I don't remember any popping in old 3D era GTAs. Though going by my new Audigy Rx, Creative's stuff is mixed bag for me as far as general 3D audio and EAX effects quality is concerned. GTA: San Andreas sounds best to me with DSOAL + ReverbSA mod. Though you have to configure OpenAL Soft properly, you really want non-default HRTF filter for playing with headphones.

Yeah, not all games that support EAX sound equally good. Generally, higher EAX versions are better and more feature rich, but it also depends on how well the developers were able to utilize those features. This varies based on the genre as well, i.e. you're more likely to notice EAX in a first-person shooter than in a top down strategy game.

Broadly speaking, stealth titles, racing games and competitive shooters tend to make good use of EAX. Notable examples include Thief: Deadly Shadows, Colin McRae: Dirt and Battlefield 2.

UCyborg wrote on 2025-07-04, 10:48:

I don't remember any popping in old 3D era GTAs. Though going by my new Audigy Rx, Creative's stuff is mixed bag for me as far as general 3D audio and EAX effects quality is concerned. GTA: San Andreas sounds best to me with DSOAL + ReverbSA mod. Though you have to configure OpenAL Soft properly, you really want non-default HRTF filter for playing with headphones.

Yeah, maybe it's my version, wich is a 1.0 patch with some mods like skygfx. Not many more works on windows xp.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-07-04, 11:23:

Yeah, not all games that support EAX sound equally good. Generally, higher EAX versions are better and more feature rich, but it also depends on how well the developers were able to utilize those features. This varies based on the genre as well, i.e. you're more likely to notice EAX in a first-person shooter than in a top down strategy game.

Broadly speaking, stealth titles, racing games and competitive shooters tend to make good use of EAX. Notable examples include Thief: Deadly Shadows, Colin McRae: Dirt and Battlefield 2.

Dirt and Grid are alredy on my list!

Uninstalling old creative drivers *seemed* to fix the issue.

Do that from device manager on windows.
On windows 11 , I clicked the option the option here:

Then reboot and reinstall the drivers from Creative App.
I have also disabled my onboard audio on the motherboard.

igloo9697 wrote on 2025-07-04, 23:52:

Uninstalling old creative drivers *seemed* to fix the issue. […]
Show full quote

Uninstalling old creative drivers *seemed* to fix the issue.

Do that from device manager on windows.
On windows 11 , I clicked the option the option here:

Then reboot and reinstall the drivers from Creative App.
I have also disabled my onboard audio on the motherboard.

GUYS
I'm on WINDOWS XP.
I've said it in the main post and several times in the thread.

But yeah, changing drivers fixed most of the issues. The remaining ones are games related issues: Pops and cracking sounds can be heard in GTA San Andreas even with the onboard audio.

I used to have Radeon HD 4890 in this PC and remember having performance issues with it on XP, quite unexpected with once top of the line card. Maybe the driver is lagging causing audio issues?

UCyborg wrote on 2025-07-05, 14:28:

I used to have Radeon HD 4890 in this PC and remember having performance issues with it on XP, quite unexpected with once top of the line card. Maybe the driver is lagging causing audio issues?

Yeah, I had a 4850 before this, and now a 6970. They had performance issues in XP with latest video drivers... Fixed by using older drivers before GCN cards existed. It was proved, here on vogons, that drivers launched with GCN cards would cripple performances on Terascale cards.

But no, the main issue was the unofficial Audio driver + GTA San Andreas having not great audio to begin with. Any other games appears to be sounding good, but I have yet to install the drivers and softwares I was suggested by Joseph_Joestar, I could try do them this evening, since yesterday I was busy getting a new CRT TV and trying to make it work my old PS2 on it with FreeMCboot.

Mondodimotori wrote on 2025-07-05, 14:51:

Any other games appears to be sounding good, but I have yet to install the drivers and softwares I was suggested by Joseph_Joestar, I could try do them this evening

If you do end up reinstalling the drivers, you may also want to look at this thread of mine: Guide: Installing Windows XP drivers on PCIe X-Fi Titanium sound cards (version 1.2)

It was written for PCIe X-Fi cards, but everything from section 4 onward is also applicable to PCI models, like the one you have. Basically, those are tips on how to properly configure the card for gaming under WinXP.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-07-05, 15:02:

Mondodimotori wrote on 2025-07-05, 14:51:

Any other games appears to be sounding good, but I have yet to install the drivers and softwares I was suggested by Joseph_Joestar, I could try do them this evening

If you do end up reinstalling the drivers, you may also want to look at this thread of mine: Guide: Installing Windows XP drivers on PCIe X-Fi Titanium sound cards (version 1.2)

It was written for PCIe X-Fi cards, but everything from section 4 onward is also applicable to PCI models, like the one you have. Basically, those are tips on how to properly configure the card for gaming under WinXP.

That's exactly the thread I was following when I got the card, this forum is great for resources like those!

Well, I don't know what to say as San Andreas never striked me as something special in sound department, but you definitely shouldn't be getting cracks and pops. I will say though that Windows XP is a horrible OS, can't even play music on it without random sound dropouts. And that's with AMD Phenom II X4 920 clocked at 3 GHz running constantly at top speed. Because if you use CPU power management, frequency switches cause huge lag spikes (only on XP).

I'd put at least Windows 7 on that PC.

Coincidentally I also recently bought a SB0460 with 2MB of RAM for my XP machine and I was having all sorts of issues when using the DanielK support pack.
In games with EAX the sound would be distorted and aliased if I were to close and reopen the game or if I went to the settings to (re)enable EAX. In the creative console the CMSS-3d chopper test would briefly play the sound on both channels when panned to the right right speaker or in the "below" position for some reason. This issue was also happening in games.

Other times instead of the sound being distorted, the card would simply stop outputting any kind of audio in the whole system and I'd have to restart the computer to fix the issue.

At first I thought there was some kind of issue with the card, but using the official creative drivers from 2014 instead of the DanielK support pack solved all my issues.

UCyborg wrote on Yesterday, 10:34:

Well, I don't know what to say as San Andreas never striked me as something special in sound department, but you definitely shouldn't be getting cracks and pops. I will say though that Windows XP is a horrible OS, can't even play music on it without random sound dropouts. And that's with AMD Phenom II X4 920 clocked at 3 GHz running constantly at top speed. Because if you use CPU power management, frequency switches cause huge lag spikes (only on XP).

I used Windows XP with a Sound Blaster X-Fi for 3 years and never experienced any audio stuttering. This reeks of a misconfiguration.

UCyborg wrote on Yesterday, 10:34:

Well, I don't know what to say as San Andreas never striked me as something special in sound department, but you definitely shouldn't be getting cracks and pops. I will say though that Windows XP is a horrible OS, can't even play music on it without random sound dropouts. And that's with AMD Phenom II X4 920 clocked at 3 GHz running constantly at top speed. Because if you use CPU power management, frequency switches cause huge lag spikes (only on XP).

I'd put at least Windows 7 on that PC.

That would defeat the point of an XP box that maximizes XP software compatibility. At that point I would just try to make everything work on my main rig.

jcfb wrote on Yesterday, 21:14:

Coincidentally I also recently bought a SB0460 with 2MB of RAM for my XP machine and I was having all sorts of issues when using […]
Show full quote

Coincidentally I also recently bought a SB0460 with 2MB of RAM for my XP machine and I was having all sorts of issues when using the DanielK support pack.
In games with EAX the sound would be distorted and aliased if I were to close and reopen the game or if I went to the settings to (re)enable EAX. In the creative console the CMSS-3d chopper test would briefly play the sound on both channels when panned to the right right speaker or in the "below" position for some reason. This issue was also happening in games.

Other times instead of the sound being distorted, the card would simply stop outputting any kind of audio in the whole system and I'd have to restart the computer to fix the issue.

At first I thought there was some kind of issue with the card, but using the official creative drivers from 2014 instead of the DanielK support pack solved all my issues.

Creative website is kinda of a black hole, a far cry from GPU vendors website, where you can find older drivers without many issues.

GemCookie wrote on Yesterday, 22:01:

UCyborg wrote on Yesterday, 10:34:

Well, I don't know what to say as San Andreas never striked me as something special in sound department, but you definitely shouldn't be getting cracks and pops. I will say though that Windows XP is a horrible OS, can't even play music on it without random sound dropouts. And that's with AMD Phenom II X4 920 clocked at 3 GHz running constantly at top speed. Because if you use CPU power management, frequency switches cause huge lag spikes (only on XP).

I used Windows XP with a Sound Blaster X-Fi for 3 years and never experienced any audio stuttering. This reeks of a misconfiguration.

I can say for certain that it isn't misconfiguration of the sound card, since I can hear those cracks even with on board audio. While other games and creative's own demos works flawlessly.
It may very well be how I configured the game, since the vanilla digital distribution of that game is quite crap and needs older .exe and some mods to be, at least, on par with the PS2 version in both visual fidelity and free of bugs.
I forgot I have the same version installed on two other PCs with windows 10, I can easily test the game on those PCs with the same headphones and check if I can hear the same craks and pops.
I'll update you.

FUNNY NOTES for Joseph_Joestar too. I think NFS Carbon has EAX. Only they enabled it in cutscenes too... Meaning that when characters are speaking to one another, and the camera is cutting between them, you can hear the voices changing when taken from the front or the back. Like you are the camera and are listening to someone either talking at you or away from you.
I checked on youtube the cutscenes, probably captured withotu EAX... And the voices don't change. They sound the same either from the front or the back.
Yeah, not every EAX implementation is great alright.

OK, I've no idea what's there to misconfigure in the OS, I don't mess with system stuff in registry and the like. Dropouts aren't constant, but they happen often enough to be noticeable. Admittedly, it was a long time since I ran Windows XP without Actual Window Manager. Maybe that's too much for it? I'd have to try using it without and see. But holy crap, I'm lost without that program on XP.

And yeah, in my case, when it comes to dropouts, there's no difference between Audigy Rx and onboard VIA.

I doubt Actual Window Manager is a factor when the OS goes nuts due to power management features on the CPU.

Mondodimotori wrote on Today, 09:58:

I think NFS Carbon has EAX.

Nope.

That's likely DirectSound3D positional audio doing that. WinXP was the last windows to support it, youtubers are unlikely to run games on XP so no DirectSound without wrappers.

EAX does environmental audio effects, as per its name. As in how the audio sounds in certain space. Postional audio is its own thing and creates virtual surround sound.

Mondodimotori wrote on Today, 09:58:

FUNNY NOTES for Joseph_Joestar too. I think NFS Carbon has EAX.

Like @Sombrero mentioned, positional audio is handled by DirectSound3D. And EAX is a set of extensions which sits on top of that. Alternatively, OpenAL can be used instead of DS3D to enable EAX functionality.

That said, there are a few edge cases where positional audio works better on EAX capable hardware. An example of this would be Doom 3, which offers up to 5.1 surround via its software mixer, while providing 6.1 or even 7.1 support if EAX is enabled. Here's the relevant article from Creative's old website.

Sombrero wrote on Today, 11:23:

Nope.

That's likely DirectSound3D positional audio doing that. WinXP was the last windows to support it, youtubers are unlikely to run games on XP so no DirectSound without wrappers.

EAX does environmental audio effects, as per its name. As in how the audio sounds in certain space. Postional audio is its own thing and creates virtual surround sound.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on Today, 11:40:

Like @Sombrero mentioned, positional audio is handled by DirectSound3D. And EAX is a set of extensions which sits on top of that. Alternatively, OpenAL can be used instead of DS3D to enable EAX functionality.

That said, there are a few edge cases where positional audio works better on EAX capable hardware. An example of this would be Doom 3, which offers up to 5.1 surround via its software mixer, while providing 6.1 or even 7.1 support if EAX is enabled. Here's the relevant article from Creative's old website.

That's good to know, because I saw both "Carbon" and "Most Wanted" in the list, but no cross on any EAX version. Still, it's not a great implementation to have that positional audio in the cutscenes.

Mondodimotori wrote on Today, 12:15:

That's good to know, because I saw both "Carbon" and "Most Wanted" in the list, but no cross on any EAX version. Still, it's not a great implementation to have that positional audio in the cutscenes.

Yeah, the initial version of that list was taken from Creative's old website and the ALchemy support page. Over the years, it has been curated by many other people (myself included) to make it more accurate.

The entries without checkmarks mean that we weren't able to verify Creative's claims independently. In short, we found no references to a specific EAX version by looking at the game's documentation, options menu, launcher, executable etc. Either that, or the game hasn't been fully tested yet. I can't speak for NFS: Carbon, as I haven't looked into it myself, but there are some notes on the PC Gaming Wiki which suggest it's just DS3D.