Curse

swiftygem · Feb 03, 2007, 04:58 PM // 16:58

Is anyone running an X-Fi soundcard under Vista? I'll be probably getting one soon, so I'd like to know if it runs fine with GW, and especially if it has any problems with GW running windowed at full sound settings and Winamp playing on the background.

Hockster · Feb 03, 2007, 07:38 PM // 19:38

Creative has some of the worst driver support of any peripheral company. Ever. Check around at some hardware forums as well.

trimidium · Feb 03, 2007, 07:52 PM // 19:52

the game works well with vista/x-fi, however i went back to xp because even with 2 gigs of ram and an extreme processor, the OS still seems to run slow

and my ati all in wonder 2006 can't stay in high resolutions while outputting to a tv in clone mode.... which means to output to tv i have to either use extended desktop mode (yuck) or 1024x768 on a 21" widescreen monitor ; (

If this problem were fixed I would go back to vista even if it ran slower because it does have some really slick new features

Lonesamurai · Feb 03, 2007, 07:55 PM // 19:55

Info about sound issues in Vista and why:

Quote:

Sound Off On Vista
Vista redefines the audio landscape, but is it a landscape of forced obsolescence?
by Tim Dean, IGN AU

Australia, January 29, 2007 - "Windows Vista and DirectX 10 signal a new era in gaming," so says Mark Walker, Microsoft columnist and gaming evangelist. And he's but one of a chorus of voices from within and without Microsoft touting the merits of the next generation of Windows when it comes to gaming.

So imagine your surprise when you fire up one of your favourite games in Vista - say World of Warcraft or Prey - only to find your fancy EAX-endowed soundcard and 5.1 surround speakers are dribbling out flat, unenhanced stereo sound. Then, in a vain attempt to spruce up the audio by enabling EAX, you get a nice taut error message saying EAX is not detected on your hardware. What's going on?
Welcome to the world of Vista audio. And a brave new world it is.

The root of all these problems? Microsoft's Windows team made the bold decision to rewrite the Vista audio stack from the ground up, and in doing so they removed hardware acceleration for DirectSound. That's right. They took hardware support away from the most ubiquitous sound API implemented in games over the past several years.

As a result, in many of today's games, all those feature-laden sound cards, with their multiple channels, audio extensions and hardware accelerated processors, become little better than common garden variety on-board sound running in software mode. Naturally, Creative Labs (amongst others) is pissed.

It looks like Audigy and Soundblasters are going to have to upgrade to a new sound card.

Why would the Windows team strip DirectSound of its hardware privileges? The reason goes all the way back to the days of Windows 3.1 in the early 1990s. Back then it was the beginning of the multimedia boom - the days when sound cards came bundled with CD-ROM drives. At that time Microsoft first incorporated its Multimedia Extensions (MME) API into Windows, which allowed an application to interface with a sound card, opening up a somewhat richer experience than the bleeps and bloops of the old PC speaker. However, the MME API was fairly rudimentary and included no support for channel mixing, so only one audio stream was rendered at a time.

Then with the release of Windows 98 came a new and more advanced audio stack based around the Windows Driver Model (WDM). This fully 32-bit audio stack was notably more sophisticated than the MME API and did allow the mixing of audio streams. Coupled with DirectSound and DirectSound3D, applications and games could send commands straight to the hardware, opening up a whole world of enhanced features, such as 3D positional audio and Creative's EAX.

However the new Windows audio stack's new strengths belied a critical weakness: much of the audio stack was run in kernel mode, right in the guts of Windows. This meant that if - heaven forbid - something went wrong and the audio stack crashed, there was a good chance it would drag the rest of Windows down with it.

According to the blog of Larry Osterman, veteran engineer at Microsoft, "the amount of code that runs in the kernel (coupled with buggy device drivers) causes the audio stack to be one of the leading causes of Windows reliability problems."

And when Windows crashes, whatever the cause, who gets blamed? Microsoft. So after years of reprisals from angry users like us, the Windows team finally threw their arms in the air in exasperation and decided to entirely rewrite the audio stack from scratch for Longhorn. The project started in 2002 following the launch of Windows XP, and we're finally seeing the fruit of it today with Windows Vista.

The big change with the new audio stack - called Universal Audio Architecture (UAA) - is that it has been surgically removed from kernel mode and has been implanted firmly in user mode. This means the audio stack is always one step removed from the inner sanctums of Windows, so if - heaven forbid - there is a problem, a crash won't cause undue collateral damage.

This wasn't the only reason the audio stack was slapped into software. Doing so also removes a grain of latency from the audio sub-system, and allows for other funky features like per-application volume settings, automatic sound card port detection and support for array microphones. On a more sinister note, it also allows for greater controls to be placed on audio by digital rights management through the Protected Audio Path.

But the thing we're concerned with here is games. Windows XP games, and those that haven't been tweaked to accommodate the Vista audio stack, will send their audio commands through DirectSound as normal, but DirectSound doesn't talk directly to the sound card drivers any more. This results in the sound being rendered in Windows' software audio engine, often resulting in the most basic settings being used, such as stereo sound with no effects. Even if your sound card supports EAX, DirectSound no longer has access to the drivers to even detect its presence, let alone send commands through to it.

This is not to say the Windows software audio is sub-par. When properly coded for you have full support for Intel's High Definition Audio, which is superior to the ubiquitous AC'97 codec, as well as multi-channel sound. However, it's all done in software.

So what does this mean for the multimillion dollar sound card industry?

According to Mick Gordon, Director of Game Audio Australia, sound hardware vendors aren't impressed. "Microsoft has really dropped a bombshell by announcing that there will be no hardware audio support, which has sent hardware manufactures such as Creative Labs into a panic," he said.

But Creative Labs and its brethren aren't licked yet. This is because DirectSound isn't the only audio API in the game. Back in 1998, just when Linux was starting to gain some interest with home users and gamers, a company called Loki was formed. Loki's mission was to port games from Windows to Linux, but to do so it needed to develop a range of tools to translate commands into the appropriate format. One of these tools was a multi-platform audio API called OpenAL (modelled after its graphical analogue, OpenGL). You can check out the official OpenAL site here.

OpenAL functions in a similar way to DirectSound in that it's a bundle of software commands developers can use to speak to OpenAL compatible sound card drivers to make stuff happen. Because it can talk directly to the hardware, OpenAL can use hardware acceleration and reference extended features on a sound card like 3D positional audio and even EAX.

When Loki finally gave up the ghost in 2002, Creative and Apple picked up the pieces of OpenAL and continued development. One reason for this is Creative spied the imminent demise of DirectSound hardware acceleration, so wanted an insurance policy that would enable gamers to continue using Creative's extended features.

Currently there are a host of games that support OpenAL, primarily those powered by id or Unreal engines, such as Doom 3, Quake 4, Unreal Tournament 2004, America's Army and Battlefield 2, among others. However, OpenAL is far from ubiquitous. World of Warcraft and Half-Life 2 being just two notable omissions. Creative is furiously working to spread the message of OpenAL far and wide, but besides id and Epic and a handful of smaller developers, progress has been slow.

But this is where Creative gets cunning. Creative's developers have been frantically beavering away to develop a back door to audio hardware acceleration in Vista using OpenAL for all DirectSound games. Creative calls it ALchemy.

From the Creative ALchemy Project site: "The Creative ALchemy Project allows you to run your favourite DirectSound3D games on Windows Vista as the developers intended - with full hardware accelerated 3D audio and EAX support! This is done by translating DirectSound calls into OpenAL."

ALchemy is still in beta, but already supports over 25 games, including World of Warcraft, Neverwinter Nights 2, Guild Wars and Call of Duty 2. It should also work - at least on paper - with just about any other DirectSound game, although Creative suggests users will have to experiment with it themselves.

So, if you have recently invested your hard earned cash in a nice shiny new Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro, then download the ALchemy drivers and your ears will feel renewed in Vista. However, all this talk about hardware and software acceleration raises another big question: is hardware acceleration such a good thing after all?
Brett Paterson, CEO and Lead Programmer at Firelight, the people behind the third party audio middleware, FMOD, isn't so convinced that hardware is the way of the future.

"Vista going software only is a good thing," he says. According to Paterson, software opens up a lot more possibilities for the audio developer, who is also no longer tied into specific hardware features and limitations.

"Flexibility is what we want these days and locking into a hardware interface is not the way to do it. For us, supporting hardware is a step backwards and we have to disable a load of features," says Paterson. Scott Cairns, Creative Director of the SCA Sound Studio - an audio production studio that specialises in games - agrees. "Dropping the hardware support is potentially an advantage to us," he says. "We no longer have to develop to hardware specifications or inbuilt DSP limitations." The only barrier is performance.

"With the audio running solely in software, there's also the potential for more real-time FX evolving in PC gaming - assuming there's enough CPU cycles left to the audio guys to work with", says Cairns.

However, FMOD's Patterson believes multi-core processors could make CPU performance limitations a thing of the past. "A software mixer can mix 100 voices at once in about 1% of the CPU these days on a Core 2 Duo. EAX quality reverb is something we have and can be done in about another 2% of that CPU," says Paterson. "This will still come out faster than using hardware accelerated audio."

That's not to say everyone's against hardware accelerated audio. Mick Gordon from Game Audio Australia appreciates the 'clean slate' of working in software, but still believes in EAX, and is looking forward to seeing where Creative can take OpenAL.

"Creative is now working to include full EAX support through OpenAL for use with Windows Vista, which I will be keen to see since OpenAL is cross platform, with support for Mac, Linux, Xbox 360, Windows, and others," he said. At the end of the day, the changes in Vista's audio stack will have far reaching effects. Like any launch of a new version of Windows, there'll be a period of adjustment while drivers and software are tweaked for compatibility, and Vista will be no exception. There's also the big question surrounding the future of hardware accelerated audio, but it may take years to see where that leads.

For the time being, if you're using Vista, download your ALchemy patch, update your drivers and play the game surrounded by sound - the way it should be played. Well, provided you're running an X-Fi that has native OpenAL 1.1 support. Sadly Audigy and Soundblaster users might find themselves looking for a new sound card, and EAX for non X-Fi users could be a thing of the past.

swiftygem · Feb 03, 2007, 08:35 PM // 20:35

Oh our dear Microsoft..... Looks like I'll have to go with the on-board audio only. Luckily it is supposed to be quite good (ASUS P5B motherboard with AD1988B HD codec).

cannonfodder · Feb 03, 2007, 09:48 PM // 21:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by trimidium

the game works well with vista/x-fi, however i went back to xp because even with 2 gigs of ram and an extreme processor, the OS still seems to run slow

and my ati all in wonder 2006 can't stay in high resolutions while outputting to a tv in clone mode.... which means to output to tv i have to either use extended desktop mode (yuck) or 1024x768 on a 21" widescreen monitor ; (

If this problem were fixed I would go back to vista even if it ran slower because it does have some really slick new features

Hmm, works great for me.. thats with an X2 3800, 2gig of ram and a 7800gs, oh and an X-FI, there has to be something wrong hardware-wise or with your install, vista is alot faster than XP.

As for the X-FI, i'm using beta drivers and its working great, I have not had 1 problem.

swiftygem · Feb 03, 2007, 09:59 PM // 21:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by cannonfodder

Hmm, works great for me.. thats with an X2 3800, 2gig of ram and a 7800gs, oh and an X-FI, there has to be something wrong hardware-wise or with your install, vista is alot faster than XP.

As for the X-FI, i'm using beta drivers and its working great, I have not had 1 problem.

So is the EAX/positional audio working for you? Are these the ALchemy project drivers mentioned in the article above?

Lonesamurai · Feb 03, 2007, 10:08 PM // 22:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by swiftygem

So is the EAX/positional audio working for you? Are these the ALchemy project drivers mentioned in the article above?

Yes and Yes... and I'm using the same rig as him, except I have a 7600GT instead

swiftygem · Feb 04, 2007, 02:35 PM // 14:35

Cool. It seems Guild Wars is officially supported by the Alchemy driver, so I'm gonna give it a try. I'm just gonna pray I don't get any of those infamous crackling/popping problems.

EternalTempest · Feb 04, 2007, 05:40 PM // 17:40

Creative Alchemy Link (noticed it was missing in the thread)
http://preview.creativelabs.com/alchemy/default.aspx

I have been reading on the web how if you can manually install all the files / make the registry changes, it work on the Audigy Series cards.

I'm going to be in this situation (Audigy 2 ZS) in about a month so I won't be able to test / confirm / deny this until I get Vista.

easyg · Feb 06, 2007, 10:31 AM // 10:31

MS dealt Creative a hard shot to the nards when they decided not support audio acceleration. Personally, I'm not too upset about this cause I always suspected a large number of BSODs were being caused by lousy Creative drivers....Apparently, MS feels the same way.

Creative driver support is just terrible - always has been, always will be. When enuf people start complaining about a bug, Creative will usually get around to addressing it...in about 11 months.

Supposedly, they will have non-beta Vista drivers ready in March. But I wouldn't hold my breath. And I sure wouldn't expect them to be anything but extremely buggy.

Just my opinion.

joe3273 · Feb 10, 2007, 02:12 AM // 02:12

Well I tried the Automated exe of the ALchemy, but I get bupkiss.
Game Will run but I get no sound....
And not really sure about manually doing it...

If anyone has any luck with it please share....Would greatly appreciate it

EternalTempest · Feb 10, 2007, 03:27 PM // 15:27

I think you have copy the dll file and the ini file in the same directory that has the main game exe. At least from what I've been reading.
Not sure if you have to install OpenAL 1.1 first either.

swiftygem · Feb 10, 2007, 06:20 PM // 18:20

There are few settings in the ini file that you can experiment with, so you can try that.
My new system should be ready in few days, so I'll see how it works on that....but I don't really wanna give up positional audio, the ability to hear stuff from rear speakers is pretty addictive. So I hope it works.