Add-on boards Asus Xonar (except ROG and USB). Auzentech (oh, and if you were struggling just to find official drivers, they are still available ). CMedia-based (Meridian series):.

• Gamespirit Realtek Mod

Creative-based (X-Fi series): or CMedia (others). Creative See my You may also be interested in and in (the only Live! And Audigy driver with proper x64 and 2GB RAM support). Check if having any problem HT Omega Claro. Onkyo Wavio SE-300PCIE. Razer Barracuda AC-1.

Integrated chips Now, things starts to be a bit messy here (and no, I'm not just talking about lower quality DACs). We may distinguish between two kind of custom drivers:. Simply 'unlocked' ones, that makes otherwise high-end-only features (like DDLive or DTS) available on all the products. X-Fi modded. Like the last one, but you get the entire SB X-Fi MB suite too. Contrarily to popular beliefs, these actually sound quality, though just ALchemy alone would be worth the effort. Analog Devices (Conexant) SoundMAX.

Unlocked drivers:,. X-Fi mod:. never. Gigabyte G1 motherboards These use a real CA20K2 DSP, refer to Creative above Realtek Some of these drivers are claimed to address bugs in. Unlocked drivers:.

X-Fi mod (in chronological order):, R2.16-R2.21, R2.21, R2.21, R2.48 ( was deleted), R2.60, R2.67-, R2.74, VIA Technologies. X-Fi mod: Everything else not previously covered (like SigmaTel-IDT-Tempo Semiconductor) might find something USB headset Microsoft LifeChat LX-3000. (CM108AH). ALchemy and 3Dsoundback can't be set to show the exact supported version, neither will work with OpenAL games EDIT: now logs queried EAX versions. Some games does not check EAX 4/5 if EAX3 is not there (as indeed happen with this dll hack), but most of other times this should be enough These were the previous methods. EAX1: has a setting to toggle EAX 1 and 2.

EAX2: same. EAX3: Check below.

AdvancedHD logo/designation starts here. 64 simultaneous voices are the highlight and potentially suggest at least this version.

EAX4: These are pretty difficult to distinguish. Xonar GX's seems the only easy way to determine. EAX5: May be assumed if game supports more than 128 voices. Again, Xonar GX is the only easy switch Having said that, please take note that if you have X version (but game supports up to or only X -1) no one can guarantee it will work (e.g. This happened to me with DSGX and EAX 4 with splinter cell: double agent) On the other hand even if in-game setting can already be enabled with X version, nothing stop additional effects to be applied with X +1 without further notice.

And this is where quantitative analysis comes into play. Quantitative means that audio output is accurately. Indirectsound has fake EAX support, thus it can't be used. And Asus GX's cannot be scientifically recorded. So things get really tougher. EAX1: VMware XP virtual machines uses an Ensoniq ES1371/ES1373 virtual audio device (aka Creative PCI128). Remember to install.

Gamespirit Realtek Mod

EAX2: Under Windows XP ( aside) the majority of sound chips should reach this specification, just make sure to check support with previous method. EAX3: I think that original Audigy series is the only one that ever had EAX 3 without EAX 4. EAX4: Besides, story is similar, with Audigy 2 and 4 series though. ALchemy may be used, as long as exact EAX version has already been determined (but OAL games.).

EAX5: There's so few games using this that. It's not such a big deal. Though if really questioned a X-Fi would be needed.

Frankly, I was going to be brief and just mention a modded driver for every manufacturer but then, Creative part was becoming really long, so I decided to split it. Then I figured out even that split was becoming too big, so this post while just tell one of my usual stories of the past So. We could say that 80% of the driver hacking scene is (was?) done by a single person: mr. Daniel Kawakami (aka danielk) Everything when Creative released ALchemy for their X-fi series. Leaving Audigy and Live! Users high and dry.

And is where the father of all the tweaks's career started. He soon tried to improve even cards' own drivers, patching odd bugs and fixing Vista compatibility issues. But what then?

Creative released ALchemy for older soundcards too. But to a condition: you had to pay for the 'legacy' support.

Therefore his work entered into competition with Creative all of a sudden. They him and he simply decided. Ok, actually the wayback machine hasn't the, and he never really left 100% A nice summary of his works is given in his (and some older file names can be checked ) After some time though he came back ( claims there was an agreement but I couldn't find other reference) Ok, let's just list his massive firms:. (I don't actually know why all Live! Stuff has been removed between May and ).

(supports Auzentech, Gigabyte and Onkyo solutions too). and (again, I can't understand why it was from forums), older version EDIT: bugs in newer OpenAL/drivers implementation. Yes, I know this sounds pretty rude. Though I'm really pissed off by all theirs contradictions that wasted tons of my time, and I wanted to let off steam Let's start from the beginning. They seemed pretty sympathetic towards users initially.

In 1999 they announced for I3DL2 open standard. Furthermore they announced their version. If previous bulletins weren't enough to stress this, the support of these specifications for every PCI sound card was further underlined in these. Well, they of the gamer audio market.

Every good intentions vanished. And the new EAX version just saw the light of day 2 years after.

And it was as and exclusive as possible. Not to mention that Interactive Audio Special Interest Group And later things just went worse.

The new series was practically a rebrand of Live! Series, but firewire port and improved DACs. I mean, improved DACs are a quite nice addition. Though the DSP (despite being called 10K2) the good old 10K1 To add insult to injury even their marketing department was ' ' EDIT: found!

EDIT2: new mess! Age of empires 3 is claimed to DS3D. But it supports EAX and it would even need ALchemy. EDIT3: Creative's audio processors datasheets are available EDIT4: surprise, different revisions of the original live! EDIT5: suprise²: EDIT6: they are using for some cards.

What of a irony. EDIT7: ALchemy is freaking and it might even misbehave on newer Core3D ( Recon and Z) cards. As the name suggest is the successor of the.

Both of them are a kind of for a proper 3D sound experience, with a special attention on reverberations and occlusions. Although first version had been mostly independently developed, the second one was based on the just opened EAX 2 specification. The final proposal nevertheless was backed by every major sound cards producer of the time (as can be seen in the Acknowledgments paragraph of pdf).

In turn it eventually ended on all their sound APIs:, (since ),. EAX in fact was that with a closer to I3DL2 yes. But even after Creative's wide about own openness and for its effor to ' convert EAX calls to IA-SIG calls when the platform does not support the full EAX functionality'.after was still missing the support for the no-longer-new standard (it is also true it quickly fall by the wayside) The game supporting this should be, ironically DirectX 7.

EDIT: this is still kind of relevant even. Adapted from my request to CarvedInside, developer of the UNi Xonar Drivers All started by reading on that C-media based chips used to support audio extension and 3D algorithms thanks to an. As usual, the more bossing and evil company ever existed in the PC audio world could not fail to spoil this. And so Creative Technology back in 2003. Anyway C-media license keep going on, but it couldn’t last forever.

And in September 2008. As soon as they could (judging by how stringent they had been in the announcement) all Sensaura technologies were removed from drivers. (: the 3D audio rendering engine was Sensaura based.) Now as rule, I wouldn’t be really worried, given that the greatest audio API (i.e.

A3D) of the century is already dead and gone for more than a decade but a really stressed how Sensaura tech made a great difference in the overall gaming experience and surround accuracy of Xear3D. I was wondering. Wouldn’t be possible to add it back to the drivers? I already spent 3 hours probing the net for older drivers. And I’m not talking about my Xonar DX drivers, but -hopefully- the c-media ones you use to work with.

Let me post some links. (This includes Club3D c-media based sound cards. But I couldn’t find accurate sources about their use use of CMI8788 chip) Then, I think I ended. I would just like to some I found. They seems to be the only precise articles describing the licensed technologies I could found.

(C-media should have supported every Sensaura specs afaik). Unfortunately they are either in Russian or in Polish. English editors seems to have been very on the argument “Sensaura 3D positional sound enhancement with multi-drive” engine until the aforementioned end of contract. Funnily it was introduced in. Last but not least I finally discovered why when I install sound card drivers (including yours) I have this apparently meaningless pcm file (. Customapp GX30 3DHelicopter.wav) It seems it was one of the various asset cmedia took from Sensaura and it was originally inside a named.

No explanation for its stay up to our days though. Thanks for your time! In the meantime I found out a. And I'd like to point out another thing: (2007) (2014) Something is definitively missing. EDIT: and guess 's monopolizing what again. First DirectSound3D Game E Xtensions debuted after Xonar D2 release (their first soundcard) and its only purpose was to restore, along with common EAX 2.0 support.

GX 2.0 was silently added on the drivers and. This the much EAX 5 emulation mode, which was widely featured a week later with the launch of the Xonar DX (which I own:3) (EAX 3 and 4 can also be btw). As side note. Asus this 'also incorporates Dolby Home Theater Technologies', even though these were already available (and the are the ) Various emulation-translation accuracy tests showed to differences when compared to X-fi cards (even though there are still lots of people which ) Then by the end of 2008 with RC drivers GX version was bumped to 2.5. Besides the questionable improvements in reverberation quality a much lower CPU footprint was. With subsequent driver releases asus mainly took care of bug fixing and hopefully all of them have been fixed by now.

Personally I hadn't none of the issues early adopters experienced 7 years ago. (but maybe it's all merit of UNi xonar drivers instead.) Finally, in the middle of 2012 Asus decided it was time to move on from the evergreen CMI8788 to the blazingly new CM8888DHT. And it did with its new Xonar Phoebus. This introduced the new GX 3.0 which I couldn't find anything about. Hence I guess it could just be a marketing gimmick It actually has improved stablity and a new (and then there's this weird thing where shows benefit from DS3D restoration without winXP compatibility) Driver installer is signed by, so I believe some of their technology is used EDIT: albeit there's a CmOal dll dated coming with Asus (and Auzentech/HT) drivers, it's suspiciously 'smaller' than the other OpenAL native implementations.

It's to not work, but my quite unfunded theory is that it just does only when GX is enabled (and Xear3D?). In the beginning Creative the EMU10K1 chip. Unfortunately they forgot to build a card around, so even though they started to announce '. Nothing happened at that time.

Was with updates. Finally on the the already showcased soundblaster Live!

Saw the light of stores, with first EAX compatible games scheduled for 'that fall'. Not everybody knows that PCI SoundBlaster card was made supporting EAX. And that included even boards prior to Live!, such as Ensoniq AudioPCI cards (which had been acquired by Creative by then), with a program called 'EAX upgrade' In the same year, was also introduced.

Microsoft eventually decided to all the previously mentioned stuff to include it in the upcoming directX Relentlessly after just 5 months the shiny new was at the starting line. Omitting the fact that they promoted its support for older boards (which ). There won't be any further news for more than 2 years. In the end, after, EAX 3.0 EAX ADVANCED HD was revealed, a week before Audigy boards debut and this was the first time forward compatibility was ruled out. First EAH games were released after though (even if that claim is challenged by some ) Contrarily to assertions EAX 4.0 did not come out with the Audigy 2.

Instead, that became an exclusive of the even newer, with the first game to ship being Finally, latest -forever- revision, EAX 5 was suggested on at the reveal of the Xtreme Fidelity audio processor, but I believe the right date for the debut should be set on (and indeed the it started to be featured on the Creative website) And that was the story (with more to come!) Just for additional reference here are the EAX reference websites for the past nearly twenty years 2008-2010.nuthing! Thanks to our friend, Adobe Flash. Some news were still posted in the good old html though (the list wasn't update in this time frame). Ok, now that I have your attention the thing is major. Has (had?) environmental audio extensions. Nowadays it's not all that matter.

Though this got me thinking: there must be more. Especially if you consider that an ALC889 music-wise is with claimed damn better equipment That's the 'flagship' chip of the taiwanese producer, and maybe OEMs don't always use it to save as much money as they can (and this may be why people with lower end integrated chips feel so much differences) Though, in games the gap seems way big and contrarily to music field I have yet to meet anyone that can't hear a tangible improvement with dedicated solutions. Placebo effect could even be another explanation, who knows. Thanks for reading, as always;) EDIT: is situation the same under OpenAL? And remember I don't bite if somebody want to release its findings.