Environmental Audio Extensions

Environmental Audio Extensions ( EAX ) is developed by Creative Labs proprietary system, which serves to make it appear ambient noise in computer games as real as possible. Since each noise etc. different sounds in different rooms due to reflections from the walls, you would have in a computer game, a theoretically and record the same sound in different conditions. To avoid this effort, the sound is recorded only once and the game divides EAX with the environment in which this noise to sound. EAX calculates the sound in each room and passes it to the speakers on. In newer versions supports EAX sound output on up to eight speakers ( 7.1), thus creates the illusion of being in the middle of the action ( surround sound ).

History

EAX 1.0 was from Creative Blaster 1998 for Sound Live! presented. This first version of EAX supported 32 votes; Developers could choose different presets that were applied to the noise and thus produced the effect of different environments. With EAX 2.0 came in 2000 added the ability to simulate acoustic properties of various materials. In addition, it has now been possible to include the influence of objects between the noise source and the listener. With the Audigy cards came EAX Advanced HD 3.0, the supported 64 votes, smooth fade from one environment to another effect enabled, and the developers were better ways to influence the sound output. EAX Advanced HD 4.0 added the ability to simulate different environmental effects simultaneously. The latest version is EAX Advanced HD 5.0 and is supported by the X-Fi series supports (except for " X -FI Xtreme" ). Among many other changes, the number of parts has been increased to 128.

The specifications of EAX 1.0 and EAX 2.0 were published by Creative, other manufacturers of sound cards, it is possible to support EAX 2.0 via software emulation. Former competition format to EAX was Aureal 3rd Dimension Technology, according to the company's acquisition of the developer company Aureal by Creative but it was not developed any further.

Windows

With Windows Vista, the reproduction of EAX effects is only possible because neither with DirectX 10 or DirectX 9L is the Hardware Abstraction Layer of Direct Sound available, are transmitted via the DirectSound commands for calculation of hardware EAX chips. Due to the lack of DirectSound HAL for Vista EAX Effects can not be calculated in hardware in many previous games. An exception are the few games that use OpenAL interface instead of DirectSound.

Therefore, Creative Labs has released a tool called " ALchemy " (pun on " OpenAL " ) is available, which translates DirectSound commands many games in OpenAL commands, thus making fully compatible with Windows Vista. The required computing power for this translation is to be low according to Creative Labs. So far, however, not yet supported " ALchemy " means all known games. Meanwhile ALchemy is available free of charge for the sound card Audigy series, after initially only X -Fi cards for free and later Audigy cards had been chargeable supported.