Creative Announces Super X-Fi Gen 4 Audio Profile

[stimpy88]

Not defending Creative here, not sure why you’d think that. I was there while the whole thing was happening. Their drivers WERE trash, nobody argues that, but MS took a nuclear option in this regard and, more importantly, didn’t even try to create some sort of compromise solution that would allow for HW acceleration of audio while still running the driver in user mode.
But yeah, Creative is to blame too with their awful drivers and stifling competition. I remember back then thinking that maybe MS was angling to create their own solution and implement it in DirectSound, but that obviously didn’t happen.

I was there too, I also read the reason for MS's decision, that Creative's drivers were the No1 reason for bluescreen crashing in Windows, next to printers and scanners. And yes, MS went nuclear and that was a massive shame that Windows Audio has never recovered from.

MS should lay a framework API for hardware accelerated audio inside Direct-X and design a strict driver foundation to utilise it. But sadly MS has almost no competent coders/devs, so they don't know how to do it, and probably couldn't get the budget for it anyway, even if they wanted to. The interesting thing is that the XBox consoles have had hardware Audio for years now, so there must be an API, MS just refuses to make it public. Maybe Windows 12, but I won't hold my breath.

 

[Dwarden]

This is a press release that says basically nothing. Come on, Creative.


That’s one of the things Microsoft can definitively be blamed for. Re-writing the entire Windows audio stack in Vista so that HW acceleration of audio is basically not viable sure was a move.

and when one realizes that XBOX audio processing used hardware acceleration after they done that and still does ...

by removing any option for frameworked path in PC DX to have reliable hardware audio ...

but there is no equivalent of Vulkan for audio ... even OpenAL is stuck and fragmented for decades

 

[DudeBeFishing]

I was there too, I also read the reason for MS's decision, that Creative's drivers were the No1 reason for bluescreen crashing in Windows, next to printers and scanners. And yes, MS went nuclear and that was a massive shame that Windows Audio has never recovered from.

MS should lay a framework API for hardware accelerated audio inside Direct-X and design a strict driver foundation to utilise it. But sadly MS has almost no competent coders/devs, so they don't know how to do it, and probably couldn't get the budget for it anyway, even if they wanted to. The interesting thing is that the XBox consoles have had hardware Audio for years now, so there must be an API, MS just refuses to make it public. Maybe Windows 12, but I won't hold my breath.

Microsoft managed to break Minecraft's directional audio, and then marked the bug report working as intended. It's still not fixed. Do you really there's a chance of them implementing it into DirectX properly?

 

[stimpy88]

Microsoft managed to break Minecraft's directional audio, and then marked the bug report working as intended. It's still not fixed. Do you really there's a chance of them implementing it into DirectX properly?

I think there is a very small chance with Windows 12, because I just don't see the point of Windows 12 in the first place, so MS needs as many selling points as possible. But I won't hold my breath. I also think we would have had a leak of this by now, probably from the likes of AMD, Creative or Realtek.

I can't imagine that MS would just update Windows 11 with hardware audio support at the end of its development cycle. So, if it's not in Win12, then we aren't ever getting it.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Microsoft is too incompetent, and too callous to care about 3D Hardware/Software sound in their OSes at the moment. Now the focus lies with the shitty AI gimmick, the new 2nd coming trend.
The quality 3D Sound went extinct with Windows XP sadly.
Still funny and ironic how ancient games such as Unreal 1/2, DeusEx, Thief, Half-Life or FEAR still sounds 1 millions time better than the latest AAAAAA Games that have budget in the hundreds of millions.

 

[stimpy88]

Microsoft is too incompetent, and too callous to care about 3D Hardware/Software sound in their OSes at the moment. Now the focus lies with the shitty AI gimmick, the new 2nd coming trend.
The quality 3D Sound went extinct with Windows XP sadly.
Still funny and ironic how ancient games such as Unreal 1/2, DeusEx, Thief, Half-Life or FEAR still sounds 1 millions time better than the latest AAAAAA Games that have budget in the hundreds of millions.

I fear that you are 100% correct. Lets hope that they need hardware acceleration for AI audio features!

 

[Veseleil]

Microsoft is too incompetent, and too callous to care about 3D Hardware/Software sound in their OSes at the moment. Now the focus lies with the shitty AI gimmick, the new 2nd coming trend.
The quality 3D Sound went extinct with Windows XP sadly.
Still funny and ironic how ancient games such as Unreal 1/2, DeusEx, Thief, Half-Life or FEAR still sounds 1 millions time better than the latest AAAAAA Games that have budget in the hundreds of millions.

Sad but true.

 

[OneMoar]

Microsoft is many things Incompetent is not one of them

Sorry kids but Hardware Acceleration for Audio makes no sense when cpus are fast enough and more flexiable this was the entire reason it was dropped cpus got fast enough for not to matter and maintaining it was a stablity nightmare (see creative)

EAX/HTRF/spatial audio processing can be easily done in software and are computationally irreleavent on modern platforms

 

[stimpy88]

Microsoft is many things Incompetent is not one of them

Sorry kids but Hardware Acceleration for Audio makes no sense when cpus are fast enough and more flexiable this was the entire reason it was dropped cpus got fast enough for not to matter and maintaining it was a stablity nightmware (see creative)

EAX/HTRF/spatial audio processing can be easily done in software and are computationally irreleavent on modern platforms

You are wrong on all counts, kid. Education is key.

 

[Prima.Vera]

EAX/HTRF/spatial audio processing can be easily done in software and are computationally irreleavent on modern platforms

Yeah, they are so easy to implement that in the past 15+ years, NO GAMES what so ever have any quality 3D Sound implementation.
5.1 Dolby or simmilar, IS NOT 3D sound. Not by a million miles.

Ex of simmilar 3D sounds (ASMR 3D Binaural) that the ancient games were using via A3D 2.0 or later EAX 5.0:

 

[OneMoar]

Yeah, they are so easy to implement that in the past 15+ years, NO GAMES what so ever have any quality 3D Sound implementation.
5.1 Dolby or simmilar, IS NOT 3D sound. Not by a million miles.

Ex of simmilar 3D sounds (ASMR 3D Binaural) that the ancient games were using via A3D 2.0 or later EAX 5.0:

you seem to be confusing game devlopers with microsoft you do NOT need a dedicated DSP to perform simple HTRF calculations \ biaural processing end of story
microsoft is not to blame for game devlopers being lazy

you might want to look up EAX's short commings before signing its praises by the time microsoft shitcanned directaudio basicly nobody was using it
btw open al still exists and is actively maintained here:

GitHub - kcat/openal-soft: OpenAL Soft is a software implementation of the OpenAL 3D audio API.

OpenAL Soft is a software implementation of the OpenAL 3D audio API. - kcat/openal-soft

github.com

 

[Prima.Vera]

you seem to be confusing game devlopers with microsoft you do NOT need a dedicated DSP to perform simple HTRF calculations \ biaural processing end of story
microsoft is not to blame for game devlopers being lazy

you might want to look up EAX's short commings before signing its praises by the time microsoft shitcanned directaudio basicly nobody was using it
btw open al still exists and is actively maintained here:

GitHub - kcat/openal-soft: OpenAL Soft is a software implementation of the OpenAL 3D audio API.

OpenAL Soft is a software implementation of the OpenAL 3D audio API. - kcat/openal-soft

github.com

Sorry, maybe I didn't explained well.
There used to be an API called DirectSound3D which was part of DirectX suite. This was created exactly for the reasons you mentioned, to stop proprietary bs and have a standardized API for 3D Sound.
However, starting with Vista, Microsoft changed the Audio path process, and instead of continuing to develop the DirectSound3D, they just said "fuck it, too much hassle" and dumped it altogether.
Now, you are also correct, devs are also lazy too, but be advised, a lot of Game devs are using game engines such as Unreal, which DOES NOT HAVE quality 3D sound implementation. Instead Unreal is using the "Unreal Audio Engine" API, which is a very crappy, very basic API, no near the ones like A3D 2.0 or EAX5. Not even close.

 

[OneMoar]

the Unreal Audio API is alright the problem is Unreal Engine is Game Dev Duplo Blocks for babies. (at least as far as the blueprint editor is concerned) you can still write your own audio subsystem in C#/C++
nobody has a gun to your head forcing you to use the default audio engine

yall remember when game devlopers used to write there own engines to suite there needs. well I do remember

again not microsofts monkey not there circus the capablity todo HTRF still exists devs just don't want to (or can't)
#blame console

and the death of DirectSound/DirectSound3D is MOSTLY the fault of creative/other vendors Microsoft did indeed say "fuck it, too much hassle" primarly because creative\other vendors keept breaking stuff and causing crashing and other instablity so microsoft removed the api to gain control back after repeatedly begging vendors to clean up there acts.

and Creative was about the worst one when it came to driver problems and plugging there ears going "lalalallalallala" when issues where reported to them I can personally attest to this. Multiple Times I raised issues with the driver team over stuff breaking and got a lot of slience and the occsional finger pointing funny as soon as microsoft killed DirectSound And everybody switched to WASPI all the stablity issues and wierdnes vanished.

Creative are the ones that Killed Hardware accelerated Audio OpenAL was there baby and they elected to drown it in the river (they bought OpenAL then slowly killed it)

all of this co-insided with Death of soundcards in general caused by AC97/HDA becomming common

addionally blaming microsoft because the entire industry moved away from dedicated audio hardware is wholly unfair and boarder line idiotic

tl:dr creative went full sith lord and paid the price for it they can rot in hell

 

[Prima.Vera]

Creative are the ones that Killed Hardware accelerated Audio OpenAL was there baby and they elected to drown it in the river (they bought OpenAL then slowly killed it)

all of this co-insided with Death of soundcards in general caused by AC97/HDA becomming common

addionally blaming microsoft because the entire industry moved away from dedicated audio hardware is wholly unfair and boarder line idiotic

tl:dr creative went full sith lord and paid the price for it they can rot in hell

Stop writing nonsense. A single vendor cannot control what Microsoft does and choose. You're writing crap.

See this:

Sound card - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

There are a lot of other sound card producers that could offer quality 3D sound (not the current fake and emulated shit), if the Microsoft would have provided a standardized 3d Sound API. They instead chose not to do it and let all the burden to game engine producers, to just emulate it as see see fit (they don't), or just use the overly crappy and flat Dolby, which is just a multi-speaker technology with ZERO tri dimensional sound and audio filters.
In all seriousness, nowadays sound in games is THAT BAD. There is absolutely NO DIFFERENCE at all compared to 20-30 years ago, when you were using ISA 16-bit sound cards.

P.S.
Ever heard of Quake 1? An almost 30 years old game. This is how it was sounding with OpenAL and shitty 22Khz sounds. That's right, 30 years old audio sounds better than the current games, hahaha:

 

[OneMoar]

son I was playing quake 1 before you where a glimmer in your momas eyes

Stop writing nonsense. A single vendor cannot control what Microsoft does and choose. You're writing crap.

See this:

Sound card - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

There are a lot of other sound card producers that could offer quality 3D sound (not the current fake and emulated shit), if the Microsoft would have provided a standardized 3d Sound API. They instead chose not to do it and let all the burden to game engine producers, to just emulate it as see see fit (they don't), or just use the overly crappy and flat Dolby, which is just a multi-speaker technology with ZERO tri dimensional sound and audio filters.
In all seriousness, nowadays sound in games is THAT BAD. There is absolutely NO DIFFERENCE at all compared to 20-30 years ago, when you were using ISA 16-bit sound cards.

P.S.
Ever heard of Quake 1? An almost 30 years old game. This is how it was sounding with OpenAL and shitty 22Khz sounds. That's right, 30 years old audio sounds better than the current games, hahaha:

stop blaming microsoft ok? microsoft isn't the problem I explained that already microsoft has nothing todo with 3D audio being dead:
you can do that in software as evident by the video you posted whos title you didn't read