Auzen Xplosion 7.1 and H/W Acceleration

[Skakruk]

Is the Auzentech/HDA Xplosion 7.1 capable of Hardware Acceleration in games? I thought I knew what hardware audio acceleration was, but now I'm not so sure...

Every time I enable hardware acceleration with my Xplosion, something goes wrong. The sound works, but there are all sorts of issues. Is it only Creative cards that can support H/W acceleration in games such as UT2004, Oblivion etc.? I know only Creative cards do EAX (properly - although other brands can emulate it), but I always thought that my Xplosion supported hardware audio.

It would be much appreciated if you could clear this up for me - I'm trying to decide whether it's worth replacing the Xplosion with an X-Fi Titanium.

[Kelainefes]

Basically, do you need hardware acceleration?
Because the X-Fi series of cards is known for creating lots and lots of trouble, i remember a thread here not too long ago where a guy was getting hardware lag in games and it was the X-Fi.

[Skakruk]

Originally Posted by Kelainefes

Do you need hardware acceleration?

I suppose not, come to think of it.

So if I'm not going to be using hardware acceleration in any games, can I permanently set the Windows audio properties slider to "Basic" (I have two games in which the sound only works properly with the "Basic" setting, even when I have the games themselves set to software audio)?

Also, you have not definitely answered my main question: Is my Xplosion capable of hardware acceleration?

[kinnsy]

Originally Posted by Kelainefes

Basically, do you need hardware acceleration?
Because the X-Fi series of cards is known for creating lots and lots of trouble, i remember a thread here not too long ago where a guy was getting hardware lag in games and it was the X-Fi.

I personally have had no problems with my X-Fi in three different motherboard/cpu setups (AMD and Intel).

Though they don't like sharing IRQ's with certain devices, NICs and USB in my experience. But that is not limited to X-Fi, my Adaptec 21960n doesn't like sharing IRQ's with those devices either. I may be wrong but iirc devices of a same type (say block devices) don't like sharing IRQ's.

Can be hard these days too considering you only get two PCI slots max on modern motherboards and one of those usually ends up unusable depending on the video card you have installed.

[godsdog]

Originally Posted by Skakruk

Also, you have not definitely answered my main question: Is my Xplosion capable of hardware acceleration?

You'll have to contact Auzentech through their online support centre: Auzentech.com >> Support >> Tickets fill in the ticket with exact model version (ie, you don't have the newer Cinema version) and driver detail (version number required), for a definitive answer and specifics. There's probably some, but very very basic. No need to mark it as urgent priority, high will do. They're pretty good at replying. The fact it's not advertised in your face as a selling point would suggest so anyway.

[Kelainefes]

Depends what you (and the games) mean with "Hardware Acceleration".
You should be able to set the windows sliders all the way to the right, but games require EAX compatibility in order for hardware acceleration to be enabled. I'm not aware of something else other than EAX that could be used by games and called hardware acceleration.

[godsdog]

X-Meridian 7.1 didn't have hardware acceleration for example: Techgage - Auzentech X-Meridian 7.1

While sound quality is the primary focus of the X-Meridian, it doesn't leave gamers completely out in the cold and it does offer support for EAX 1 and 2, but that's about all.

There's no hardware acceleration for games, so the DSP duties are offloaded to the CPU. If you're not concerned with having bleeding edge gaming performance though, and instead having top notch sound quality, read on.

[Kelainefes]

Maybe they meant the 3d audio acceleration of DirectX? Now it's basically dead as Vista only suports OpenAL.
By windows hardware acceleration i do not mean anything specifically related to games, just those things that you can set in the control panel, such as sample rate conversion and other basic stuff.
I also think that with the power that today's CPUs can offer, offloading the audio tasks from the CPU does not bring so many advantages in terms of FPS.

[Skakruk]

Originally Posted by Kelainefes

I'm not aware of something else other than EAX that could be used by games and called hardware acceleration.

In UT2004, along with the software option, there are two Hardware options:

[H/W 3D Audio] and [H/W 3D Audio + EAX]

What's the 'H/W 3D Audio' option for if EAX is the only form of hardware acceleration?

When I enable [H/W 3D Audio] on my Xplosion, I get random pops and clicks, and I get exaggerated stereo effects (eg. the players footsteps go right-left-right-left, but from the far edges of the soundstage - in software audio mode they sound more central).

[Kelainefes]

Aw, you talk about a 2004 game! Back then the 3d audio part of DirectX was being used but as i said now it's basically dead since Vista came out.