Creative disses Microsoft XAudio2

Posted at: 3:49am 8th August 2007 by Ben Hardwidge

DirectX 10.1 won’t solve hardware EAX issues in Vista, and XAudio2 won’t be ale to match the sound quality and environmental effects of OpenAL, says Creative

When Microsoft launched the BETA of DirectX 10.1 with a new audio technology called XAudio2, many people thought that the new API might reintroduce the hardware abstraction layer to Windows Vista.

However, leading sound card manufacturer Creative has told Custom PC that the ‘new API will not affect how current DirectSound3D and OpenAL titles function in Windows XP or Vista. Current and legacy DirectSound3D titles still require Creative's ALchemy to restore 3D spatialisation and hardware accelerated environmental audio on Windows Vista.’

According to Microsoft, XAudio2 is intended to replace DirectSound, and offers programmable DSP effects, full surround sound and 3D spatialisation. However, Creative still argues that ‘OpenAL is a very powerful alternative to Direct X, and is the audio engine of choice for most leading game developers, with new titles being released all the time.’

The main reason for this is because OpenAL supports hardware acceleration, which XAudio 2 apparently doesn’t. This, according to Creative, allows ‘much faster and higher quality sample rate conversion, 3D spatialisation, environmental reverb, filtering and other DSP effects.’

Creative also claims that OpenAL is a superior technology for developers making games for both PCs and consoles, saying that it ‘provides a broader scope for cross-platform programming, including not only the Xbox 360 and Windows PCs, but also Mac (OSX) and Linux based systems.  Furthermore, Sony has adopted many of the calling conventions found in OpenAL for its audio tools and libraries, making the port of an OpenAL audio engine to PS3 much simpler.’

Of course, Creative would say this, as it’s invested a mountain of resources into developing EAX Advanced HD and OpenAL support, as well as persuading Vista to produce surround sound in older games via ALchemy. Even so, it looks as though OpenAL could well be here to stay for a while yet, and you’re still going to need ALchemy to get hardware-accelerated gaming audio in Windows Vista with an X-Fi or Audigy card.