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Posted by Thomas
McGuire on December 17, 2001
Manufacturer: Creative
Labs Product: Sound
Blaster Audigy Player
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Although
as mentioned earlier, no current games support EAX Advanced
HD, that’s not to say that there’s little benefit to
upgrading to an Audigy. On the contrary the Audigy features
an enhanced Reverb & 3D Audio engine. So how does this
add to Gaming with the Audigy?
Games
I used for testing out the Audigy in Windows XP were Serious
Sam, Max Payne, Jedi Knight, Operation Flashpoint, Quake 3,
No One Lives Forever & some other Titles as well.
Jedi
Knight was used to test A3D 1 compatibility, which worked
correctly as I had expected.
Next
up, came my favourite Game of this year – Operation
Flashpoint, an EAX supporting title at that. Previous to the
Audigy in this Game I had used the Game Theater XP &
SiXPack 5.1 & getting into a Game with the Audigy was
like a truly new experience. It felt like previous to the
Audigy I had some sort of filters over my ears & removed
them after installing the Audigy – The Sound quality for
many audio sources was much more detailed & for what
seemed like the first time, I could really hear
bullets hitting the terrain around me, or bouncing of the
wrecks of tanks & such.
3D
Positioning was great, too. With a bit more obvious speaker
placement than the Sensaura enabled Soundcards I’ve used
previously (Not that that’s a bad thing of course).
Helicopters flying overhead felt all the more threatening
& would have me looking around to check they hadn’t
spotted me.
In
the other Games I mentioned – Serious Sam, No One Lievs
Forever, etc. the Audigy also proved rather impressive,
although not quite as much of a difference as I noticed with
Operation Flashpoint.
As
mentioned earlier the Reverb engine has been updated over
what was in the Live! range & should be a perceivable
improvement for Live! owners & certainly more noticeable
for those with non-Live! Soundcards, many of which I’ve
found to have a weaker Reverb strength than the Live!’s.
When
using the EAX Control Panel, Reverb level & other
settings can be further adjusted, ironically something
missing on other Soundcards which could benefit more from
being able to adjust these levels.
Other
than this I had no real problems in Games which supported
DirectSound3D and/or EAX. Both initialised successfully
where available. Overall the positioning quality I found to
be great indeed & although I only can achieve 4 Speaker
output with my Speaker system it did feel (In 4 Speaker
mode) to be to be nicer than that in the Sensaura Soundcards
I’ve previously used (Though the Front/Rear transitions
seemed less smooth, but the positioning was easier to
determine). The only Soundcard I have which had one up on
the Audigy was the Philips
Acoustic Edge, thanks to the QMSS feature (Ability to up
mix stereo sources to 4/5/5.1 channel).
2
Speaker mode was also of good quality, although not as good
as the Game Theater XP or other Soundcards I could compare
with. The weak point here being, positioning of audio
sources to the Rear of your virtual self. That said, a lot
of you who’ll be buying an Audigy will probably be using a
4 or 5.1 Speaker system so it’s not of too much
importance hopefully.
5.1
Speaker output was untested given the DTT 2500’s inability
to do it (& lacking the Inputs also) & my lack of a
capable system. Although it is worth noting that unlike all
Sensaura featuring Soundcards (Game Theater XP,
Santa Cruz
, etc.) the Audigy (just like the Live!
5.1, Philips Acoustic & Seismic Edge & some others)
can do true 6 Channel output for Games, whereas the
Sensaura Soundcards currently only do a Virtual 5.1
(For the Center & Sub-woofer channels). It’s also
worth pointing out that Games doesn’t have to be
specifically coded to support 6 Channel output, if it’s,
say DirectSound3D supporting it’ll work with the Audigy in
5.1 output mode just as well as it would in 2 Speaker mode.
Again,
overall the Audigy is very impressive for Gaming offering a
really excellent 4 Speaker output mode, a great improvement
over the Live! range, similarly it features top notch Reverb
quality & is ready for all the next-gen EAX Games.
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