Audigy Rx was never interesting for games when it was "new" and even less interesting today, sitting in the same price range as many X-Fi cards on second hand market. They're all dead products on 20+ years DSPs and Rx won't somehow magically outlive X-Fi cards.

DeadOfKnight wrote on Yesterday, 19:54:

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.

Source on this?

I haven't noticed any difference between my X-Fi Titanium and my Audigy 2 ZS with regards to EAX intensity in older (pre 5.0) games. Also, based on what's written in Creative's BioShock Guide that I linked to earlier, the EAX Effects Amount slider in the Audio Console controls the intensity of the reverb. Relevant bit:

Creative Labs wrote:

3.3 EAX Settings

This is where the names could get a little confusing. "EAX Effects" in this context just means Reverb. The tick-box switches reverb on and off, and the slider lets you turn it up or down. Leave it at 0.0 dB to hear reverb at the volume intended by the designers.

This setting is at 0.0 dB by default, but changing that value could alter the reverb intensity.

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

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.

Battlefield 2142 also uses 128 sounds via OpenAL on an X-Fi card, according to Creative's official guide for that game.

The Serpent Rider wrote on Yesterday, 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.

Actually the Audigy Rx is essentially the Audigy 4 (not the Pro variant) and uses the E-MU CA10300 from Audigy 4, but with a dedicated 600-ohm headphone amplifier, one TOSLINK optical output, and a PCI Express ×1 interface supported via a PLX Technology bridge controller. The E-MU CA10300 (Audigy 4) in turn was actually the unleaded counterpart of the EMU10K2.5 CA0108 which was used in the Audigy 2 Value.

DeadOfKnight wrote on Yesterday, 19:54:

The Serpent Rider wrote on Yesterday, 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.

That's exactly the reason why i decided to buy one a few months ago (plus the fact that i found it on a clearance sale at the price of 29 euros!). I have really no complaints from it's performance and i think it's a better option to buy this than a used old Audigy or X-fi. The only thing really missing it's the EAX 5.0 support, but only a handful of games were released that took advantage from it.

By the way, that's the russian site i mentioned before that tested it and described the way you should set the software settings in order to get rid of the excess Reverb effect that gets automatically enabled in many instances with the RX: https://www-drive2-ru.translate.goog/b/464923 … &_x_tr_pto=wapp

Joseph_Joestar wrote on Yesterday, 20:19:

Source on this?

No specific source that I can remember, at least not a reputable one. I could maybe hunt down a bunch of quotes in forums of people complaining about this, but admittedly you can find that for just about anything. When I say it was 5.0 that gained it that reputation, that could be a misinterpretation, but I do recall complaints that new versions of EAX did away with previous features that people found more useful or interesting than those that remained, and EAX was pejoratively referred to as "just reverb" by many even after it was discontinued. I think it's more to do with the implementation in specific levels. EAX is usually a net positive IMO, but sometimes I sense a mismatch that errs on the side of too spacious. I think this is due to an unnatural lack of sound dampening for rooms that aren't completely empty.

Raytraced audio has the potential to do a lot better job of it, but just as surfaces can be more or less light reflective, the same would have to apply to sound on different materials to feel completely accurate.

Dimos wrote on Yesterday, 23:12:

The only thing really missing it's the EAX 5.0 support, but only a handful of games were released that took advantage from it.

But in those, some are legendary games in my very biased opinion ! I mostly built a retro XP machine for the sake of playing them in their ultimate form reminding me from a time where PC gaming did not rely on console ports.
We are talking Unreal Tournament 2004 and Unreal Tournament 2007, Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142, Trackmania Nations, Quake 4 and Prey which are all true PC games.
Joseph and others have found more than 30+ games using EAX 5.0 overall so far which is a little more than a handful.

DeadOfKnight wrote on Today, 00:14:

Joseph_Joestar wrote on Yesterday, 20:19:

Source on this?

No specific source that I can remember, at least not a reputable one. I could maybe hunt down a bunch of quotes in forums of people complaining about this, but admittedly you can find that for just about anything. When I say it was 5.0 that gained it that reputation, that could be a misinterpretation, but I do recall complaints that new versions of EAX did away with previous features that people found more useful or interesting than those that remained, and EAX was pejoratively referred to as "just reverb" by many even after it was discontinued. I think it's more to do with the implementation in specific levels. EAX is usually a net positive IMO, but sometimes I sense a mismatch that errs on the side of too spacious. I think this is due to an unnatural lack of sound dampening for rooms that aren't completely empty.

I'll be your source hah, I have already shared my thoughts previously on how I regret the abusive use of the reverb engine in most late EAX games.

I had some real trouble trying to get the EAX patch working for Unreal 2004 on all of my X-Fi cards, I would either have three quarters of the sound effects absent or nothing at all. Has anyone faced some issues with that game as well ?

yes, had the same issues, that patch was terrible even beyond the stupid added music. the problem is the default HW renderer will work even worse with x-fi cards so they had to do something because epic clearly wasn't going to put the effort in to support a card released over a year later than the game.

it was actually following tradition, because creative's eax pack for ut99 was also bad, adding bathroom reverb everywhere for no reason. i only consider ut2004 with an audigy to be a proper improvement and even that is broken on certain maps (dm-goliath comes to mind).

SansPlomb95 wrote on Today, 02:29:

I had some real trouble trying to get the EAX patch working for Unreal 2004 on all of my X-Fi cards, I would either have three quarters of the sound effects absent or nothing at all. Has anyone faced some issues with that game as well ?

No, it worked right out of the box for me under WinXP. Creative posted detailed instructions on how to get it running on their UT 2004 page.

That said, I strongly dislike Creative's implementation of "dynamic music" as well as their revised weapon sound effects. Both of these replace original game assets with some generic sounding crap. Thankfully, you can turn that off via the in-game console, as described on the page linked above. Positional audio is noticeably improved by the EAX 5.0 patch, but that's pretty much the only good thing about it. Oh and, it also allows the game to use 128 sounds via OpenAL, per that page.

this topic mirrors my experience with ut2004 and the x-fi: https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/ut2004-and- … -sounds.191198/

IMO creative needed to ensure on their (driver) side that a prior released game works on new hardware just as it did on the previous generation, instead of releasing half-broken patches messing with the game itself.

Dimos wrote on Yesterday, 22:59:

The E-MU CA10300 (Audigy 4) in turn was actually the unleaded counterpart of the EMU10K2.5 CA0108 which was used in the Audigy 2 Value.

The funniest thing is that is that CA103 (108) is the coolest of the Audigys in terms of its features.
The P16 block, which allows playing 44.1 kHz to 48k without Sample rate conversion, is only in this chip.
True only for WASAPI, not for Dsound and ASIO. 🙁

But the 2ZS is bigger and prettier, so it's much better. 😀

Pardon my ignorance, since the first sound card I ever bought was Sound BlasterX AE-5 Plus...so Audigy Rx can't work with stock Windows drivers (NT 6.x line that comes with universal driver that can drive 99% other sound solutions), at least when it comes to basic sound output?

I've read some old posts from 10 years ago that software based EAX may have over-pronounced reverb or occlusion doesn't work in some cases etc...but that was 10 years ago, it'd be nice to have more current write up with latest and greatest libraries and concrete examples of differences, in which games there are issues and in which parts of the game etc. There was also a remark on this forum that ALchemy supposedly only works as-intended when paired with hardware based ct_oal.dll OpenAL implementation.

And Audigy cards supposedly lack Elevation Filter...does this mean being able to tell some sound is coming from above you in 3D space?

Also, generally, is one just better off with Daniel K's drivers when it comes to anything Audigy / X-Fi?

I'm still not sure if any of those cards are worth the bother. Plus my only realistic option is Audigy Rx, I'm not comfortable with used market in general.

UCyborg wrote on Today, 06:27:

And Audigy cards supposedly lack Elevation Filter...does this mean being able to tell some sound is coming from above you in 3D space?

It was discussed a few pages back. The Elevation Filter does this:

And Creative describes MacroFX here. Both are very noticeable when using the X-Fi CMSS-3D Headphone mode. As for specific examples, I've talked about the Elevation Filter use in Battlefield 2142 here. You can hear ships flying over your head and such.

Also, generally, is one just better off with Daniel K's drivers when it comes to anything Audigy / X-Fi?

For Audigy cards, yes. But for PCIe X-Fi cards, you might want to use an older driver version from 2010, since there are some issues with missing sounds in OpenAL games with Creative's latest official drivers. The final X-Fi support pack from Daniel_K is based on the latter, and it supposedly fixes the OpenAL issue, but there have been some (unconfirmed) reports to the contrary. I'm talking specifically about WinXP here, not sure how this all works under Win10/11.

I've added a few more links to Creative's old website:

• X-Fi Performance And Technology Specs
• X-Fi S-SRC (Super Sample-Rate Conversion)
• X-RAM
• EAX 5.0

This is just some basic info that Creative used to distinguish the X-Fi from their previous cards. I find this bit from the first link particularly interesting:

Creative Labs wrote:

HRTFs / Headphone processing HRTF Data collected from multiple sources (UCDavis, Aureal, and Sensaura) Patents on MacroFX, binau […]
Show full quote

HRTFs / Headphone processing
HRTF Data collected from multiple sources (UCDavis, Aureal, and Sensaura)
Patents on MacroFX, binaural 3D panning.
48-tap FIR filters, 128 3D sources.

It looks like they used some of Aureal and Sensaura tech for their new X-Fi CMSS-3D Headphone mode.

UCyborg wrote on Today, 06:27:

I've read some old posts from 10 years ago that software based EAX may have over-pronounced reverb or occlusion doesn't work in some cases etc...but that was 10 years ago, it'd be nice to have more current write up with latest and greatest libraries and concrete examples of differences, in which games there are issues and in which parts of the game etc. There was also a remark on this forum that ALchemy supposedly only works as-intended when paired with hardware based ct_oal.dll OpenAL implementation.

Dimos wrote on Yesterday, 23:12:

By the way, that's the russian site i mentioned before that tested it and described the way you should set the software settings in order to get rid of the excess Reverb effect that gets automatically enabled in many instances with the RX: https://www-drive2-ru.translate.goog/b/464923 … &_x_tr_pto=wapp

Guess this anecdote is fairly recent.

It kinda bugs me that my motherboard has one PCIe x1 port covered by the graphics card. Why these things have to be so large? Maybe if I didn't get unlucky when I was buying a computer (that was meant to be full AMD based, now I have chipset by NVIDIA), I'd end up with the motherboard with different placements of PCIe x1 slots.

So I'd have to remove AE-5 Plus to be able to install Rx in this computer.

shevalier wrote on Today, 05:38:

But the 2ZS is bigger and prettier, so it's much better. 😀

Fun fact:
SB0230 (Audigy1 OEM) is a little bigger than SB0350 (Audigy 2ZS)

UCyborg wrote on Today, 06:27:

Pardon my ignorance, since the first sound card I ever bought was Sound BlasterX AE-5 Plus...so Audigy Rx can't work with stock Windows drivers (NT 6.x line that comes with universal driver that can drive 99% other sound solutions), at least when it comes to basic sound output.

Probably it would work, but why would anybody want to do that? As far as Daniel k.'s drivers are concerned i think (from what i 've gathered online from various sources) that they are the best option for both the Audigy and the X-fi cards.

UCyborg wrote on Today, 09:53:

UCyborg wrote on Today, 06:27:

So I'd have to remove AE-5 Plus to be able to install Rx in this computer.

Remind me, why do you consider replacing the AE-5 Plus with the Rx? Cause the only legit reason i can think of is that tge Rx works in Xp, otherwise the AE-5 plus seems definitely a superior card.