Really confused! What home cinema speakers do I need for x-fi?

[Rakeesh]

:wtf:

If another company had the resources, I'm certain they could do what they wished. EAX, for the most part, is nothing but extremely fancy (and if used properly) and accurate reverb. I'm sure if a new company with sufficient resources arose that utilized both accurate real-time reverb and true to the source sound placement, Creative could do nothing.

But really, who out there has the resources to create such? I'm sure the processing power to do all that would be insane. It'd sound awesome, but just wouldn't be feasible as the market for such is so small there would probably be no income after one considers operational expenses.

Oh well.

Er...not really. Effects functions are so computationally small that the hardware needed would be extremely inexpensive to design. Hell, try to add a reverb filter to a 10 second clip in soundforge, watch how long it takes for even the most complex reverb functions. A fraction of a second. Now imagine trying to do it with even smaller segments of audio, in lengths best measured in single miliseconds. Now imagine doing it with a processor that has sinusoidal functions built into the silicone which require even fewer clock cycles to perform than your CPU even. You could easily handle more simultaneous sound effects than EAX 5 even accepts on some pretty cheap hardware.

The main reason nobody else does this is because creative has essentially become a patent clearing house. Look what happened with aureal. Even though aureal won the lawsuit against creative, the legal costs drove them out of business. This is why nobody wants to challenge creatives patents. Look at the sh*t that John Carmack had to go through just to get D3 out the door because he was "stepping on" creatives patents. Creative is mostly just a patent clearing house these days.

For another company to attempt it would be crazy anyway. It's much better to just do it all via software now. I wouldn't be surprised if Creative turns EAX into a middleware software solution, along the lines of The Miles Sound system. Even then I doubt they could stand up to Miles. Their tech has been used in just about every game made since... Forever!

It is better, namely because the latency is guaranteed to be lower if done in software.

[Redeemed]

Er...not really. Effects functions are so computationally small that the hardware needed would be extremely inexpensive to design. Hell, try to add a reverb filter to a 10 second clip in soundforge, watch how long it takes for even the most complex reverb functions. A fraction of a second. Now imagine trying to do it with even smaller segments of audio, in lengths best measured in single miliseconds. Now imagine doing it with a processor that has sinusoidal functions built into the silicone which require even fewer clock cycles to perform than your CPU even. You could easily handle more simultaneous sound effects than EAX 5 even accepts on some pretty cheap hardware.

The main reason nobody else does this is because creative has essentially become a patent clearing house. Look what happened with aureal. Even though aureal won the lawsuit against creative, the legal costs drove them out of business. This is why nobody wants to challenge creatives patents. Look at the sh*t that John Carmack had to go through just to get D3 out the door because he was "stepping on" creatives patents. Creative is mostly just a patent clearing house these days.



It is better, namely because the latency is guaranteed to be lower if done in software.

Ok, I can agree with this- in regards to the reverb. But with accurate sound placement ( i.e. the surround we get from movies) I'm sure it'd be too taxing for any cheap processing unit you mentioned. Furthermore, the patent issue would be moot if the company had sufficient resources. Creative doesn't have a patent for every sound, and everything relating to sound, even though they seem to think they do.

But I do realise that nobody will realy compete with Creative simply cause of the head ache it'd be.

[Rakeesh]

Ok, I can agree with this- in regards to the reverb. But with accurate sound placement ( i.e. the surround we get from movies) I'm sure it'd be too taxing for any cheap processing unit you mentioned.

Not sure what you mean exactly. Surround heard in movies isn't supposed to have accurate placement per se. As I described in my earlier post, surround in movies is more for effect and ambiance. I think what you may be talking about is the sound in movies is far more "crisp" than what you hear in games, and tends to feel more realistic than games do. This is due to a number of things - the biggest of which is that a sound engineer can sit down and tweak each sound, and add sounds for a more "proper" effect to fit the scenery. When movies are being filmed, there isn't really any background noise at all, all that is being recorded, or all that is intended to be recorded, is what the actors are scripted to say. Everything else, e.g. birds chirping, people in the background chatting, is mixed in afterwards.

If you ever watch those "making of" clips on DVD's, you can sometimes notice (depending on whether or not these clips were post processed) that in even the most active environments, say a rave or something, you can see all kinds of stuff going on in the background, people dancing, strobe lights flashing, a band "playing" music (just faking it actually) but the whole scene is completely silent except for what the main actors are saying. All of the rest of that jazz gets added later, and a person sits down and spends lots of time making it sound very believable. Needless to say, this can't be done in real-time.

As far as sound placement in games, that is handled entirely by directsound3d, and computationally that is even easier than effect functions, just some basic trigonometry.

Furthermore, the patent issue would be moot if the company had sufficient resources. Creative doesn't have a patent for every sound, and everything relating to sound,

No, but they do have a patent on many of the implementations.