Sb-Live, EAX is good or NOT ?

[Thor_Sevan]

Ok. Now I am TIRED of my Sb live.
Why.... why I can't play ONE game that has GOOD 3D sound in it...
I play UT... TOTAL crap.. always scratchy sound and missing sounds sometimes.
I play Q3, no 3D sound at all. Pfft
I play RUNE, oh my god.... is this SOUND ??? Or it is crunchy noises put together with NO harmony at all. There are many defects in sound and the 3D.... is THIS 3D sound ? pfff

Now I want to know... is it ONLY ME having this problem with 3D sound ??
Oh yeah... counter strike and half-life based games aren't bad.. except for that WATER noise in DUST that appears sometimes..... ?!?!?!?

Hehe..

 

[Sephy]

Nope, EAX sucks

 

[Sephy]

Well, I can't say I've heard those specific issues, but in general, it's been bad experiences

 

[frover2000]

I noticed the sound in general of rune was horrendous how it suddenly just jumps to one sound effect to the next without any type of transition
or flair, i don'tthink this directly related to eax though

 

[Seeko]

Now that Creative Labs have bought Aureal, CL should just can EAX and use the A3D technology in their next line of cards. A3D 2.0 wipes the floor with any implementation of EAX.

 

[Thor_Sevan]

Kewl... I am not alone hehe

Yeah.. that was EXACTLY the problem I had. Sound cuts from one channel to an other. It is VERY annoying and not natural.

I think some SERIOUS competition is needed to SBLive...

Noone wants to create a Sound card company ? I would jump anytime LOL

 

[oldfart]

I remember when the big debate was A3D Vs EAX. I went out and got a Live! and absolutely hated it. I could not believe how bad EAX sounded. All it does is add this horrific hollow echo to everything, like you are in a giant tin cave. I returned it and got an MX300 (still have it). Night and day difference. I've heard EAX on other PC's since and it hasn't changed. It still amazes me that anyone would actually like the way it sounds. It just goes to show that having a superior technology doesn't mean success.

 

[nortexoid]

oldfart, that's funny, cuz i did the same - bought an sblive value...and returned it the next day and got an mx300 instead - although it costed me an additional $40 CDN...still have it too...

A3D 2.0 vs. EAX???...that isn't a competition, really (or is it?...ha)

I agree that creative should implement aureal's technology into its next line of cards...

hmmm, i played the rune demo numerous times and never got that issue..."crunchy noises put together with NO harmony at all"...now that's comique...

i'm telling people, the sq2500 can be had for pennies and is one of the best cards currently on the market...sell that crap u have and consider an alternative...crap sound just isn't cool...(or is it?)

or is it?

 

[Subversal]

I agree EAX sucks... and using A2D drivers on any Live card slows it WAY down, and thats if you get it to work.



<< Oh yeah... counter strike and half-life based games aren't bad.. except for that WATER noise in DUST that appears sometimes..... ?!?!?!? >>



I hate siege... the echo drives me nuts.

 

[Thor_Sevan]

YES !! siege ! Its SOOOOOOOOOO annooying !!

What is THAT ??? They put ECHO on ALL the level ??? Man.. I really don't understand... c'mon... they could do BETTER....

Now... I am having my Klipsch promedia's speakers very soon... so just for fun I used the surround setting with my 2.1 speakers set. I should have nice sound but only in front right ? Wrong... same cutting sound... donno why... frustrating...

 

[nortexoid]

the whole map echos?...ha - that's funny....god, that IS funny...u don't understand, it IS funny...funny IS EAX...they are the same thing - identity....(not predicate)...

got it?
good.

 

[NaughtyusMaximus]

The only game where I found EAX was fairly good most of the time was Ultima IX. It was a hell of a lot better than UT at least, but definetly not perfect.

 

[Impact55]

I have a Sb Live Value and a SB PCI128 and the SB PCI128 will do A3D but not EAX.. and yes I admit A3D is soooo much better. Could drivers enable the Live to do this?

 

[randomlinh]

only prob w/ aureal... win2k drivers

 

[R0b0tN1k]

Now that Creative has A3D under its belt, we will never have good sound from our computers. Creative will definitely screw up A3D bigtime, probably by trying to combine it with EAX and Liveware (which alone strikes fear in any SB owner). Creative lost my support when the Live cards first came out, and they don't seem to be working towards regaining it. I'm holding onto my Aureal Vortex card as long as I can.

The water sound in Counterstrike is related to the goofy clipping problems that plague that mod. Sometimes it feels like that mod was made by a bunch of 12-year-olds (which is also the mentality of the average CS player).

 

[Thor_Sevan]

One of the strangest thing is that I did not had this BIG problem in windows 2000... man.... I don't unerstand ! hehe
Maybe I should change sound card... hummm

 

[borealiss]

eax causes some weird problems for me in win2k and cstrike. i get massive massive echoing, but it's weird. when i shoot the mp5 in a burst, the burst will echo to the right channel then the left channel. weird. i just disable eax. too bad mx300 is not smp friendly, otherwise i would've never given it up.

 

[bookem dano]

oldfart, that hollow echo effect you hear can easily be fixed by taking down the reverb. I haven't had any problems with the Live after I found that reverb and chorus options and put those at 0 instead of the default 100%.(unfortunatly this takes down the volume a little, but what you get is a clean sound which is better for input into an external amp since the Live does not amplify the sound.)

 

[Auric]

Some people seem to confuse cheesy mixer settings with actual EAX support in a game. The stuff in the mixer is just to play around with or in some cases was to tack effects onto existing games. Go play a game with EAX in the game's options such as Rally Masters and you will be glad you did. RM is actually not a great example because some car and track combinations are flaky EAX-wise but you can hear helicopters passing overhead and the change in sounds when going under overpasses and all that stuff. Also, I have no problem using Dolby Pro-Logic in UT so you may look for blame elsewhere than the Live!

 

[BD2003]

The echo in half life isnt the problem of eax, but the problem of half life. Whoever programmed the eax into that game is an idiot, they used way too much reverb. But the opposite problem with UT occurs. Theres barely any actual reverb in the game at all. Not many games actually do it correctly. Diablo 2 got the reverb part down right, but there wasnt much actual positioning. The technology isnt flawed, just too many lazy developers.

 

[AngelOfDeath]

When I played Diablo I worked ok giving me an awesome sound enviroment, but in Rune it was terrible. Since these are the only two gamez I've tried with EAX I can't generallize it...But for now a 50/50 experience

AoD

 

[oldfart]

<< that hollow echo effect you hear can easily be fixed by taking down the reverb. >>


I played around with the settings. Never got it to sound good. That's the difference between a statically applied reverb (EAX) and dynamic positional 3D sound (A3D). You don't have to set the amount of echo you want. (Who wants echo anyway) The EAX was one thing I (really) didn't like. There were others.

1) The card would kill my nic card no matter what slot the thing went into. I spent a day trying to get that fixed. I even resorted to calling Creative, which was my first ever tech support call. They told me there were incompatibilities with that nic (3Com) and I should buy a different one!

2) At that time I needed to have the same sound coming out of both sets of speaker jacks. 2 ch stereo &quot;front&quot; sound only. The Live could not do this. Front sound out of the front jack, rear sound out of the rear jack. The MX300 can do this easily by changing from Quad to Stereo X2. Did Creative ever fix this?

I found the MX300 to be far superior to the Live! It's really is a shame they went under. Creative will just keep repackaging that Live! 100 different ways just like they did with the old Soundblaster cards.

 

[9lives]

if you play HereticII , you will know how lousy EAX is.

SB Live only support A3D 1.0 . No games nowaday are in 1.0 , they ae in A3d.20. See how stupid creative is. even the latest SB Live Platinum 5.1 support 1.0 only. My old Monster M80(2 years old)can even support 2.0.

Actually I have bought Live platinum 5.1 recently but I don't really quite happy with it. I advice gamer should get diamond mx 400.

 

[Viperoni]

I'd still be using my mx300 today if it wasn't for it's incompatability with the kt/kx133 chipset

 

[Remedy]

hey Vip, i was so pissed when i had to get rid of my aureal over that. It just wouldn't work, thats when i started to hate VIA :|. Back in the summer i went and got the Turtle beach Santa Cruz and i aint giving this thing up no time soon!

Sensura 3D sound can be a threat(or could of for that matter)to Aureal 2.0 but it is immature when compared to A3D. I hope some company buys sensura and puts some more money into their advertising and R&amp;D.