Creative bypasses Vista and enables Hardwaresound

So basically EAX 3.0 introduced new (and to your credit a lot better) reveb effects. EAX 4.0 allowed for multiple reverb effects (Creative calls them environmental effects) simultaneously (also it added new reverb effects, as does every new EAX version). EAX 5 added Environment Occlusion, which according to Creative, "recreates the effect of sound from adjacent environments passing through solid objects". EAX 5 also allowed for even more multiple reverb effects to happen at the same time (and, of course, new different reverb effects).

I agree there is a large difference between EAX HD and EAX 1/2, but even EAX HD boils down to reverb effects.

Perhaps it would be better if we clarified what a "reverb" is:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/manual-1.2/effects_reverb.html
 
Well I guess one has to ask just what game audio should consist of. I'd hope for the most realistic depiction of the environment as possible. Reverb, reflection, occlusion, etc are all critical to that. Positional is part of DS3D already. EAX is adding realism to the positioning.

Agreed.

Can't see how that's a bad thing in any way. If done right it can totally make the experience. People underestimate audio. Developers and gamers alike.

Agreed again, sadly it's been all about "eye candy" the last couple of years.
But now physics is suddenly getting attention(adn thatis GOOD!), now we just need the same drive with audio.
 
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Perhaps it would be better if we clarified what a "reverb" is:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/manual-1.2/effects_reverb.html

A Reverb simulates the component of sound that results from reflections from surrounding walls or objects.

Sounds about right to me. That's all EAX does. Though obviously it's a little more complex than that. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy EAX, but certianly it's not "way more than a simple reverb". It is just that, a reverb.
 
how does work OpenAL?
I wish it does what the name's proximity with OpenGL suggests : if the effect is not supported in hardware then do it in software and result is the same :). Is it like that?

and if EAX is purely proprietary and bolt on DirectSound or OpenAL.. well that's shit. 90% people use integrated sound anyway, isn't that a good enough incentive for developers to make sound effects that everybody will be able to hear? use OpenAL, if it doesn't have the nice reverb, well either do it custom and software only, or extend that OpenAL API and tell Creative, support that universal reverb API or eat shit.

I mean, CPUs are powerful enough to do various special effects and post-processing in real time on videos, but we should believe CPUs can't do much more with sound than the likes of doom2 and quake did?
 
Sounds about right to me. That's all EAX does. Though obviously it's a little more complex than that. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy EAX, but certianly it's not "way more than a simple reverb". It is just that, a reverb.

Distortion is not a reverb
Delay is not a reverb
3D voice over IP is no a reverb ect...

You statement is not true.
 
how does work OpenAL?
I wish it does what the name's proximity with OpenGL suggests : if the effect is not supported in hardware then do it in software and result is the same :). Is it like that?

and if EAX is purely proprietary and bolt on DirectSound or OpenAL.. well that's shit. 90% people use integrated sound anyway, isn't that a good enough incentive for developers to make sound effects that everybody will be able to hear? use OpenAL, if it doesn't have the nice reverb, well either do it custom and software only, or extend that OpenAL API and tell Creative, support that universal reverb API or eat shit.

I mean, CPUs are powerful enough to do various special effects and post-processing in real time on videos, but we should believe CPUs can't do much more with sound than the likes of doom2 and quake did?

http://www.openal.org/documentation.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAL
 
Distortion is not a reverb
Delay is not a reverb
3D voice over IP is no a reverb ect...

You statement is not true.

From the site you linked (whatever is added in the parenthesis is my addition):

Reverb Damping (Distortion)

Usually a Highshelf and/or a Lowshelf EQ with variable Frequency.
These EQs are applied continuously to an evolving reverb of a piece of audio. Over time, as the reverb fades, so do certain frequencies, either in the lower or higher frequency range. The more less-reflective surfaces the sound bounces around from, the more the reverb is dampened the higher frequencies.
Freeverb features a Damping parameter that dampens the upper frequencies.

Predelay (Delay)

The time between the reception of the DIRECT signal by the listener and start of the Reverb portion of the effect is called Predelay. This is a parameter in many digital reverb effects, and it is expressed in milliseconds (ms).

And from Creative's site:

EAX® Voice works by feeding the microphone input into the EAX® hardware effects engine (another way of saying reverb) and at that point becomes another gaming sound element which you can hear. It is then transmitted along with the environment properties over the LAN (3D Voice Over IP not currently supported over internet connections)

Basically it adds a reverb effect to your voice.

All of which you listed are part (or an aftereffect if you will) of a reverb effect. My statement is 100% true. The same cannot be said about yours.
 
Willard, that's not what this is about. Go look for the effects used for guitar, for example. These:

Flanger, Echo, Distortion, Ring Modulation, Comb Filtering

are all not related to reverb in any way. Distortion is overdriving the signal into saturation, flanger and ring mod are something completely different, and delay/echo is repeating the signal portions (which is somewhat indirectly related to reverb, but still a different beast). Comb filtering is used for the emulation of the real-world interferance between multiple speakers, like in a 4x12" guitar box.

What I'm trying to say, a reverb algorithm in whatever form won't be able to give you these FX.
 
From the site you linked (whatever is added in the parenthesis is my addition):





And from Creative's site:



Basically it adds a reverb effect to your voice.

All of which you listed are part (or an aftereffect if you will) of a reverb effect. My statement is 100% true. The same cannot be said about yours.

According to you all sound effects and sound processing are reverbs then...
 
EAX is still no A3D.

EAX 5 is basically A3D.

are all not related to reverb in any way

Ok, perhaps "reverb" was too narrow, still EAX is just enviromental effects. While they add to a game in a postive way (I definately like EAX), you have to admit it exactly "make or break" an audio engine in a game. It really depends on the quality of the codec the engine uses (mp3, ogg, ac3 shouldn't be the norm) and how accuate the positioning is (using the API itself). Though I would prefer a developer to include EAX rather than not include EAX, it still is not a big downer if they don't support EAX.
 
I see Aureal's chips as game chips. That's all they were good for, honestly.

Creative's chips are dual purpose. They can game well, and they can make a wicked musician's card out of them. Aureal has nothing on E-MU's APUs in that respect. I'm not even sure that Vortex had a hardware MIDI synth (if it did, I'm sure it was VERY limited).

EAX was a way to make use of the advanced DSP inside EMU10K1-2, for more than just MIDI effect processing. It's totally obvious that's what EAX 1-3 or so is. Ironically, unless you used 2 speakers, Live! was not far behind in quality at all. Even with pre-baked reverb vs. the more interactive A3D 2.0. A3D 2.0 was largely done on the CPU, btw. It was a real killer for processors back then.

Aureal built a card to do neat audio placement thru aural tricks. Great for games, but the chip itself wasn't very flexible at all really and was very limited in its applications as a result.

I think X-Fi's GPU is totally still built to be dual purpose. It's obvious if you look at what it can do with inputs, outputs, effects, resampling, etc.
 
Really I'd say Creative is on par with NVIDIA. :) Seriously. They both release drivers at about the same pace. Creative uses a unified driver release with their series' (Live!, Audigy, and X-Fi lines all have packages). NVIDIA is about the same; most of their older cards aren't supported by current driver releases. And like NV I suppose on some level, you get driver feature parity within product lines (within chip architectures, more accurately).

Their hardware is of pretty decent quality, especially post Audigy 1. The non-value/OEM boards are obviously built with quality in mind.

I haven't had issues with any Creative products since they got their initial Win2K driver issues figured out. Other than that, I know people had problems with SMP mobos vs. Live! back in the day (as in many years ago now).

The only quirks I've had with Audigy 2 ZS is occasional audio artifacts in some OpenAL-using Doom3-engine games. And apparently that's yet another PCI/chipset issue, this time with the bug-ridden nForce4.
 
You'd be surprised how many of us have not had issues with Creative. I for one have not and I've used a number of their cards.

otoh, some of us have.

I bought an Audigy near launch. It took literally a year and half for the drivers to attain non-suck status.

That's why Sugarcoat's original statement ("always had very decent driver support") struck me as a stunner. I figured he probably wasn't into things at that time or had a short memory... or maybe he was sugar coating it. :p

Driver issues with Creative were very, very common for a long, long time which is why they still have such a bad rep. (Buying and then burying superior 3d audio tech earned them a bunch of bad mojo, too.)

But it seems they've finally gotten enough pride and dignity in their products to actually do some good. Took long enough.
 
Alchemy does only work in Vista 32bit atm, for those who care.

Dammit. This is very sad. :cry:

I don't understand how 32/64 versions of Vista could be incompatible in this respect. :???:

EDIT: Wait, where did you hear this? I checked the Alchemy forums and I saw someone with x64 Vista have some bugs with the EAX effects in Serious Sam 2, but the main audio still worked. I'm thinking this is just a specific Alchemy-Serious Sam 2 bug and not a x64 Vista incompatibility.
 
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