AndreaColombo86 wrote on 2026-08-26, 08:20:

So if I wanted to, say, impress a friend who’s never experienced EAX, Battlefield is where it’s at, pretty much. I’m gonna try Quake 4 for sure as I’ve wanted to play that for a while now.

Prey 2006 is quite good as well. I need to try out the recently rediscovered quake 4 expansion to see what it sounds like. Then there's doom 3, a perennial favorite, though it's a bit exaggerated.

Dreamfall Chapters is another one. It's an 3D adventure game and might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it had very good sound, EAX4 I think. More than a decade later the story continued in Dreamfall Chapters, but that only had plain jane stereo:
Dreamfall Chapters: https://youtu.be/MufiGxYLHEY

AndreaColombo86 wrote on 2026-08-26, 08:20:

So if I wanted to, say, impress a friend who’s never experienced EAX, Battlefield is where it’s at, pretty much.

Absolutely. For me, Battlefield 2 / 2142 represent the pinnacle of EAX and CMSS-3D. Especially when using headphones.

AndreaColombo86 wrote on 2026-08-26, 08:20:

I’m gonna try Quake 4 for sure as I’ve wanted to play that for a while now.

Quake 4 is very good as well, but I feel that it sounds slightly better on 5.1 surround speakers. Simply because it makes such good use of the subwoofer for explosions. Probably through EAX PurePath.

Thanks, guys.

Is BioShock’s implementation good?

AndreaColombo86 wrote on 2026-08-27, 08:27:

Is BioShock’s implementation good?

It's ok, but not the best I've heard.

Definitively not as good as Quake 4/Prey/Battlefield 2.

Since people have been asking, here are my personal top 5 EAX games. Of course, this is just my subjective opinion, and everyone is free to post their own list.

1. Battlefield 2 / Battlefield 2142
These two games share the top spot, as the EAX implantation is equally good in both. I've talked about them many times, but the key takeaway is that they use EAX 5.0 and CMSS-3D to their maximum potential, as the developers have worked closely with Creative Labs engineers to ensure that. See here for more details. Positional audio is exceptionally good, and all EAX effects (reverb, occlusion, reflection etc.) are used to their fullest. They also make excellent use of the X-Fi's 128 hardware voices, as seen in this test.

2. Prey (2006)
Another game that makes fantastic use of EAX 5.0 and CMSS-3D, which is especially noticeable because of the unique environments that you get to explore. Due to how gravity works in this game, enemies will often attack you from above, below or anywhere else in 3D space. The game's positional audio reflects this beautifully, especially when using headphones. More info about how the developers used EAX in Prey can be found here.

3. Quake 4
This is another EAX 5.0 title that makes superb use of the tech. In particular, I was impressed with how realistic the in-game explosions sound here, especially when using 5.1 surround speakers. The subwoofer is used to its full potential thanks to EAX PurePath, and positional audio is excellent too. There are also some standout effects, such as when a grenade explodes near you, it will temporarily dull your hearing. A detailed summary of the EAX implementation in Quake 4 can be found here.

4. Thief: Deadly Shadows
This game uses EAX 4.0 in a great way. Every EAX feature gets the spotlight here, including Environment Morphing and Multi-Environments, which help to realistically model the soundstage of the levels. This is particularly important for a stealth game, so the developers handled it with great care (more info here). You will visit castles, cathedrals, caves and clocktowers in this game, and EAX really helps with bringing those places to life. And of course, there's the famous horror-themed mission called "Robbing the Cradle" which definitively needs to be experienced with EAX 4.0 and a nice pair of headphones. Beware of jump scares.

5. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
Another stealth game which makes excellent use of EAX 3.0 for its levels. This is evident from the very first mission. For example, try walking into one of the tents there, and listen to the raindrops hitting the fabric. With a good pair of headphones, it sounds like you're actually standing inside that tent in the rain. Furthermore, during that mission EAX is especially noticeable in the caves and inside the lighthouse itself. And it only gets better from there.

A couple of snippets from the Prey EAX page that I linked to earlier:

Creative Labs wrote:

Lead audio designer, Ed Lima, worked closely with Creative to ensure optimal support for the latest Sound Blaster X-Fi technologies. Up to four reverbs are processed simultaneously by the sound card while panning and positioning them around the player. Full support was also added for low pass filtering effects (occlusion and obstruction) to help create a muffled effect whenever a sound is generated behind a door or portal. For example, all sounds behind closed doors or on the other side of portals are low pass filtered (each additional closed door or portal between the player and the sound adds an additional amount of low pass filtering).

Because audio is not fixed into a speaker configuration until the final playback stage, Prey audio played through the OpenAL API can be virtualized to surround sound in a far more meaningful way. The audio reaching the card from the game is delivered with all its positional information intact thereby allowing the headphone or stereo speaker virtualization algorithms to produce highly convincing surround sound over stereo playback equipment.

Simply select X-Fi CMSS-3D and set your speaker settings to headphones and Prey will sound as good, if not better, over headphones as it does on 7.1 speaker systems. The wall walking element of Prey is further enhanced by the improved elevation effects offered by the advanced HRTF algorithms of X-Fi CMSS-3D.

As noted before, this game features many environments where gravity works in unusual ways. This makes its soundstage very unique, especially when using the X-Fi CMSS-3D Headphone mode.