (an EAX 1.0 game) sounds great on my 5.1 speakers. The positional audio is fairly precise, which is very noticeable at the start of the first level (Liberty Island) when the patrol bot is walking around you.

That said, EAX 5.0 with its PurePath tech can deliver some amazing stuff, when used properly. Play Quake 4 or Battlefield 2 on an X-Fi card, and hear it for yourself.

Thank you very much! I'm a bit focused on Win98 gaming - I guess for that the general experience will be better with A3D for the games that support A3D (or both A3D and EAX)? Based on what I've read, a couple of examples are Half-Life or Unreal or Thief, etc. Since you have (or have had) an Audigy 2 ZS, what's been your experience with games like these? And yeah you're right about the games' implementation as well - e.g. in Hitman Contracts some parts sound awesome with EAX (I don't think it supports A3D) but some other areas sound inaccurate

xtreger wrote on 2026-02-10, 17:11:

Thank you very much! I'm a bit focused on Win98 gaming - I guess for that the general experience will be better with A3D for the games that support A3D (or both A3D and EAX)? Based on what I've read, a couple of examples are Half-Life or Unreal or Thief, etc. Since you have (or have had) an Audigy 2 ZS, what's been your experience with games like these?

In Thief: The Dark Project, A3D sounded a bit more precise than EAX to me. This video by @Dipshidian provides a direct comparison between the two APIs. The situation is similar with Unreal, especially if you're using headphones. As for Half-Life, I ended up using EAX because A3D was kinda glitchy on my Vortex 2, possibly due to using drivers that were too new. That's my problem with A3D, you sometimes need to mess around with different driver versions and .DLL files to get certain games to sound right.

One last thing to note. While Creative's later cards like the Audigy and X-Fi can emulate A3D, it doesn't sound as good as the real thing on proper Aureal hardware. That's been my personal experience at least, though I suppose things may vary depending on which driver version is used and such.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-02-10, 16:59:

That said, EAX 5.0 with its PurePath tech can deliver some amazing stuff, when used properly. Play Quake 4 or Battlefield 2 on an X-Fi card, and hear it for yourself.

Wow, I'm surprised that Creative called this a unique feature:

With EAX® PurePath™, developers now have total control over exactly which speaker (or speakers) the sound should be played through. This is particularly useful, for instance, for controlling bass reproduction through the subwoofer for Low Frequency Enhancement.

As far as I remember, the ability to assign specific sounds to a specific speaker in multichannel mode was available long before EAX 5.0, back in the days of OpenAL/DirectSound3D (including previous EAXs) and audio middleware like FMOD / Miles.

Also I didn't find any mention of "PurePath" in Creative OpenAL SDK 1.1 docs, which introduces features of EAX 5.0/X-Fi (X-RAM, etc.).

Just picked up a set of really cheap fully working Cambridge FPS1000 speakers from facebook marketplace. Bit far so I got it shipped. I am so ready for some period accurate late 90s four point surround EAX 2.0.

ott wrote on 2026-02-11, 03:41:

Also I didn't find any mention of "PurePath" in Creative OpenAL SDK 1.1 docs, which introduces features of EAX 5.0/X-Fi (X-RAM, etc.).

I don't know how PurePath works on the programming side, but I did experience pretty much what Creative describe here:

Creative Labs wrote:

However, until now the '.1' in games was a general bass feed that came from all the sounds playing in the game. There was very little control over which content went to the subwoofer. EAX® PurePath™ changes all this. It gives control of the Low Frequency Enhancement (LFE) channel to game developers, so they can now feed as many or as few of the 128 available voices to the subwoofer. For you this means a far more powerful bass for those sounds that need it, and beautifully precise highs for those sounds that don't.

In Quake 4, there's a level called "Aqueducts" where you're driving a hover tank while rockets are falling all around you. The improved subwoofer use for explosions was immediately noticeable on my 5.1 surround speakers. Positional audio was extremely precise as well. On that note, I just played through this level, and got the game to use 127-31=96 simultaneous hardware voices during some of the later sections, when enemies were shooting at me from all sides.

First game I cared to get through from start to finish with EAX - Call of Duty 1 and UO. I actually played both games through United Offensive expansion's executable.

Used Singleplayer Improved 1.1 mod and CoDUO-YAP. The author of the latter fixed both FOV and HUD for widescreens. Cinematics work too when wide resolution is used, preserving original aspect ratio, menus also use 4:3 ratio. Now if only mouse buttons 4 and 5 were natively bindable.

On the sound front, it does seem to be the clearest through Creative's OpenAL driver. Very distinct from software mode in ALchemy's dsound.dll. Or using Sens_oal.dll renamed to ct_oal.dll, that seems to fail to produce EAX effects. With both of these, it's apparent that weapon switching sound sounds off as well. Muffled and somewhat distant.

I'd say OpenAL Soft ranks second, but not quite there in clarity. It's possible my config could use improvements, but then you need the know-how. And effects are somewhat stronger than on Audigy Rx's OpenAL. I'd say it's more balanced on the latter. No idea what other bugs (if any) could be there with ALchemy and certain other games, but at least for CoD, in terms of sound, I can't say it sounds any different on XP, where DirectSound is fully featured, compared to newer OS with ALchemy.

CoD's sound engine is restricted to max 32 concurrent sounds. Hectic sequences do suffer from this limitation, there are audible cut offs. But, it's not as simple to increase the limit as one might think. It does query MSS library for max sound channels, that seems to return 95 on my system (which is over Audigy's limit) if I recall correctly from recent poking with debugger, this is capped by the engine to 32. And naively increasing the variable with the limit crashes the engine.

I also compared EAX 3 mode in one part of the game with 2 and 1. Sewer level, after last autosave, the corridor leads to outside area with buildings. Being inside the corridor makes the nice suppression effect on the shooting sounds from outside. Though with EAX 2 and 1, no difference from being in the corridor vs. outside. I guess one of the standards presets is used, shooting in there will also reverb.

One last thing, the game apparently doesn't save EAX state, so if you saved while being in such area, it won't be restored on load, only passing the trigger again in the world will activate it.

UCyborg wrote on Yesterday, 22:21:

I also compared EAX 3 mode in one part of the game with 2 and 1. Sewer level, after last autosave, the corridor leads to outside area with buildings. Being inside the corridor makes the nice suppression effect on the shooting sounds from outside. Though with EAX 2 and 1, no difference from being in the corridor vs. outside. I guess one of the standards presets is used, shooting in there will also reverb.

This is probably due to Environmental Morphing, a feature that was first introduced in EAX 3.0. This page describes it in more detail:

Creative Labs wrote:

One of the major criticisms of previous EAX versions was that there was no easy way to transition smoothly from one audio environment to the next. To solve this, EAX 3.0 provided developers with access to every single one of the reverb engine's parameters. Now, rather than simply switching from one environment to another as the player moved around the game world, the technique of “morphing” from one effect to another became possible. Environment Panning™ allowed developers to place both the early reflections and the late reverb components of an environment anywhere in 3D space.

Game developers were very enthusiastic in their support of the new features that EAX ADVANCED HD offered. Top game titles that supported EAX ADVANCED HD included NeverWinter Nights, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Call of Duty, Splinter Cell, and Knights of the Old Republic.

It gets even better with EAX 4.0 and its "Multiple Environments" feature. I remember being amazed with how effects from different areas merged together to create a vibrant soundstage while playing certain levels in Thief 3: Deadly Shadows.

What's odd, people were talking about environmental transitions in Half-Life, which is only EAX 1.0.

BTW, something I noticed about CoDUO-YAP, it's written in modern C++, not compilable with v141_xp platform toolset, sooo no quick way to get working on Windows XP. Thought I'd mention since at least one person here tends to play these things on XP or older. 😜 Unless kernel extensions can help. Interestingly, that toolset is still installable alongside latest Visual Studio 2026, but shows a warning it's deprecated and will be removed in future releases.

Is anyone able to bug out EAX controls by launching any game that will use Creative's OpenAL driver, either directly or indirectly through ALchemy, then terminating the game abruptly in Task Manager's Details tab? Still wondering if I'm dealing with Creative bug or Windows 11 bug. To be fair, it could be both. I was modifying CoDUO-YAP, but currently not having Visual Studio installed at home, I borrowed it at work to modify plugin code and only naively looking at Quake III code at first, I crashed CoD with modified plugin, because Sys_QueEvent() function there has different signature from Quake III.