Getting the most out of my soundcard (X-FI, Vista64)

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VulcaN

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Ive read quite a few threads and right now under 64bit vista im still confused as to if I am getting the most out of the X-FI (titanium, PCI-E). Right now I just have the latest drivers from creatives site.

Is the CMSS-3D working right out of the box? I didn't notice a difference when I turned it off and on.

Do I need to install that guy Daniel K's drivers to get hardware acceleration? Do I currently have EAX 5.0 and if not do these drivers enable it?

I have not installed "ALchemy" yet. Should I really get on that? The games I have played so far (WoW, ARMA, Ghost Recon) all sounded fine?

Does enabling the "crystallizer" thing I hear about really just increase the decibels / run the sound through some automatically adjusting EQ that they thought sounded best under most conditions? Or does it actually do something good...

Thank you, I am lost with all these "features" that may or may not be working.

PS. I am still considering returning the card for something like the Asus Xonar which seems highly regarded. Will I really notice a difference when im playing games / watching a movie by switching cards? Or is it one of those things where you'd have to play a MP3 on $500+ headphones with the sound cards side by side and then you could slightly hear a difference.
 
Only X-Fi cards will give you hardware acceleration of sound and full EAX effects while playing games. Asus doesn't quite give you EAX - it sort of emulates it. I'll let users of the xonar series comment on well it does that.

Sound isn't simple, unfortunately, so let me try to address your questions.

CMSS-3D, like Crystallizer and EAX, are functions of your sound card and may be enabled or disabled. They have separate settings depending on which mode you are in. The Creative Audio Console has several modes; most notable of these are the Entertainment mode and Game mode.

Only in Game mode will you get hardware acceleration of games and EAX effects as programmed by the game developers (in supported games.)

Games have to be written to support hardware acceleration of sound, which can be done through either DirectSound3D or through OpenAL. If they don't use either of these they use some other software-only sound rendering engine, and cannot be hardware accelerated.

EAX is a separate issue; EAX is an extra set of instructions that give additional sound effects. EAX is programmed by the game developer and extends the basic OpenAL or DirectSound3D instruction set.

So games fall into one of three categories (and this completely depends on the game developer):

  • hardware rendered with DirectSound3D or OpenAL WITH EAX effects
  • hardware rendered with DirectSound3D or OpenAL, NO EAX
  • software rendered - NO EAX

Vista removed the hardware acceleration component from DirectSound3D, preventing those games direct access to hardware. Creative worked around this by using ALchemy, which puts a .dll file in your game directory which basically tells the game to use OpenAL instead of DirectSound3D. Vista still allows OpenAL to use hardware acceleration for sound. ALchemy works fairly well; for a small number of games it takes some tweaking.

You ONLY need ALchemy for DirectSound3D games on Vista.

Without ALchemy games will still work but you may only get stereo sound instead of surround sound, and the sound will be processed on your CPU instead of your sound card; this only means your CPU is doing a little extra work.

Furthermore if a game has both DirectSound3D and EAX (as written by the developer) you will not hear the EAX effects without ALchemy on Vista.

You do not need any third party drivers to access EAX 5.0 or hardware acceleration, but you do need to be in game mode, and you need to be playing a game that supports hardware acceleration and/or EAX.

CMSS-3D tries to take a stereo sound and put over your surround speakers. In 'xpand' mode it just duplicates your front stereo channels to your rear stereo channels. In 'surround' mode it tries to split portions of the sound to your rear channels, instead of duplicating the entire front channels. The slider changes the volume of the sound coming from the rear the speakers.

Crystallizer tries to accentuate certain portions of sound to make the sound 'fuller,' whatever that means. It is one of those features you should try out and play with, disable if you want, it is really based on user preference.

I don't play ARMA or Ghost Recon, but WoW is a special case in terms of game sounds. WoW, under XP, uses DirectSound3D. But under Vista it now reverts to a software-only sound rendering engine, which will still give you 5.1 sound but will do all of its audio processing on your CPU. This is true even if you tick the 'use hardware' option under the sound panel (check your sse_sound log in your WoW directory if you like.)

If you really want to use your sound hardware for audio processing under Vista with WoW you have to run the game in XP2 compatability mode and use ALchemy with it. The XP2 mode fools the game into thinking you are on XP, and so the game will use DirectSound3D for sound.
 
First thank you for such an in depth explanation! That really helped me understand what was going on.

I cant think of any games I play that use OpenAL so it looks like I will be installing ALchemy.

I've been in "Game mode" since I installed it. Seems kind of tedious to switch out of it and into multimedia mode everytime I want to watch a movie or play a MP3. Is it really worth it to switch? I cant hear that much of a difference...

Does running WoW in XP2 compatibility mode offer any negative side effects?

I'm also still curious if "Daniel K's" drivers will benefit me in any way shape or form. I heard a few people talking about having to fiddle with them to get them to work, and I'd rather avoid that if its not going to benefit me.

Thanks again for that great post!
 
The Daniel K drivers were mainly bug fixes for the X-Fi (Creative have brought out about 3 new driver sets since...funny that) and to re-enable features on the Audigy cards.

Chances are they will be of little benefit if any to you.
 
Good response Balthazor! An excellent down-to-earth explanation for people who are not audio-pros.

I have been working on building a new system and lately my decision on what soundcard to purchase has been up for grabs. I have always been a creative fan because of the features they tout the cards have, but at the same time I have had so many issues with the cards but never really had a different route to take.

I just want something that works! I don't want to be bothered by having to change a setting between different games I play and playing music or movies. I don't want to check all the time to see if a game I play is hardware compatible, EAX compatible, DirectSound3D compatible or OpenAL compatible! Do I need to turn Alchemy on or does it do nothing in this game?

With the change of Vista combined with using any creative solution, I feel there is too much involved just from a soundcard aspect. This includes the Prelude since it's working off X-Fi stuff.

For these reasons I have decided to try out the Asus D2X. I have usually had good experiences with Asus products and while it still involves some changes such as turning DS3D on or off, it seems less of a nuisance than what creative is offering currently. With the future of Windows 7 on the horizon and more games that will support Vista and fade out XP, I question the future of EAX and what creative offers. The big problem I currently have with Creative is that they worked with MS on the development for Vista but still did not have a solution when it was released and it took them a year to add fixes that still are prone to issues!

While creative cards offer some features that sound good from a marketing stand point, most of what it can do can also be done with the Asus cards but with less effort and better in some areas! I am happy there is finally an alternative to cards known for buggy, slow released drivers and snap-crackle-pop in random games. I am willing to give anything a try that can move away from those issues and since sound is relative to everyone, I would suggest you and others try the same. It can be hard if on a tight budget, but you can always return one or sell it off to someone.
 
OP: I know of no negative side effects to running WoW in XP2 compatability mode. Running it in this mode will allow you to use up to 128 voices vs. running it in 'Vista mode' which is limited to 64 voices over the software audio rendering engine.

Check Creative's list of games, it has a somewhat incomplete list of many games; it lists which ones are OpenAL, DirectSound3D, or that use some other sound engine that is software only. Notes are included where tweaks are necessary to get a game working properly. Some games include OpenAL drivers that do not function properly, for instance; these may need replacing. If you have problems with ALchemy or OpenAL this forum is a good place to post your problem; ALchemy devs check it weekly or so.

Audio setup can be a major pain, and Microsoft's decision to eliminate the hardware layer for DirectSound 3D makes it that much more difficult.

But at least once a game is setup and running properly the only thing you need to do is make sure you are in Game mode.

That's with Creative or X-Fi cards, of course.

I don't have any experience with the Asus Xonar series; they are well reviewed and their emulation of EAX seems to be passing muster with most people who use it. I just prefer knowing that I'll be hearing actual EAX effects, and I like the idea of offloading a little bit of audio processing from my CPU (my system's current bottleneck.) If my current Titanium X-Fi had a fatal flaw I would probably move to a Xonar, but its performing pretty well at the moment.

a5i2c - I agree that EAX and hardware accelerated audio in general is probably going to go away, especially with cross-platform games becoming more common. I would guess in 10 years or less the idea of gaming 'sound hardware acceleration' will be a thing of the past, with add-in sound cards only used for special inputs/outputs, high-end DACs, or recording features.

But at the moment there are still some games I use that have EAX, so for the time being I'll live with what I got. In a few years I'm sure that will change; we'll have to see how EAX support fares over the next few years, and whether Creative will try to make the technology more ubiquitous by allowing it be to licensed easier / cheaper to third parties. If it doesn't then EAX will die, just like 3dfx died when the more open DirectX and OpenGL standards became more prevalent than GLide.
 
Oh and regarding your question about modes:

I'm not 100% sure, but I the only real difference between Game mode and Entertainment mode is how the card interacts with games and how it implements EAX.

If you are in Entertainment mode, when a supported game attempts to access your hardware for audio, you'll get an error, and it can crash the game or cause other unpredictable behavior. So don't try to run hardware-accelerated games in Entertainment mode.

EAX is different in the two modes. In Game mode EAX is only used as programmed by a game developer. In Entertainment mode you can select an 'environmental' reverb effect so that your music sounds like you are in a concert hall, jazz club, or a metal tube.

Its as silly as it sounds.

The EAX effects slider affects the volume of the reverb effects, both in games and if you decide to use it in entertainment mode.

EAX also adds occlusion filters to sound (if you are using a game with EAX 5.0 you'll notice them); occlusion filters make a sound muffled if there is a game object between you and the sound, like people talking behind a window made of glass. Its actually a pretty neat effect. The EAX slider has no effect on these occlusion filters; they come as programmed by the game developer.
 
a5i2c said:
I just want something that works! I don't want to be bothered by having to change a setting between different games I play and playing music or movies. I don't want to check all the time to see if a game I play is hardware compatible, EAX compatible, DirectSound3D compatible or OpenAL compatible! Do I need to turn Alchemy on or does it do nothing in this game?

With the change of Vista combined with using any creative solution, I feel there is too much involved just from a soundcard aspect. This includes the Prelude since it's working off X-Fi stuff.
Click to expand...
That was one of the reasons I decided to move to Xonar a while ago. Trying to find optimal buffer and duration settings for non-Alchemy listed games (Jade Empire for example), locating correct directories in which to place them and switching between different modes was a pain.

Also, there were conflicts leading to crashes or application hangs when running two applications using Alchemy at the same time, for example a media player like Winamp (which sounds very flat and dull in software mode) and a DS3D game (like Guild Wars). Plus, some games like Eve Online refused to start if there were extra files like dsound.ini and dsound.dll in game directory.

Xonar eliminates those specific annoyances, but GX emulation brings up a few additional problems, especially with older games. Some games may crash if GX is enabled. They might crash at startup or at a specific point, when certain sounds or effects are played. Some games work, but sound odd or wrong compared to a hardware X-Fi card.

It's kinda like choosing between the lesser evil. I've been pretty happy with Xonar so far and wouldn't go back to those older X-Fis - although X-Fi Titanium is kinda tempting. :)
 
So with the Xonar you dont have to run a program like Alchemy? How do they get around the problem where as creative has to have a special .dll put in game folders?
 
VulcaN said:
So with the Xonar you dont have to run a program like Alchemy? How do they get around the problem where as creative has to have a special .dll put in game folders?
Click to expand...

Xonar uses two processes, HsMgr and HsMgr64 (for x64) to capture and reroute DirectSound3D calls. Those processes are started during Windows startup and thus are always active. Fortunately they are not resource hoggers, combined memory usage for those processes seems to be 3.7 megabytes on my system.
 
VulcaN, I would recommend that you find a retailer that will let you try both and return one, if you can. I live overseas which makes that difficult, but by all means try both out and see if there is a difference in the games you play.

True EAX 5.0 support might be great, but if you don't play many games with it, you're not going to hear much of a difference between the Xonar and X-Fi - and may prefer the more 'toolless' setup of the Xonar.
 
Is there any way to get Microphone boost working with X-Fi Titanium and Vista 64bit?
 
I can't seem to find the +20db boost option that was available on older X-Fi cards. I don't use a microphone.

If the microphone input on the Titanium is too quiet then Creative needs to get their act together, because the Titanium seems to be ideally suited to gamers - and a good portion of gamers like using microphone / headset type devices for communication.
 
Yeah, that's another issue I have with the creative cards is the mic boost. I use ventrilo most of the time when gaming and with the creative cards it has been a pain to always have to use the mic boost and it will not work with VOIP in games such as CoD4 and BF2. On the newer cards they took away that option. :confused:

Word is that they MAY reintroduce it within a driver update. That's all hearsay at the moment with no facts to back it up.
 
I hope that I'm not intruding... but I wanted to ask: just how much cpu is consumed when rendering sound in software? In my opinion: So long as I can hear all of the cool sound effects in the game than I do not care if I lose 3 to 4 frames per second.
I've been playing Doom 3 in Vista 32 and the sound effects (ex: metallic reverb when I shoot a metal pipe with my shotgun or machine gun) sound awesome.
By the way, don't non-creative and non-xfi audio cards only offer EAX2 emulation? At least that was the case when the audigy one and two were the main cards offered by creative. If this is still true, than you might not get much in terms in-game sound effects.
 
Hello dark,

In general not a lot of CPU time is consumed by processing sound effects on current CPUs. You might see a slight FPS improvement by hardware accelerating your audio processing, but its not going to be anything miraculous.


This article by Elite Bastards shows a very CPU-limited scenario (low resolution Unreal Tournament), and even here the FPS improvement is only mild. The article does compare two Xonar cards, two X-Fi cards, and the Auzentech Meridian. This was before the Titanium came out. You can extrapolate from this review that you'll see some extra FPS improvement on games that are CPU-limited, but otherwise you probably won't see that big of an FPS change.

EAX2 is open to be supported by any manufacturer. Anything beyond that is only available if the developer licenses the audio processor tech from Creative, like Auzentech did with their Prelude.

The Asus Xonar series 'fakes' out games by telling the games that it has EAX 5.0 capabilities, allowing you to enable these options in-game. The actual result won't be EAX 5.0 but an approximation created by Asus. You can read user comments about how satisfying this is, because opinions seem to differ.

The one nice thing about the Xonar series is that Asus is attempting to create a one-size fits all solution to the missing DirectSound3D hardware layer in Vista; Creative's ALchemy works, but requires per-game setup, which is slightly annoying. Fortunately it is a one-time deal, and once setup you shouldn't have to fiddle with it.
 
Thanks for the information/link Balthazor. It confirmed what I thought about the cpu-usage and soundcards. Too bad that I did not hear about the Asus Xonar because that might have been perfect for me. I'm very happy with the performance I get with the X-fi in games but with its sound quality and to remedy that I purchased the EMU 0202 USB device. I love its simple features and great sound quality.
 
Hi guys,

Does anyone have this software/hardware combo? i wan´t to change from my old Auzentech X Plosion to the new pcie X FI but i need to know if de decoder from the Z5500 will change from DTS or Dolby Digital to stereo a so on when i change the source sound.

Best regards and thanks in advance.
 
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