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Vista will support EAX after all

Published on 28th November 2006 by Brett Thomas

"Can you hear me now?" - Windows Vista will support EAX, says Creative.

Rumours have been flying for weeks that many current audio technologies would not be available in Vista. Microsoft had to remove the audio hardware layer due to the way it restructured its driver models, and so has chosen only to support the OpenAL audio model. Of course, this means that previous DirectSound 3D and EAX programs and hardware would be of little use...but Creative is now saying otherwise.

This is a very good thing, as no doubt there would be a lot of upset people after spending over $200 on an audio board that was supposed to future-proof them for years with its programmability. The limits on DirectX 10 would move all complex audio processes back onto the CPU if the game didn't use OpenAL, which would degrade sound quality as well as reduce performance. Clearly, that was not a good solution for either Creative or its customers.

In light of this, Creative stated that it has been working on a driver for Windows Vista. The new driver will intercept DirectSound 3D calls and translate them into OpenAL on the fly, thus allowing the Creative X-Fi to work its magic. Therefore, all games that are coded with EAX support will continue to play with it enabled on Windows Vista.

Of course, the drawback to this is that the driver will only be released for the X-Fi, no Audigy or Live models will be supported by Creative in Vista. So, for those of us without X-Fi setups, the "good" news sounds a little bit, well, hollow. But, at least there will be some support. The driver is expected to be finished in December, so it will be out by consumer release.

Do you have a thought on the driver debacle? Tell us about it in our forums.

23 Comments

Discuss in the forums Reply

_DTM2000_ 28th November 2006, 19:40

But surely this new translation from DirectX to OpenAL will have to be done on the CPU, so that will take up clock cycles and reduce performance? Or maybe it will be done on the sound card, does anyone know more details on this?

Da Dego 28th November 2006, 19:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by _DTM2000_
But surely this new translation from DirectX to OpenAL will have to be done on the CPU, so that will take up clock cycles and reduce performance? Or maybe it will be done on the sound card, does anyone know more details on this?

As of right now, details are horrendously murky.

My understanding of the new Vista driver models tells me that this will be converted via CPU, as you can't even get the sound data off the chip until it's OpenAL. So you'll still suffer the same (if not worse) performance hit, but at least you'll have decent sound. Therefore, the power of the X-Fi would also not be the reason why it's the chosen one and others aren't...

Kipman725 28th November 2006, 19:57

This is a good thing as it removes the need for expensive sound cards for good positional audio. Creatives standard of positional audio is only supported by creative sound cards which is annoying as they happen to be crap for listening to music. By doing the positional audio on the CPU a better card can be used without any loss in the quality of the positional audio.

DXR_13KE 28th November 2006, 20:04

what other hardware vista wont support? this is getting real bad, this remembers me the time when i had to scrap my lovely functional scanner because of XP :(.

Colonel Sanders 28th November 2006, 20:26

Looks like I'll be hanging onto XP for a while. . . :(

Off topic, I'm recalling how my A+ hardware teacher constantly insists that Microsoft created EAX and every other good thing that happened to PCs withing the last 3 decades. . .

L J

cjmUK 28th November 2006, 21:43

Right, well I've got an Audigy 4 card I cant get working Vista, and now it looks like it never will. It's maybe 9 month old and was bought as a cheaper way of getting good EAX support.

Clearly, Creative have had the last of my money, so if I need a new card, what are the recommended non-Creative cards?

speedfreek 28th November 2006, 21:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by cjmwork2
Right, well I've got an Audigy 4 card I cant get working Vista, and now it looks like it never will. It's maybe 9 month old and was bought as a cheaper way of getting good EAX support.

Clearly, Creative have had the last of my money, so if I need a new card, what are the recommended non-Creative cards?

Bit did a review of a decent one not too long ago, look through the hardware archives.

I still see no advantage to vista.

_DTM2000_ 28th November 2006, 22:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Da Dego
As of right now, details are horrendously murky.

My understanding of the new Vista driver models tells me that this will be converted via CPU, as you can't even get the sound data off the chip until it's OpenAL. So you'll still suffer the same (if not worse) performance hit, but at least you'll have decent sound. Therefore, the power of the X-Fi would also not be the reason why it's the chosen one and others aren't...

Thanks for the info :)

This doesn't sound too good. I'm just glad I've never given into the EAX hype and just stuck with on-board sound. The only time I'd buy an add-in sound card would be for sound recording or other pro-audio usage. But I certainly wouldn't buy a Creative card for that anyway. :D

Despite any hardware compatibility, or any other issues, I'll definitely be getting Vista pre-installed on my next PC at work (early next year). As for my home PC, I think I'll wait until Vista has been out for at least 6 months and then just get a whole new PC that's fully Vista compatible. I'll be well over due for an upgrade by then anyway.

overdosedelusion 28th November 2006, 22:16

oh thank god i have x-fi, this is a nightmare im glad im clear of

Kipman725 28th November 2006, 22:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by cjmwork2
Right, well I've got an Audigy 4 card I cant get working Vista, and now it looks like it never will. It's maybe 9 month old and was bought as a cheaper way of getting good EAX support.

Clearly, Creative have had the last of my money, so if I need a new card, what are the recommended non-Creative cards?

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/esi-julia/

this is ment to be awsome when hooked up to a nice external DAC even though it has relativly low cost. No good for surround sound though if thats your thing... personaly Im of the opinion that with good enough stereo headphones suround sound is a usless gimick. But some people like speakers wherupon it may be of use.

Aankhen 28th November 2006, 23:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by cjmwork2
Right, well I've got an Audigy 4 card I cant get working Vista, and now it looks like it never will. It's maybe 9 month old and was bought as a cheaper way of getting good EAX support.

The article says older cards won't be supported initially.

cjmUK 29th November 2006, 00:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aankhen
The article says older cards won't be supported initially.

So I should go with out any sound for 3 months, then without EAX for another, what...6 or 9 months...?

antikill 29th November 2006, 00:21

what about the number of cores we have on processors today 1-2 or 4 cores plus hyperthreading on top of that which we didnt have back in the day of amd-xp and p4

say if we have 2 cores 1 core be maxed out for the game the other could be used for sound+sorting out back ground data surly microsoft have thort this one threw.

or say we get the 4 core cpus that has just come out, and get them 6 months down the line which surely be more than powerful then the games need so it could be something like the main game on core 1+2 and sound+ back ground dataon core 3 and physics on core 4 .

Aankhen 29th November 2006, 07:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by cjmwork2
So I should go with out any sound for 3 months, then without EAX for another, what...6 or 9 months...?

Well, yeah, that sucks. :p

Spaced_invader 29th November 2006, 08:37

tbh If someone is that into gaming that they really believe this will make a huge difference to their frame rate and gaming experience they should try stopping other background tasks such as teamspeak and IRC.. Looking at todays pc's they can hadle all that brunt and if all they are doing is going for a frame rate then switching off the sound engine would help a lot...

[USRF]Obiwan 29th November 2006, 09:45

Well i dont think it has that lot of impact on fps in games. I mean not that you notice a 2fps difference in gameplay anyway. If your (onboard) sound (card) supports dolby 5.1 then youre better of anyway becasue almost all games suport 5.1 surround nowadays. And i really dont notice any difference between EAX and 5.1s on my systems with and without a xfi card.

And dont blame it on vista. but on the driver support from Creative. They need to make EAX work on vista. And not the way around...

cjmUK 29th November 2006, 10:01

I largely agree with you Obiwan that the problem lies with Creative, and furthermore it is a problem they have been aware about from sometime. I can't help but feel that it's part apathy and part marketing - trying to shift a few more X-Fi cards.

However, I would say that I noticed an improvement in both sound quality and effect, and a slight improvement in FPS (or less stutter) when I went to an Audigy 4 card from an onboard AC97 device.

Suddenly, I could distinguish footsteps and their direction in the likes of BF2...

yakyb 29th November 2006, 14:48

well it seems like the best bet would be to just wait until creative bring out a vista based Sound card that sets the standard for game development now that any new games made will not be using EAX as non will want the performance hit

Redbeaver 29th November 2006, 15:09

goddamn, so my Audigy wont have any EAX support in Vista? f**k u, Microsoft... yes, MS, not Creative... well probably both... but its MS that setup the Dx10 driver architecture to have a different model....

i bet u MS talked to Creative agreeing on 'hey, lets just support xfi so creative can release brand new more expensive cards to work properly on vista!'

cjmUK 29th November 2006, 15:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Redbeaver
goddamn, so my Audigy wont have any EAX support in Vista? f**k u, Microsoft... yes, MS, not Creative... well probably both... but its MS that setup the Dx10 driver architecture to have a different model....

i bet u MS talked to Creative agreeing on 'hey, lets just support xfi so creative can release brand new more expensive cards to work properly on vista!'

FFS! I know MS have been responsible for a lot in the past, but you can't pin this on them. We complain that they're constrained by the past and need to make a break. So they do, and we complained that they've changed everything. They can't win.

Yet Creative can make EAX work on X-Fi but not Audigy? Why? Is there that big a difference between the two? Of course not.

aggies11 29th November 2006, 16:16

Gagh: Vista = Better Visuals with Worse Sound.

Am I willing to trade DX10 for my Audigy 2?

For games like COD2 and Brothers in Arms, imho, the awesome sound was the core of the experience. Get into the game enough and you forget about the graphics, but when an MG42 opens up and it sounds like your roof tiles are gonna fall out, well you can't ever ignore that.

My knowledge of dedicated sound hardware isn't too hot. I have heard before that creative cards aren't really "much" under the hood, and what they do is largely hype (compared to say, GPU's). Does that mean that maybe this isn't that big of a deal?

Aggies

Cthippo 30th November 2006, 07:16

THis is the same Creative that still hasn't released X-fi drivers for Linux. I dn't care about Vista functionaliy since I don't plan to get it, but their driver support sucks the big one.

willardjuice 1st December 2006, 16:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Da Dego
As of right now, details are horrendously murky.

My understanding of the new Vista driver models tells me that this will be converted via CPU, as you can't even get the sound data off the chip until it's OpenAL. So you'll still suffer the same (if not worse) performance hit, but at least you'll have decent sound. Therefore, the power of the X-Fi would also not be the reason why it's the chosen one and others aren't...

Actually I heard it's going to work like WINE/Cedga works under Linux; there is no real "conversion" per say, but a simple translation (the is no "noticeable" performance decrease of programs running under WINE/Cedga because it doesn't take vast amounts of CPU to translate calls; I expect this to be even easier/faster just translating DirectSound3D->OpenAL calls).

In Custom PC's article it even says:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Custom PC
However, our source at Creative Labs exclusively revealed to Custom PC that the company has developed a driver for its X-Fi range of sound cards that will allow for full hardware sound processing in all games, not only those that use OpenAL

So I think X-Fi users won't even notice a difference between Vista and XP in the audio aspect. Perhaps I am wrong though...