UCyborg wrote on 2025-03-31, 13:27:

Someone here mentions that old Audigy 2 sounds better than Rx, that the latter sounds weak.

No, it can't be. 😀
Re: SB Live vs. Audigy

It's strange when I claimed that Creative doesn't make "sound cards" but "sound accelerators with mediocre sound", "Titanium HD is an midrange line, Auzen make X-Fi much better" and so on.
I was convinced even in this thread that "any X-Fi makes sound much better, even on Bluetooth headphones" (I exaggerate)

PS. By the way, the best of audidgy at pic.
Yes, while there were people from the purchased E-MU in Creative, they were able to make exactly "sound cards".
Why else would the chips be called EMU10k/20k?
And then Titanium SB088x happened
True, then happened even Recon3D, which was really sad

SansPlomb95 wrote on 2025-03-27, 19:19:

I would agree with the critics towards EAX 4 and 5 and especially in Doom 3 is that the reverb engine was abusively used in most scenes which makes EAX sound like a gimmick

EAX reverb engine sounds the same in all games and it gets really boring. It's hard to make an algorithmic reverb unique for each game.
The next logical step would be to add a convolution reverb, which would give a reflection of the real space.
I don't understand why Creative didn't do this for EAX 5? They had X-Fi with a powerful chip and X-RAM memory. This would be a game changer in those years.

ott wrote on 2025-04-01, 06:12:

EAX reverb engine sounds the same in all games and it gets really boring. It's hard to make an algorithmic reverb unique for each game.

I don't think this is always the case, though it's possible that some games use similar settings.

It's also worth noting that, in certain EAX 4.0 and EAX 5.0 titles, the "multiple environments" feature can make for some interesting blending between different EAX presets. I recently experienced this in Thief: Deadly Shadows (specifically during the Pagan Sanctuary and Hammerite Cathedral missions) but I'm sure that other games use it as well. To my ears, this created a very unique soundstage.

The rather rare low profile sound card I use for my EAX 5.0 compliant SFF build. These cards are hard to find it took me an entire year scouring the aftermarket nearly every day to stumble on one.

SansPlomb95 wrote on 2025-04-02, 05:13:

The rather rare low profile sound card

Excellent choice.
In terms of sound quality, this is probably the second best X-Fi audio card after the Onkyo SE-300 PCI-E.
Titanium HD - closes this list.
The rest is all such nonsense...

SansPlomb95 wrote on 2025-04-02, 05:13:

The rather rare low profile sound card I use for my EAX 5.0 compliant SFF build. These cards are hard to find it took me an entire year scouring the aftermarket nearly every day to stumble on one.

Based on the Samsung chip in the pic, I think that card has the full 64MB X-RAM on board. Is that correct?

And yeah, Auzentech stuff is superb. You can tell just from looking at the high quality components that they used.

I could probably never tell the difference between this one, the Onkyo or the Titanium HD. At this point it mostly boils down to the kind of outputs you need straight out of your card.
I still want to try the base 16MB X-Ram Titanium SB0880 some day to see by myself if it is as bad as forum experts makes it seem.

And yes I call this card the holy grail of EAX SFF machines as it does embark the full 64MB X-RAM chip on board making it as potent as the Titanium Fatal1ty.
The only way to have even more X-RAM would be to use the Gigabyte G1.Assassin 2 with its E-mu 20K chip soldered right onto the motherboard that comes with 128MB X-RAM but from your tests it feels no games will ever make use of so much space.
Auzen really went all-in when it comes to filtering each and every outputs for sure with those obnoxious green capacitors. Still sad Creative didn't consider making a similar form factor for their Titanium product line.

By the way, the Onkyo once you take the shield off does not seem to carry any X-RAM chip at all making it ironically one of the worst options for hardware accelerated EAX gaming rigs.
This card was probably aimed at the music producer market instead of the gaming market as the E-mu 20K chip was probably used for other purposes here.

SansPlomb95 wrote on 2025-04-02, 09:54:

By the way, the Onkyo once you take the shield off does not seem to carry any X-RAM chip at all making it ironically one of the worst options for hardware accelerated EAX gaming rigs.
This card was probably aimed at the music producer market instead of the gaming market as the E-mu 20K chip was probably used for other purposes here.

Yep, for the rich and beautiful.
See pic.

You are discussing very strange things for me.
Everyone knows that X-Fi needs 4 MB of memory to work, which it uses as a cache for internal needs.
The rest of the memory is not used at all in the lower price range.
In top segment is used as "manual managed memory", i.e. memory to which the command to write data MUST BE EXPLICITLY given.
This is done either by the game engine or directly by the programmer.
This is not an automatic cache where the most frequently used sounds are saved.
It is a straightforward "download this 100 KB of sound and play when I tell you"
There are maybe... well 5, maybe 6 games that use X-RAM.
Unreal Tournament 2004, for which Creative wrote its own sound engine.
May be Quake 4
Well... I don't know anymore.
The size of the X-RAM is as important as the color of the PCB.
As we all know, black PCB sounds better.

shevalier wrote on 2025-04-02, 14:32:

There are maybe... well 5, maybe 6 games that use X-RAM.

A while back, I did some testing with regards to X-RAM usage in Prey. That game was able to fill up most of the 64MB on my X-Fi Fatal1ty. The situation was similar in Quake 4 and Doom 3, and can also be verified via their in-game console output. Also, Creative's old EAX website specifies that both Battlefield 2 as well as Battlefield 2142 use X-RAM. Those are the games that I know of.

That said, earlier in this thread, UCyborg mentioned that any OpenAL game could theoretically make use of X-RAM based on this article, but I haven't tested that myself.

shevalier wrote on 2025-04-02, 14:32:

There are maybe... well 5, maybe 6 games that use X-RAM.
Unreal Tournament 2004, for which Creative wrote its own sound engine.
May be Quake 4

+

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-04-02, 15:00:

usage in Prey.
Battlefield 2
Battlefield 2142 use X-RAM

=5 😀

Pсi is a "bus" topology, PСI-e is a "star" topology.
The "star" has no problems with polling devices at all, because the connection is point-to-point.
Accordingly, RAM made at least some sense for X-Fi on the PСI bus.
But, the specified 4 MB perform the functions of a FIFO buffer, to reduce glitches, in a situation when all 128 audio streams are involved.
BUT.
OpenAL SDK directly describes "you open a buffer, write a sound fragment into it, specify coordinates and effects - it plays right away"
Accordingly, more than 8-10 sound sources with a level above the audible level will turn into noise due to intermodulation distortion. Physics, damn it.
The number of sounds more than 32 (yeah, Soundblaster Live!) makes sense only when using DirectSound.
When instead of cutting off sounds that are not audible - all sounds from all sources are played, simply with zero volume.
Direct 3D developers (since 9??? or 😎 have finally decided that rendering objects out of view is stupid.
Even before X-Fi was born, DirectSound died, and OpenAl... also died without being born.
So 128 audio streams, and X-RAM, are completely unnecessary things.
Even less necessary than Crystalizer.

shevalier wrote on 2025-04-02, 17:07:

The number of sounds more than 32 (yeah, Soundblaster Live!) makes sense only when using DirectSound.

Not sure about other games, but Prey (and Quake 4 and Doom 3) can definitively use more than 32 sounds via OpenAL. I made a comparison between running the game on an Audigy 2 ZS and an X-Fi Titanium here.

Battlefield 2 also claims to use 128 sounds when the X-Fi option is selected in setup. At least that's what's written on the page that I linked to in my previous post.

Does Audigy Rx do up-to EAX 4.0 or is 5.0 also supported?

Edit: read somewhere on Reddit that it natively supports up to EAX 3.0. Is that true?

UCyborg wrote on 2025-04-02, 20:53:

Does Audigy Rx do up-to EAX 4.0 or is 5.0 also supported?

Looks like it tops out at EAX 4.0 per this datasheet.

I confirm that it supports up to (hardware, not emulated) EAX 4.0. Another thing to note is that currently the third revision of the RX is in production and it seems that is the best of them, having some minor tweaks. Each revision comes packaged in a different box, the one currently produced comes in the grey one.

UCyborg wrote on 2025-04-02, 20:53:

Does Audigy Rx do up-to EAX 4.0 or is 5.0 also supported?

Try ALCapsViewer utility to check EAX capabilities.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130726192938/ht … s/AllItems.aspx

Here is my Audigy 2 ZS

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-04-02, 17:24:

shevalier wrote on 2025-04-02, 17:07:

The number of sounds more than 32 (yeah, Soundblaster Live!) makes sense only when using DirectSound.

Not sure about other games, but Prey (and Quake 4 and Doom 3) can definitively use more than 32 sounds via OpenAL. I made a comparison between running the game on an Audigy 2 ZS and an X-Fi Titanium here.

Battlefield 2 also claims to use 128 sounds when the X-Fi option is selected in setup. At least that's what's written on the page that I linked to in my previous post.

But no one else did that.
Serious Sam 4, 2020.
35 buffers of 88 kilobytes each.

shevalier wrote on 2025-04-03, 08:08:

But no one else did that.

Looks like BioShock may have also used 128 sounds via OpenAL on X-Fi cards. Relevant bits from Creative's Audio Guide:

Creative Labs wrote:

Most X-Fi and Audigy series sound cards support OpenAL, and if these devices are set up correctly then there should be no problems.

Audigy sound cards are not capable of mixing as many 3D sources as X-Fi, so to avoid missing sounds you should modify the "Bioshock.ini" file. Change "MaxChannels=128" to "MaxChannels=60". You might want to make a backup of the file before you change it.

Seems to be another case where the X-Fi could potentially provide some benefits over the Audigy.

shevalier wrote on 2025-04-03, 08:08:

Serious Sam 4, 2020.
35 buffers of 88 kilobytes each.

Interesting. I guess most OpenAL games released after 2010 didn't bother with implementing more than 30+ simultaneous sounds, since that would need to be handled in software on modern PCs. I doubt it would tax the latest CPUs a whole lot, but maybe there is some other reason for it as well.

UCyborg wrote on 2025-04-02, 20:53:

Does Audigy Rx do up-to EAX 4.0 or is 5.0 also supported?

Edit: read somewhere on Reddit that it natively supports up to EAX 3.0. Is that true?

Audigy Rx is Audigy 4 Pro with PCIe bridge.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-04-03, 14:56:

UCyborg wrote on 2025-04-02, 20:53:

Does Audigy Rx do up-to EAX 4.0 or is 5.0 also supported?

Edit: read somewhere on Reddit that it natively supports up to EAX 3.0. Is that true?

Audigy Rx is Audigy 4 Pro with PCIe bridge.

Better than nothing if you want something easily obtainable and officially supported on modern systems. Anyone buying it is doing so for wide-ranging support for features in old games, and missing 5.0 and XRAM is far from ideal. However, I will say that when 5.0 was new it failed to impress, dropping support for older EAX features in games that used it. This is not unique to 5.0. Most versions of EAX both added new and removed old features, but it was 5.0 that had a real reputation for just adding excessive amonts of reverb to games and making them worse, likely contributing to the death of EAX.

This card will definitely give you the most bang for your buck, especially on modern systems when they inevitably kill off Titanium cards in a future Windows update, assuming Creative doesn't drop support for this as well, and if no one steps up to carry the torch from daniel_k. Thinking about getting one myself just to have in my collection when that day comes, or I might just join the lot of you holding onto old hardware and refusing to upgrade. Need to brush up on my soldering skills though, since nothing lasts forever. I plan to main Linux eventually, leaving my last Windows PC for "retro" gaming.