Jump to content
The Dark Mod Forums

Sir, your EAX insults my EARs


jay pettitt

Recommended Posts

Look 'ear, I'm excited because I've got my first ever sound card capable of EAX - thanks to Creative, my laptop's Express Card slot and not a tiny amount of money. I, for one, would like to welcome me to 2004. At least I was excited, until I tried the thing.

 

Back in the day (last century) my then PC had a little chip inside that did Aureal3d (what happened to them? - oh right I remember, Creative did a hostile takeover and killed 3D sound tech dead) and it was super awesome - they managed to fake 3d positional sound with stereo in a way so convincing and lifelike that you could pinpoint Thief's guards not just behind you but above and below too. It was a genuinely impressive and immersive experience. Eerily good in fact. So I had high hopes for 21st Century EAX 4.0.

 

So far I'm not impressed.

 

The DSP reverbs are genuinely, comically awful. Like $5 Wallmart Karaoke machine with built in SFX bad. Only worse. The transitions (transition really isn't the right word for it) between them jarringly abrupt and the implementation in the couple of games I've tried (Doom 3 mostly and a little bit of SS2) dodgy as hell. Are all small rooms Cavernous Caves on the left side and Echoey Cathedrals on the right?

 

Reverb was 2004's bloom, right?

 

Please tell me I'm doing it wrong.

Edited by jay pettitt
  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

What follows is the opinion of someone with basic 3D sound knowledge.

 

I got my start back in the day with Thief on an SB Live! I was really impressed at the time with Thief's sound, but pissed that games like Quake 2 and 3 didn't support EAX. I noticed this thing called "A3D" and I researched it. The premice sounded totally kick-ass. Sounds would supposedly bounce off the walls in the game the way they do in the real world. Different surfaces would bounce sounds differently.

 

For a wile, I was big into sound and even had a whole receiver hooked to the computer with full-size speakers including surround speakers. Folks underestimate how helpful this stuff is in multiplayer games!

 

Yes, I agree with you that the reverb is and always was overused. Also, I know that my 1100t CPU could do this stuff in its sleep on one of the spare cores and I object to having to buy hardware to do it.

 

It is like the whole wavetables thing; we used to be impressed by dedicated hardware that had this feature, but now software fulfills that need.

 

Halo was a game that didn't overuse the echo feature. They got it just right.

Edited by lost_soul

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guys, there was this new 3D sound emulation driver that was discussed here. I remember seeing a YT vid featuring this in an Unreal environment, I think. Only I can't find it here or online. Can someone plz point me to the right post/link?

My Eigenvalue is bigger than your Eigenvalue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I remember a vid of some fancy real-time acoustic modelling in Half Life 2. Can't find it though.

 

Plenty of Vids of Aureal 3D though, which was doing similar, calculating reverbs and occlusion in real-time according to actual game geometry and faking positional audio with HRTF 15-20 years ago:

(best with headphones)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8O6rtlmsIA

Edited by jay pettitt
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nah, I finally found it. Turned out I was too dense to use the search feature correctly.

 

Anyway, here it is. Works with Doom 3, but only few other games. I really had hoped that the list of supported games would be longer by now. Still, I might try it out when I replace my 5.1 headset.

My Eigenvalue is bigger than your Eigenvalue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My Dad was all over this in the 90s, but Creatives dominance was too great - and so his tech - despite technically being shipped in every Xbox, and being available as middleware for the other consoles, never really reached its full potential. If a game has amazing graphics, that will fill up 90% of an article about it. If a game has amazing, mind blowing sound, it will only get 10% coverage in an article.

"No proposition Euclid wrote,

No formulae the text-books know,

Will turn the bullet from your coat,

Or ward the tulwar's downward blow

Strike hard who cares—shoot straight who can—

The odds are on the cheaper man."

 

From 'Arithmetic on the Frontier' by Rudyard Kipling

Link to comment
Share on other sites

EAX 4.0 as far as I can tell has got excellent capability to cover the most important factors in reverb and acoustics.

 

Environment size & damping,

early reflection & reflection speed,

decay length, EQ of decay (e.g. carpet sucks up high frequencies, while smooth marble excentuates it),

room EQ (e.g. are there a lot of corners where low frequencies like to hide),

echo (...echo...echo...) speed and depth,

modulation,

air absorption (e.g. humid air reverberates longer and appears louder than dry air)

 

 

But here's the problem: Ask anyone in the audio business -- instant no-latency reverb has historically sounded bad. It's getting much better with digital tools like Convolution, but even in 2004 -- it was baaaad.

yay seuss crease touss dome in ouss nose tair

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow your posts are truely somewhat shocking to me. I remember my EAX sound card when I was very very very young (yes, younger than now: first computer). It was a great experience as far as I remember and I constantly play with the thought to buy a new cool expensive Creative Audio card. I never did for the last time because I already have the G35 headset which is 7.1 surround sound (via software) and pretty good.

 

Is EAX / creative sound cards really that bad though? / not worth the money..?

"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

Link to comment
Share on other sites

EAX f.i. doesn't work in D3 on Linux - so I don't know how good it can be because all I know it is so bad as to be non-existant for me..

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

Link to comment
Share on other sites

EAX is just a series of DSP effects like reverberation and enveloping layered on top of positional audio. In Doom 3 positional audio is handled by OpenAL and I've read that it's EFX extensions offer the same functionality.

 

Doom 3 uses effect presets assigned to areas separated by visportals. I'm not sure how much of this can be changed but that would be the place to start for really good audio.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is it even used in Darkmod missions ?! I know that there is an entity which allows to make zones which contain EAX information (if I recall that right) but do mappers even set this up?? Most of them (like me) don't have EAX and aren't able to test these settings.

 

It is a shame if you boys are right - there is so much potential in sound and effects and it's never used right.. what the hell ... ?! *angry smiley*

"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've seen at least one map author here talking about it so I know at least one mission uses EAX. But I don't have a Creative card either so there could be several.

 

On a related note I've noticed that a Doom 3 source branch called dhewm3 has migrated to EFX. If that can be rolled into TDM then everyone should be able to make use of DSP effects.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How do these advanced modern sound cards even function? Specifically, I thought directsound 3d was removed a long time ago starting with Vista. In XP, EAX would work with echo features, but even with Vista on hardware that could do EAX, it was impossible. There was a program called "3D SoundBack" or something, but it never did anything when I tried it.

 

Is all of this stuff being done in software now anyways? It is one of the reasons I keep an XP/2000 box aorund with an SB live for classic games.

Edited by lost_soul

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well I actually see no sense in buying an expensive sound card ? What makes them so advanced against onboard sound nowadays?

"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It would be awesome if someone did a technical video on Youtube going over the differences between advanced sound cards from the '90s, modern sound cards, and integrated audio. I mean really getting into the nitty gritty of how these work.

 

One advantage dedicated sound cards had for a long time was SNR (signal to noise ratio) and higher output. Now, even the audio out of an EEE PC sounds fantastic with headphones. It can do EAX too!

 

The other advantage sound cards have is hardware mixing to allow multiple programs to use the card at once. This is only an issue if you're using an OS with a sound system that doesn't just transparently mix everything for you in software.

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well I actually see no sense in buying an expensive sound card ? What makes them so advanced against onboard sound nowadays?

 

I brought mine because I wanted something with a consistent, measurable line out (rather than a headphone jack) which is obviously not something most people would give a damn about - and because I was curious to play with EAX in my beginners competition FM entry, which again isn't everybody's first concern.

 

Certainly I can hear a qualitative difference between on board and the express card (with all the nasty DSP off) - but it's different rather than obviously better. The headphone amp goes a lot louder, but the on board could already go too loud, so that's not particularly useful. I do have sound measurement kit (I actually wanted the line out so I can produce a signal for measuring with different speakers and different venues before doing EQ to fit) so I'll probably get curious one day and see what the actual difference between them is using graphs and science.

 

The proper posh stuff is probably a different cup of tea again. But unless you've got a specific reason for wanting it (you work in sound and need good clean pre-amps) then yeah - on board audio seems okay to me. You'd be better off spending your pennies on decent headphones, women or cream cakes.

Edited by jay pettitt
Link to comment
Share on other sites

EAX is just a series of DSP effects like reverberation and enveloping layered on top of positional audio. In Doom 3 positional audio is handled by OpenAL and I've read that it's EFX extensions offer the same functionality.

 

Doom 3 uses effect presets assigned to areas separated by visportals. I'm not sure how much of this can be changed but that would be the place to start for really good audio.

That's very interesting rich_is_bored. Several months ago, I recorded some gameplay video of the Dark mod with EAX on and off.

My goal was to prove how much better sound is with a Creative sound card.

The results were dissapointing. According to my gameplay tests of the Dark Mod, the difference between EAX on and off is very little.

 

I have also tested Thief 1/2 with EAX on and off. I can say, with absolute certainty, that Thief 1/2 sound much better with EAX on.

With EAX off, I have superman hearing which allows me to hear enemy footsteps through walls.

With EAX on, sounds are muffled and become louder only when they are closer.

 

I still have hope that EAX can be tweaked and improved for the Dark mod. Maybe next winter, I'll record more video and see if I can discern a significant improvement with EAX on.

Edited by Partol
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think you'll only get results for Missions made for EAX. Don't know which if any qualify - but TDM itself has EAX support built in, so the option for mission makers to use it is there. There's an old video floating around youtube demonstrating EAX on TDM and it's actually pretty decent - if you can excuse the old school clippityclop foot steps ;)

 

Maybe it's possible for some of us who have EAX cards to edit existing missions and make them EAX friendly...?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccsKByfgB5s

Edited by jay pettitt
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hm? I'm pretty sure my motherboard integrated audiochip has no EAX capabilities, but why does something like that need special hardware? Can't it be done with software so it would just work audiocard independent?

 

I could swear HL2 had some of those echo-y areas outside, especially in the part where the player drives with the hovercraft. And those effects worked with a card with no EAX.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hm? I'm pretty sure my motherboard integrated audiochip has no EAX capabilities, but why does something like that need special hardware? Can't it be done with software so it would just work audiocard independent?

 

I could swear HL2 had some of those echo-y areas outside, especially in the part where the player drives with the hovercraft. And those effects worked with a card with no EAX.

 

Yes - even Half-Life (1) had it! There were many different sound stiles for many many room types (without EAX).

 

The TDM EAX sound video is awesome O.O

"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe you can give it to someone with EAX support after finishing the mission? I don't know how the system works exactly but it can't be more than a few room markers to place who tell the sound card "hallway starts / ends here".

"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recent Status Updates

    • Petike the Taffer  »  DeTeEff

      I've updated the articles for your FMs and your author category at the wiki. Your newer nickname (DeTeEff) now comes first, and the one in parentheses is your older nickname (Fieldmedic). Just to avoid confusing people who played your FMs years ago and remember your older nickname. I've added a wiki article for your latest FM, Who Watches the Watcher?, as part of my current updating efforts. Unless I overlooked something, you have five different FMs so far.
      · 0 replies
    • Petike the Taffer

      I've finally managed to log in to The Dark Mod Wiki. I'm back in the saddle and before the holidays start in full, I'll be adding a few new FM articles and doing other updates. Written in Stone is already done.
      · 4 replies
    • nbohr1more

      TDM 15th Anniversary Contest is now active! Please declare your participation: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22413-the-dark-mod-15th-anniversary-contest-entry-thread/
       
      · 0 replies
    • JackFarmer

      @TheUnbeholden
      You cannot receive PMs. Could you please be so kind and check your mailbox if it is full (or maybe you switched off the function)?
      · 1 reply
    • OrbWeaver

      I like the new frob highlight but it would nice if it was less "flickery" while moving over objects (especially barred metal doors).
      · 4 replies
×
×
  • Create New...