The future of Creative Labs & sound card market

[jAkUp]

Originally Posted by stevemedes

I have a ? cause I'm really bad with this whole audio stuff.

What is this Alchemy jazz all about. As I understand it, it allows games to work with X-Fi under Vista, right? Is it automatically installed when u install Creative's Vista drivers? Or is it something seperate you need.

e.g. I installed BF2142 under Vista (a "sounds best with X-Fi" game), and go to the sound tab under the options, and u can choose between, software, hardware, or X-fi. It wont let me choose X-fi, gives me some error. Lets me choose hardware accel though.

It is a seperate program, and it is required for games that use EAX through DS3D... such as BF2 I think. Doom3 engine games use EAX through OpenAL, so they do not need this program. FEAR, BF2 and many others you will need to install the Alchemy tool.

You can get it here, it is pretty easy to use:
http://preview.creativelabs.com/alchemy/default.aspx

[stevemedes]

Originally Posted by jAkUp

It is a seperate program, and it is required for games that use EAX through DS3D... such as BF2 I think. Doom3 engine games use EAX through OpenAL, so they do not need this program. FEAR, BF2 and many others you will need to install the Alchemy tool.

You can get it here, it is pretty easy to use:
http://preview.creativelabs.com/alchemy/default.aspx

Hey thanks alot for the linky, I appreciate it.

[Rakeesh]

Originally Posted by jAkUp

I don't know about that, Creative has pretty much created a monopoly on the gaming audio section, so I think they will continue to do that. If not creative, then someone else will.

I mean, if we can introduce Physics cards, and gaming network cards, than a gaming sound card is almost a given

Well, right now gaming cards are still stuck with proprietary API's, which means that they'll continue to suck for now.

[kevJ420]

I really think that they need to move up to 24/96 internally more than 3d audio fx.

Stereo digital optical output @24/96 is also uncompressed, while 5.1 Digital output is compressed.

I think some thing else that is very important, is developers make games with little to no music compression (not the same as output compression mentioned above) even if it means multiple dvds and download additions.

If PPU's take off, cpu's will be relieved of more burden, so HW audio xl won't be necessary.

[Vik1dk]

It is a seperate program, and it is required for games that use EAX through DS3D... such as BF2 I think. Doom3 engine games use EAX through OpenAL, so they do not need this program. FEAR, BF2 and many others you will need to install the Alchemy tool.

BF2/2142 are also OpenAL games

[stevemedes]

Im using Alchemy. But it doesnt detect any games to fix. Something I'm missing here? I have HL2 ep1, CS:S, quake 4 and BF2142 installed right now.

[Vik1dk]

Check link, Necrosoft did some good work testing games, maybe you will find something usefull
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/show...hlight=Alchemy

[Grov]

So my X-Fi will be pretty much useless when i get Vista?

[jolle]

Originally Posted by Grov

So my X-Fi will be pretty much useless when i get Vista?

Not really.
You got ALchemy to wrap older DirectSound stuff to OpenAL.
And for newer games you still have OpenAL support.

[einstein_314]

Originally Posted by Grov

So my X-Fi will be pretty much useless when i get Vista?

Not at all....it will work fine. You just need to use Alchemy for DirectSound games.

[nekrosoft13]

Originally Posted by Grov

So my X-Fi will be pretty much useless when i get Vista?

no, x-fi is the best card for vista currently, only card with will get you sound quality in all previous, and current games that still use directsound.

x-fi currently is the only logical choice for vista

[nekrosoft13]

Originally Posted by stevemedes

Im using Alchemy. But it doesnt detect any games to fix. Something I'm missing here? I have HL2 ep1, CS:S, quake 4 and BF2142 installed right now.

hl2, cs:s doesn't need alchemy

quake 4 uses openal (if i remmember correctly)
bf 2142 does use openal