Creative bypasses Vista and enables Hardwaresound

[willardjuice]

Alchemy does only work in Vista 32bit atm, for those who care.

Oh I see what you meant. ALchemy only works with 32 bit applications atm. I just discovered ALchemy only works/loads (generates a directsound log) with Half-Life 2 in 32 bit mode but not in 64 bit mode. I go from 88 fps average (32 bit mode) to 68 fps average (64 bit mode).

 

[levicki]

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

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.

No it is not.

Early versions of EAX like 2.0 were capable of very high quality reverberation using FDN (Feedback Delay Network) algorithm. You also had equilization tied to the effects so that you can simulate environments like metal pipe, underwater, etc which is not possible using just reverberation. By playing original Half-Life you could have learned about that.

From EAX 3, you had environment morphing and occlusion, i.e. you could pass from one to another area in a game (say Star Wars Jedi Knight -- Jedi Outcast II multiplayer arenas) and the sound would realistically morph from say narrow corridor to wide circular indoors arena.

With each new incarnation there was more processing and effects available for games to use. Whether that happened is a thing you can discuss but saying something so complex as EAX "is just a reverb" -- that I won't allow.

Find me any commercial reverb hardware or software solution for the PC which is capable of taking into account positional information of each sound source in a scene and making smooth environmental transitions from one scene to another while not costing an arm and a leg and I will accept your claim that EAX "is just a reverb". Otherwise it would be better if you'd shut up.

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?

Who gives a shit what losers use?!? Surely there are people who would like to pay to get better sound. If you don't, and you fit in that 90% which can't distinguish reverb from echo, then you are cheap and you deserve cheap effects. You can't force anyone to make better ones for you for free.

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?

They are powerfull but they can't do anything with sound in REAL TIME because of PC architecture (interrupts processing, latency, etc, etc).