Wednesday, September 27th 2006
Realtek Audio Codecs Not Rendering True EAX
Todays DailyTech top story says that Realtek Audio Codecs do not render true EAX, at least Analog Devices and Creative Labs claim that. Analog Devices and Creative Labs have made claims that Realtek's high definition audio solutions do not render EAX or EAX2 audio - at least not very well. While Realtek's audio drivers have the proper driver flags to enable EAX and EAX2 in supported games, the listening experience presents a different story. Listening tests demonstrated by Analog Devices and Creative Labs show that Realtek's high definition audio solutions render EAX and EAX2 incorrectly, removing the 3D positional audio aspects and immersion of EAX and EAX2 completely. There's also an issue with some motherboard reviews that use Rightmark 3D Sound for CPU utilization tests and award the onboard audio solution with the lowest utilization the superior solution when the onboard audio solution isn't fully rendering EAX/EAX2 audio. Analog Devices and Creative Labs testing show the Realtek high definition onboard audio showing very little CPU utilization in Rightmark 3D Sound's EAX2 CPU utilization test because it's not applying any EAX2 effects. Currently Realtek is the only known high definition codec manufacturer to render EAX and EAX2 incorrectly as IDT/Sigmatel does not support EAX or EAX2. It is unknown if previous C-Media audio solutions produced before it was acquired by Realtek produce similar results. Analog Devices and Creative Labs made no mention if add-in sound cards such as the recent Dolby Digital Live equipped C-Media CMI8768+ or CMI8778 are affected. Various manufacturers including ASUS, Universal abit, DFI, Gigabyte, MSI and others use Realtek audio solutions.
Source:
DailyTech
35 Comments on Realtek Audio Codecs Not Rendering True EAX
The Sound Card and the Speaker System are directly related to each other in the bottlenecked department.
You can buy a crapass Logitech X-230 speaker system and use an X-Fi VS Onboard and you will hear no difference.
Or you can buy a Logitech Z-5500 Digital speaker system and actually hear the difference.
If you go on Creative's forums, you will see all these complainers with their system specs as:
...
Creative X-Fi Fatality
...
(Some unknown company) 2.1 speakers
I can't believe those users have the audacity to complain when it's clearly the speaker system that is the bottleneck.
That is while playing music too.
And FYI, all Audigy/X-Fi cards have a digital out, you just have to buy an extender with S/PDIF optical and coaxial outputs.
I simply cannot hear the difference in audio quality when comparing them, if you have a high bitrate and a clean bus the specifications are so close, it is only that last few Db of sound that you MIGHT get with a sound card.
and overcast, pc speakers arent crap, you have to make full use of the soundcard as well to get a half decent sound, namely, playing with things like the graphics equalizer. its there for a reason, so use it ;)
17% at 64 buffers probably has a noticable impact on gaming performance. Turn on EAX and its even worse.
The advantages of hardware acceleration are readily apparent in RightMark 3D Sound, with the Creative cards easily consuming fewer CPU resources than the competition. Note that the X-Fi uses less CPU power with 127 voices than the M-Audio Revolution 7.1 does with just 64.
.
Hw many voices can a human hear, comprehend and react to?
How much has your hearing dulled?
Cristaaaallllllll ?
Looks like a remapped graphic curve to me. As a fact that looks alot like the equlizer curve on my two channel ten band overdrive capable equlizer in the living room. Huh. Imagine that.