I realized that for my games to get 5.1, onboard sound won't be good enough. While I do have my speakers set for 5.1, and they do work, I could never seem to get audio to be surround in games like FEAR, or HL2 etc. I'm thinking it's EAX or some other sound technologies I am unaware of (I'm a soundcard noob, seeing how I've pretty much never investigated soundcards, only using them when available, and being content with integrated for most of my life). So, I was about to run out and buy an Audigy 4 SE OEM (I missed the boat on an awesome X-fi deal - damn), but I heard that Creative is not supporting anything but X-fi for Vista. Is this true? Are their workarounds (because Google indicates that some Audigy users (ZS etc.) have managed to get it working). Any suggestions or ideas? I pretty much run Vista, and I want a sound card to get 5.1. Since I'm no audiophile, and I don't run my speakers too loud, audio fidelity isn't top priority - it's price. I'm sure an Audigy 4 SE would be good enough for my ears.
I think its just audigy 1 thats left in the dark with vista, i think that 4 will be fully covered with a 64 bit driver, (when creative get their arse in gear)
Directly from MaximumPC's Feb/2007 article entitled. "Vista - 10 reasons you don't need Vista today" No Hardware Audio "During development, MS removed a couple crucial gaming-audio-related features from Vista, including DirectSound 3D (hundreds of games use DS3D to deliver positional 5.1 audio) and support for hardware-accelerated 3D sound. This isn't a problem for new games going forward, as most developers have embraced the alternative OpenAL technology. Which will continue to work in Vista. It is, however, a problem for legacy DS3D games, such as Call of Duty 2 and Max Payne. When you run a DirectSound 3D game on Vista, it won't give you the option to enable 3D sound or features that require hardware acceleration, such as EAX. Unfortunately, there's no easy solution. Creative will release its Alchemy application, a workaround to a problem that should't exist in the first place. Alchemy is basically a wrapper program - it intercepts DirectSound 3D functions and converts them to OpenAL functions using a custom DLL. Alchemy works OK, but we'd much rather have a less-kludgy solution from Microsoft. Hopefully, they'll hear our cries and include hardware support with Vista's first service pack." Make sure your hardware is actually compatible with Vista before you purchase it. You can check by using the Vista Upgrade Advisor ALchemy
If that's true, it's both astounding and stupid at the same time. Why drop functionality from DirectX when MS have spent the last 10 years persuading people to use it above all else?
I have an X-Fi and with Alchemy I've had no problems running hardware accelerated sound be it OpenAL or EAX.
I hope they'll get this fixed soon. I would get a cheap OEM Audigy, but Alchemy doesn't support it right?
