Creative Soundblaster Zenith?!?

[MasterBaiter]

And so the rumour-mill starts' a churnin.... (aka... take with a dash of salt)
http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=1430&s=1

Quoteth:

"According to our sources, the next generation sound chip from Creative will be known as Sound Blaster Zenith. It will be a complete new architecture from the current Audigy series and it will be based on PCI Express x1. The launch of Audigy 4 Pro today which is an enhanced Audigy 2 ZS chip is the transition to the Sound Blaster Zenith series scheduled for launch in March 2005."

Soooo.... do you think they'll finally use some Aureal IP in there somewhere ?

 

[BRiT]

As with any sort of improvement brought out by Creative ... Dream about it, but plan on disappointment.

 

[Guden Oden]

No dolby digital realtime encoding I hear, which is a bummer. Not that I really desire something like that (I have a surround sound system that has the needed analog inputs), but it's a nifty feature and would cut down on cable clutter behind the PC.

 

[ZoinKs!]

I still miss Aureal.

My main question: "How many months will it take before the drivers stop sucking?" For the Audigy, the answer was "18".

 

[Guden Oden]

IMO the live's early drivers didn't suck all that much at all, and I even had a VIA Apollo MVP3 chipset (ie: the worst PCI/AGP implementation EVER) in that box...

 

[Mize]

I still miss Aureal.

Amen.
I should crank up HL1 on my kids' rig (P3 600e @ 800 + V5-5.5k + Vortex2) and compare the A3D to my rig running HL2...no, I shouldn't as I'd be sorely disappointed.

 

[jvd]

As long as they add more voices , add better eax and lower cpu overhead i'm happy .

 

[swaaye]

Only prob is HL1's audio is like 11Khz. A3D 2 sounds nice, but the audio fidelity is just terrible.

I've also noticed that my Monster Sound MX300's audio is pretty bad in general. Bad DACs I'd imagine. Not good to compare its quality to a Audigy 2 ZS.

 

[MasterBaiter]

Only prob is HL1's audio is like 11Khz. A3D 2 sounds nice, but the audio fidelity is just terrible.

I've also noticed that my Monster Sound MX300's audio is pretty bad in general. Bad DACs I'd imagine. Not good to compare its quality to a Audigy 2 ZS.

True, but comparing Aureals card with Creatives flavor of the day from back then... it most likely wouldn't be a discernible difference. You could compare the Aureal DAC's today with just about any other card of quality, and say that. :?

 

[T2k]

As long as they add more voices , add better eax and lower cpu overhead i'm happy .

EAX is a pretty lame - and fake - shit and therefore will be forever compared to A3D's real-time wavetracing methods.

 

[jvd]

As long as they add more voices , add better eax and lower cpu overhead i'm happy .

EAX is a pretty lame - and fake - shit and therefore will be forever compared to A3D's real-time wavetracing methods.

but for me its avalible and gets the job done ans is supported in the marjority of games i can play .

 

[mczak]

"complete new architecture from the current Audigy series"?
Now, that would be the first new architecture since, what, 1997? Or was that 1998? The last new architecture from creative was not the audigy, but in fact the original sb live - audigy is just mostly a new name, all cards afaik since the original sb live are based on emu10k.
That said, I highly doubt we'll see a completely new architecture. The chip will likely have a native PCI-Express interface though, which would indeed make that the biggest architectural change since the original sb live...

No dolby digital realtime encoding I hear, which is a bummer. Not that I really desire something like that (I have a surround sound system that has the needed analog inputs), but it's a nifty feature and would cut down on cable clutter behind the PC.

I'd only partly blame creative for that though. This almost certainly is not due to technical reasons, but simply licensing terms.

 

[Fox5]

And so the rumour-mill starts' a churnin.... (aka... take with a dash of salt)
http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=1430&s=1

Quoteth:

"According to our sources, the next generation sound chip from Creative will be known as Sound Blaster Zenith. It will be a complete new architecture from the current Audigy series and it will be based on PCI Express x1. The launch of Audigy 4 Pro today which is an enhanced Audigy 2 ZS chip is the transition to the Sound Blaster Zenith series scheduled for launch in March 2005."

Soooo.... do you think they'll finally use some Aureal IP in there somewhere ?

I don't know much about the sound market, but that sounds almost like asking if nvidia will finally use 3dfx tech...too little too late. Many people seem to feel that the current highest version of EAX is about equal to A3D, and from old benchmarks I've found of cards supporting A3D the performance hit seems to be equal or less to what A3D caused.

BTW, as sort of a side note I thought Doom 3 had some of the nicest sound I've heard in a game and great positional audio, and it doesn't use EAX or A3D at all.

 

[MasterBaiter]

I don't know much about the sound market, but that sounds almost like asking if nvidia will finally use 3dfx tech...too little too late. Many people seem to feel that the current highest version of EAX is about equal to A3D, and from old benchmarks I've found of cards supporting A3D the performance hit seems to be equal or less to what A3D caused.

BTW, as sort of a side note I thought Doom 3 had some of the nicest sound I've heard in a game and great positional audio, and it doesn't use EAX or A3D at all.

I'd be inclined to agree with you, but it isn't like the tech that Creative has been using is better than what Aureal had in the first place. The one negative that I heard about A3D was that it was harder to code for apparently (I guess it would be like comparing the DirectX API to OpenGL). If you want a good breakdown in API differences, head over to www.3dsoundsurge.com and read some of the old interviews (and tech papers) there. I'll link you to one: http://www.3dsoundsurge.com/interviews/aureal2.html

Too little too late? I don't think so. Do you think reverb, doppler, occlusion, ect... done according to a rooms dimensions and objects it contains is weak? That's how the human ear works. Aureal set out to create a sound API that replicated it as close as was possible.

EAX rides on top of DirectSound3D and used pre-baked effects (A3D used real-time "wavetracing", that's why you'd see a mild bench performance hit with it). That has changed with subsequent versions of EAX, and it has improved , but IMO it still pales in comparison to what Aureal was doing.

If Creative does finally does use Aureal IP, it would be the smartest thing they've done in a spell, and I would say it's just in time considering that Nvidia might be coming into the ring with horseshoes in it's gloves (throw some salt in with that comment...).

I do agree with you regarding Doom3. The sound was quite good! Good enough that Creative had to blackmail Id? You betcha!

P.S. I'm not Mr. 3D sound guru, so please correct me if I am off the mark on any of my statements guys.

 

[Nappe1]

Anyone remembers time when Creative was the cool company bringing better tech than competition?

it took long from Adlib to get their Gold edition out with digital sample support and they had already missed the train. Sound Blaster 2.0 was really amazing with real sampled sounds. no way Adlib synthesizer chip could do effects like that.


gosh, I still remember playing first time The Wolfenstein 3D what experience doors clonking and guards yelling after you.

 

[MasterBaiter]

I still have an AWE64 Gold card floating around somewhere...

That was a great card @ the time.