Does the titanium output 5.1 from the digital out or is it still 2 channel?
Also,why does vista block the hardware path? will there ever be a sound card which uses that hardware path?
Titanium, AFAIK, can output 5.1 across the optical connections.
As to the Vista thing - Specsaver is right . . . you still have full functionality, but, any aspect of the cards functions that rely on pure hardware access and support can not function dircetly with Vista - i.e. EAX.
That's where ALchemy came about, where you have a software interpretuer that intercepts the EAX calls within a game, translates them to audio calls that the OpenAL API understands, and passes them to the OpenAL API to carry through.
In XP, EAX calls can directly access the hardware through the OS.
Essentially, software audio calls function on the user end of the kernel, instead of like with XP where audio drivers functioned on the OS side. MS designed the Vista audio architecture like this because they felt that the vast majority of system crashes with XP were due to audio related issues (which IMO was a load of BS - out of all the years I've been using XP, I can't ever recall a single system crash, lock or BSoD that was audio related). In their words, it would make the system more stable.
Creative's cards aren't the only one's affected - any card that has functions which rely on hardware acceleration, thos functions will not work correctly in Vista.
But, thatnks to the Vista audio structure, we've also seen many other issues (i.e. 5.1 playback support or downsampling) within various 3rd party programs, and these issues are not limited to just Creative's hardware; the ASUS cards, the Razer, HT Omegas . . . all of them have run into quite a few issues with Vista, thanks to the audio architecture.
Although - MS programs which can access the hardware directly through the OS (i.e. WIN Media Player), don't run into the downsampling or mixing issues . . . only 3rd party programs . . . funny, ain't it?
Also, onboard audio configurations don't run into these issues, either, being integrated with the motherboard which is directly controlled by the OS . . . funny again, ain't it?
Even more odd is that MS was cooperating with nVidia and Creative during Vista's design to incorporate DirectSound support with DX10, but for some reason, nVidia dropped out of the project, and soon after MS dropped the project altogether, leaving Creative high and dry . . . personally, I believe this little incident is what caused creative to be about 6 months behind with official audio drivers for Vista; they had to go back and rewrite everything for a different audio architecture, and also design and impliment the ALchemy software and tweak down OpenAL a bit more. And right about the time that Vista went to release was when we got the explanation from MS to the change in the audio architecture, and why they did it that way (the XP and stability thing) . . . sounds to me like someone just was trying to cover their ass.
Either way, though, Creative's drivers can be a headache at times - my biggest gripe is that they don't release new drivers often enough.
And, I'm not saying that their isn't some blame on Creative for their shoddy Vista drivers, but rather that some blame should also be placed on MS for the fiasco as well.
My personal stance with Creative is that I find their technical and customer service to be near about pointless. Their drivers are hit-or-miss. As many people that complain about driver issues, there are also an equal amount that report them to function 100% fine, and considering they're the largest player in the audio card market . . .
But, I still find their hardware and designs to be their strongest feature - hopefully that will contuinue.
from MS, but considering they're the biggest audio card manufacturer and have pwned the market for 2 decades now, they should've had a contingency plan, and it shouldn't have taken them so long to get official drivers out. I could reason with being 2-3 months behind, but 6 is pushing it.
