Fact 6)
Creative has finally worked up thier drivers in vista (took them quite a while, despite MS giving manufactures like creative much extra time before retail release of vista

can you back up this 'fact' ?

im pretty sure i read on the official creative forums the reason the drivers were so buggy was that they were NOT given ample time before vista launched to work with drivers.

I recall some survey's at hardware sites showing that more and more gamers are simply using the limited functionality of integrated sound chips -- typically realtek. Creative and MS know this too. So, the market for sound cards is transioning, but to what isnt clear.

Overon:
No problem, I know I may seem harsh sometimes, but I do try and help people understand things, and I generally am willing to try and back up my statements.

Okay Dev, thanks for summarizing facts for me.

Now I understand the situation.

Fact 1)
Microsoft shafted creative (which I'm fine with) and gamers (which I'm not) by ELIMINATING all hardware directx directsound support from vista

Even more reason to buy Vista! Woohoo, Microsoft loves us gamers!

Oh wait.

As for this Asus vs Creative thing, they both fucking suck. Can they go ahead and kill each other?

Creston

PHJF:
No, digital does not equal optical.
You could have said TOSLINK, or you could have said Optical.

For instance, digital video means DVI, or HDMI. No optical there, but its still digital. I'm not aware of an common optical format for video. Similarly, the HDMI 1.3 spec includes a DIGITAL audio option in the HDMI cable, again, its NOT optical.
It shouldn't matter in a sound system wheather you are using optical digital, or wired digital. Digital is digital. Theoretically, ideally, there should be no differance between them.
I personally use optical, just in case there might exist a differance, and because I've never had an optical system before now.
I'm fairly certain there are far more digital wired audio systems in existance than digital optical systems. So I don't have a problem beliving that most people, when they say digital, do not nessasarily mean optical digital.

I even wrote my reply in such a way that if you HAD meant optical (rather than the digital you said), I covered that as well, and agreed with you on the point of optical sound.

Also, I wrote my reply so that if you had meant DD LIVE, I covered that as well.

Note that I agree with you that creative sux, I'm just disagreeing with your semantics I'm that kinda person

This comment was edited on Mar 25, 18:10.

Overon:
Exactly my point about the EAX. As I said, the early EAX were opened up because of competition with A3d. Since Creative bought them out to kill them, they haven't had any more open specs for EAX, and all of the later EAX are indeed closed and proprietary as both you and I have mentioned.

BTW, I did mention facts regarding vista and direct sound. If you disagree with any of my facts please let me know, and we can discuss it.

Fact 1)
Microsoft shafted creative (which I'm fine with) and gamers (which I'm not) by ELIMINATING all hardware directx directsound support from vista. The software emulation for directsound in vista supports ONLY STEREO, not surround.
MS instead went to something in Vista called XACT.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XACT
There are other names involved too, like UAA, etc, but the XACT is the part that is most interesting to me. The X in XACT stands for cross platform, and guess what other main platform its used on? Xbox! XACT is also part of the XNA game studio.
So from the surface to a cynical person like me, it looks like MS did the vista audio change so they could save a few bucks when porting old xbox games (like the years old xbox 1 halo 2 game they made vista only) to vista.

Fact 2)
Creative (fortunately for them) started using OpenAL before vista came out, this was an interface to thier hardware. The first game I rememeber with it (not nessasarily the first game that used it) was a battlefield game, BF2 I belive.
Since then, many games use OpenAL, perhaps even all the recent ones.
Here's a list of OpenAL games:
http://www.openal.org/titles.html

Fact 3)
OpenAL is supported in the new Vista sound thing using HARDWARE in creative cards, so any game that supports OpenAL can still use hardware acceleration in vista.

Fact 4)
Creative made something called Alechemy that uses the OpenAL interface to convert Directsound calls to OpenAL and the new vista format. So old games will hopefully be able to use hardware acceleration and full surround sound (instead of the stereo that vista forces software emulation of directsound to use).
Here's the list of games that alchemy supports:
http://connect.creativelabs.com/alchemy/Lists/Games/AllItems.aspx
If it says verified its been tested by creative, otherwise it hasn't. No steam games (half life, counter strike, etc) are shown as verified.
Note that they list steam games under SOURCE ENGINE, despite the fact that hl1, and CS, and DoD, etc are not source engine games. CS:S, hl2, DoD:S, etc are the source engine games.
If the game you'd like to play isn't verified, you may just have to hope for the best. The stereo only software emulation of directsound in vista (when alchemy doesn't support a game) is only one issue. Other sound issues exist with older games and vista as well.

Fact 5)
If all you do is play the latest greatest eye candy games, you probably DONT CARE about directsound, and you probably have vista for dx10, and you can ignore all this. The latest greatest eye candy titles are likely to be OpenAL now rather than directsound.

Fact 6)
Creative has finally worked up thier drivers in vista (took them quite a while, despite MS giving manufactures like creative much extra time before retail release of vista, like how OEM copies were sold on new computers months in advance of vista retail release) to where most people don't have have issues with creative so most people won't have experianced any issues, especially if they only play the latest greatest eye candy stuff.

Is that enough facts for you Overon?

This comment was edited on Mar 25, 18:01.

When somebody says digital they are referring to toslink, not some stupid little piece of shit "flexijack". My fucking onboard audio has digital coax and toslink and a $150 Creative card can't be bothered? It's another case of Creative being a bunch of fucking ass clowns.

Not that it matters because once again no Dolby Digital Live! support means you cant do shit in 5.1 unless it's a movie.

Edit: After a further check of the list, they do list some steam games under STEAM (instead of individual titles). However the info they list is marked as unverified, so they haven't bothered to check to see if the most popular online FPS game in the world works with surround in vista.

I use it with an X-Fi, it does work.

So much misinformation in this thread. Someone who has some facts should shed some light on all these claims especially the situation of vista and direct sound etc.

Without reverse engineering, how could the new asus card support eax 3, 4, or 5, since eax 3, 4, and 5 are completely closed and proprietary to creative labs?

I gave up on creative labs because of the driver bloat, the questionable call home apps in their driver suite, and the slow fixing of problems in general. I gave up on creative labs after my negative soundblaster live experience. Creative labs dumped supporting older cards just as soon as a new line of cards was introduced, leaving the older cards without issues. This happened with every single generation of sound cards creative released including my sb live.

I currently use an m-audio revolution 7.1. Not because I need 7.1 output, but because the signal to noise ratio is superior to onboard sound cards and with quality headphones, I definitely hear the difference.

I've never had any problems with Creative either. In fact, the only time I've *ever* had audio problems was when I tried to use a mobo's built in sound, and it was problematic as hell (channel dropouts, crackle noises). Put the sound blaster audigy back in and everything worked fine.

Currently using X-Fi with Vista, no problems....


-----------------------------------
There are 3 kinds of people in the world; those who understand math, and those who don't ...

Actually, the x-fi card I just bought sounds 1000x better than the on-board sound chip (of a brand-spankin' mobo), and I only paid $30 for the card.

So yeah, people still buy Creative.

PHJF:
I'm not sure what you mean. Dolby digital 5.1 is very differant from Dolby Digital Live.
DD 5.1 what many movies use (those that don't use DTS) and is either decoded on your soundcard and sent out to 6 speakers, or sent out directly using something like AC3 on a digital connection.
Creative has had support for outputting an AC3 signal containing dolby digital using a digital connection on audigy/live!/ and x-fi cards, and also supported decoding dolby digital to output through 5.1 analog connections from I think since audigy (live! could just output the AC3, it couldn't decode it).

DD Live (which I was talking about below in previous posts) is the ability to take ANY signal, and real time encode it to become a dolby digital surround signal. Specifically, its very useful in games so you don't need an analog hookup anymore you can go 100% digital signal.
This is what NO sound card sold by creative has or has ever had, its at least a 6 year old technology.

My soundcard X-Fi, has digital. In fact, it lets you configure one of the plugs on the back as either a digital plug, or a mic in. They call it a "flexi jack"
Now since I use the mic in games, I kinda need that to be used for a mic. So yeah, its a poor design from that standpoint.

But AFAIK, all creative cards since live! (like audigies and x-fi) have offered some sorta digital output. BTW, digital is not just optical.

Fortunately for me, since I got the platinum x-fi, I got the live-drive (or whatever creative is calling the drive bay module now) and it DOES have optical on the front. Its a pain to have cables going from front of my computer to the back (another poor design choice, I prefered the live! daughter card for the extra output/inputs). But at least I have digital optical.

Now if you were talking about how the creative cards without a drive bay device don't have an OPTICAL connection, there you may be correct. But you said "digital" not "optical" so you are not correct in that sense.

Note that I'm not disgreeing with you about creative being pathetic. I'm just disagreeing with the some of your stated reasons (or the way you stated them if you meant to say optical instead of digital for instance).
This comment was edited on Mar 25, 16:44.

Dolby Digital is offered on more or less *all* high-end sound cards... unless it's from Creative Labs.
For fucks sake, they don't even have Digital Out. Fucking pathetic.

I use my X-Fi for gaming and music creation, and it does a wonderful job with both. I don't have any complaints. In fact, I've never had a single problem with any Creative card, and I've been using them since my first SB Live Value over a decade ago.

Considering all of the problems documented here, I guess I should consider myself lucky!

Once every couple of years the fags over at Creative actually climb down off there pile of money and release a new driver which is usually buggy as hell.. they suck.

skyguy: Yes, thats still the case unless you have a card with dolby digital Live (real time 5.1 encoding). Soundstorm (from SIX! year old nvidia nforce 2 motherboards) offered this innovation. Creative still doesn't offer it on any of thier cards.

TQ: Did you read my post?
I mentioned auzentech's product in it.

I also mentioned several ways creative stifled innovation

Here's a little more detail on part of it

a) most people use motherboard sound. I dont recall the exact stats, but its something like 90% or more of people use motherboard sound.
Wait, I just remembered something, here's the stats on the average gamer:
http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html
Its not 90%, but those stats are for gamers, not average person, and it doesn't show what the mix of "other" is.

b) Given that, what kind of people buy a separate sound card? Well music people are one, and yeah, there has been some innovation in terms of music sound cards. Whats the other biggest category? Gamers. Just to make it clear, I'm talking about gamers and gaming cards in how they've stifled it. I'm not a pro musician, and I'm sure there's been advances in that area, especially since you aren't "locked" (see futher down) into choosing a creative card to get advanced EAX if you are a musician.

c) what do gamers want? Good gaming sound, which generally means EAX. What cards offer advanced EAX (I'm talking EAX 3,4,5, etc) sound? NONE except creative (see previous comment and the blues story above). See those stats I linked above, as far as I can tell the biggest categories of add on cards that gamers use are creative. EAX is a closed spec. So it almost doesn't matter what non creative cards do, the majority of gamers are going for creative and EAX. So yeah, thats kinda stifled things.

d) the main exception are gamers who want something quick/cheap and go for a $20 or so off name brand, and even then there are creative options, past generations yeah, but they are there.

e) auzentech with their prelude is just about the only exception that has full eax sound, because they use the x-fi chip. And its a recent exception, up until about a year ago, there were no exceptions.

TQ:
Also, I mentioned OpenAL in my post, again did you read it? That's what Alchemy is based on. And if you are lucky, your game is on the list of supported ones. You think most old games are there on the supported list? Hah
BTW, here's a direct link to supported titles:
http://connect.creativelabs.com/alchemy/Lists/Games/AllItems.aspx
They don't even have HALF LIFE on the list!! I go back and replay that game occasionally and it offered surround sound. Plus, what about Counter Strike, which is only the worlds most popular online FPS game (it STILL is btw, despite all the newer games)? Nope sorry, can't do surround sound in vista in those games, only stereo. If you have someone coming up behind you, tough.
Edit: After a further check of the list, they do list some steam games under STEAM (instead of individual titles). However the info they list is marked as unverified, so they haven't bothered to check to see if the most popular online FPS game in the world works with surround in vista.


Here's another stifling thing, they've had the ability to EASILY add existing innovations to existing products, but instead wait year(s) until they release their next gen cards. They wouldn't even have to release the innovations for free, they could charge a fee to add something like dolby digital live sound and people like me would be glad to pay for it if it was reasonably priced, since they could offer it as a download it would have very little overhead costs, they've already paid the R&D costs since they add the things into future generations, all the need to pay are the driver teams, and they are probably just saleried employees already. So it even makes good business sense to do something like this.



And finally, what exactly has creative offered since the days of the Live! (which BTW, one of the big advantages was supposed to be a powerful SOFTWARE programmable chip, thats what creative was hyping about in those days. And they never took advantage of it, even though they've used similar chips since then in all thier cards. Heck they could have opened up the specs of the chip itself and let other people do all the work for free of adding features and improving things. This would have actually INCREASED the demand for creative hardware, which is basically all they are selling since thier software/driver support is such suck. Example, look at all the sales of linksys wrt54g router when they released all the firmware as open source in a buildable format. ) ?

Hmm, better quality inputs/ouputs. YEAH THATS A INNOVATION! Not. Its a logical evolutionary progression.
Hmm, higher khz for recoding and playback. YEAH THATS AN INNOVATION! Not. Again, its a logical evolutionary progression.
Hmm, higher bit rate in recording and playback. YEAH THATS AN INNOVATION! Not. Again, a logical evolutionary progression.
Hmm, EAX 5! YEAH THATS AN INNOVATION! Not really, its the closest thing X-Fi has to one, but its still not exactly an innovation. I haven't noticed any huge leap in gaming sound quality compared to EAX 4.

And... thats about it!

This comment was edited on Mar 25, 15:49.

EAX HD/5.0 is fully supported by Creative under Vista provided you are running ALchemy and your game supports it.

Link: http://connect.creativelabs.com/alchemy/default.aspx

I am fully aware of Vista and DRM issues. I was asking how it related to game audio. It doesn't.