Is Creative/EAX still king?

helmutcheese said:
Lets get something clear.

I aint a fanboy of Creative, the ZS was the biggest POS ever (at software level).

If some not all got issues how can it be down to Creative ?.

If Asus who have crap support can make a Bios with 1 fix (X-FI Fix) why cant Gigabyte, now peeps need get over it and move on or buy another Mobo or Soundcard.

I aint ever had as Mobo with PCI Latency settings AFAIR since I always use Asus so cant help but I bet Google can.
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ok then
 
Back on Topic.

Is EAX still/will it remain as important over the next few years.

Do I go:
PRELUDE (EAX)
XONAR PCI-e (No EAX) although slightly better components.

Yes, I play games and watch films and listent to music.
 
Xonar all the way. It has received better reviews, not based on the X-Fi chipset and is cheaper than other high-profile sound cards. The PCI-x version of that card is the card that I wanted to buy.....but I could only afford an X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCi-x :(
 
Is EAX just living on past glory?

With a lot of games being ports from the consoles, is DTS Connect not going to be more epopular with Devs or does hardware accelerated audio still have a future?
 
EAX (latest being 5.0) aint going away, and newer games should be OPENAL so EAX will work in Vista without need for Creative ALchemy.

And I dont live for Console Ports so would not even use thats as a reason not to.
 
I dont live for console ports myself so maybe that was a mute point I raised although I was thinking that with fewer PC exclusives nowadays, will devs find it easier to support DTS Connect on both platforms rather then OPENAL on the PC and DTS Connect on the consoles?

A prelude it is then.

Can someone tell me who is responsible for the Auzentech drivers? Are they made by Auzentech or do they request them from Creative?
 
Had Win XP on the kit in my sig with the X-Fi Extrememusic when I first built it .. had to RMA the X-Fi shortly thereafter - the X-Fi arrived back today and now nothing but a few pops on startup (works in my spare pc with XP!). ALL that has changed in the meantime is Vista 64 Ultimate :mad: This has cost me 6 hours of farting around on top of the hastle associated with the 'do this' & 'do that' prior to the RMA being issued.

The Audigy that the X-Fi replaced 18 months ago (I already had it 5 years by then!) is perfectly fine under Vista 64 though ... now the kids have a great sound system for Spongebob, Nemo and friends on the spare :D
 
helmutcheese said:
I dont know what you are on about.

EAX is still the industry standard, even Vista has not changed that just because MS messed up the Soundstack in Windows making Vista.

EAX still works 100% with no issues in all OpenAL Games (most modern games should be this) and with Emulation/Conversion using Creative ALchemy in DirectSound Games (older tech should really be dead by now).
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MS didn't "mess" anything up.
MS made it quite clear to Creative and all other company's that there would be major changes in Vista that would mean that the way things worked would have to be changed.
This was detailed a very long time before Vista was released.

Creative not being ready for this change and then attempting to blame it on MS because they couldn't sort things out themselves is not MS' fault.
 
Do you actually know anything about MS (your a bit late) I am a Beta Tester (wow big deal) but I do get told a lot you do not get told by the horses mouth.

Vista (codenamed Longhorn) was 2years late and put out the door with many aspects missing that were to be in final, and other aspects rushed.

Unless you can back up above advise you dont talk about what you know nothing of m8, becuase I seriously doubt you know much about it apart from what you read on web or downloaded from leaks of the builds.

I have had a bellyload of crap from Creative (Im no fan of theirs) and their bad software and support over the years, but this issue was not their doing and at least they wrote an App to correct it, and at the end of the day all new games should be wrote in OPENAL for sound.
 
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Saw this a few days ago, seems somehow relevant to this thread:

http://www.asus.com/news_show.aspx?id=10219

Latest DirectSound & Ability to Play EAX 5.0 Titled Games
With the new audio architecture in Vista, users will sometimes be unable to achieve multi-channel sounds, DirectSound; and EAX 5.0 sound effects in EAX 5.0 Titled PC games. With the ASUS Xonar DX, all these problems will be solved. With support for the innovative DS3D GX 2.0 technology, the Xonar DX automatically supports the latest EAX and DirectSound HW after installation without the need to search for additional drivers or OpenAL – as most games are DS3D/DirectX compatible.
Click to expand...

Should be interesting.
 
Best of luck Asus support is worlds worst lol. (even more so than Creatives).

And only current issuw in Vista is lack of EAX without Creative ALchemy for DirectSound games (an old tech that aint used much now as OPENAL has took over).

I get all speakers to work upto 7.1 and EAX in all games both DirectSound or OPENAL.
 
Support? Maybe. Driver development? Unknown at the moment. Can't comment on the quality of their driver software, but it certainly appears to be updated more frequently than Creative's. But then, that's not hard to achieve... :p
 
I own all Asus Mobos, apart from the last 3 (high end Crosshair, then 680 then 780) they are good hardware but support for Bios/apps and actual support from staff is near Zero.
 
Personally I like creative gear - not to say I've had no problems with my XFI but at the end of the day with building a PC from scratch I always expect to run into a few problems at first.

Once the BIOS was updated and new drivers released been working 100% solidly for 6months.

Got a Creative vision M aswell and I much prefer it to Ipods. Again no probs with it.

Admitidly creatives own tech support is awful beyond belief, but their forums and other fan run ones are really helpful.
 
Does that mean that the CPU usage would be dramatically reduced? That's the only thing putting me off getting one atm.
 
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