Author Topic: Soundblaster X-Fi and EAX5.0 (Read 981 times)

Charge · « **on:** August 16, 2006, 03:55:22 AM »

Just purchased a new soundcard SB X-Fi XtremeMusic and noticed a weird thing.

First a small introduction:

I played AH for sometime with Hercules Digifire 7.1 card, which is pretty decent card, but it probably supports only EAX 1.0.

The next card was SB Live! 5.1 which probably supports EAX 2.0 and I noticed that the engine sounds and distant explosions were much improved over the Digifire soundscape.

With Live! card the distant engine sounds decayed into a delicious rumble and you could hear distant explosions as low "booms" which is the effect the distance has to sound IRL too.

***

Well I expected pretty much when I cranked the AH on with the new and "improved" card.

Quess what - the extremely immersive distance effect was gone.

The X-Fi has "EAX® ADVANCED HD™ 5.0 " but I'm not really impressed. The sound's directional processing with headphones and doppler effets are excellent, but I wonder if the new EAX is not compatible with older EAX?

AH supports what, EAX 2.0?

Anybody else have similar experiences?

Or is there a knob of switch I have not turned to get them work?

-C+

PS. The same thing with WW2 Online. The distant battle used to sound magnificent with low muffled booms, but now that, too, is gone.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #1 on:** August 16, 2006, 06:50:01 AM »

Aces High II (or any version of Aces High actually) does not support EAX of any kind. Our positional sound capability is derived directly from the game programming the position of the sound and allowing DirectSound (the DirectX sound API) to correctly apply the volume to create the effect of positional sound.

Charge · « **Reply #2 on:** August 16, 2006, 08:16:45 AM »

Thx for answer Skuzzy!

So could it be that what happened here is that the Live! driver employs a simple frequency decay which causes the highest frequencies decay with distance, but the same effect is simply left out from the newer card's drivers and replaced with advanced EAX Ultra Hyper Super (TM) occlusion effects which the AH simply cannot use because of the lack of EAX features?

-C+

Skuzzy · « **Reply #3 on:** August 16, 2006, 11:19:32 AM »

It's as good a hypothesis as any. The X-Fi cards have a ton of features. Some of which may actually hurt game sounds while aiding in music.

doc1kelley · « **Reply #4 on:** August 17, 2006, 08:27:16 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Charge
Thx for answer Skuzzy!

So could it be that what happened here is that the Live! driver employs a simple frequency decay which causes the highest frequencies decay with distance, but the same effect is simply left out from the newer card's drivers and replaced with advanced EAX Ultra Hyper Super (TM) occlusion effects which the AH simply cannot use because of the lack of EAX features?

-C+

Which mode are you running your X-fi in? There are three modes and make sure you have game mode selected. I've not noticed any decreasing in sound qualities switching from an audigy to the X-fi extreme music.

All the Best...
Jay
awDoc1

Charge · « **Reply #5 on:** August 17, 2006, 02:55:31 PM »

Game mode.

One possibility is to decrease the HW acceleretion one notch and see if that would make the X-Fi behave the same way as Live! in AH.

-C+

AKDogg · « **Reply #6 on:** August 18, 2006, 08:09:30 AM »

Makesure that u have EAX effects off. When ever I updated the drivers for SB cards, that feature got turned on with it still saying its off. U have to toggle it on then off with no effects. This is whats causes the hollow effect.