Patch 1.3 increased the FPS performance to +25%, 3D audio was cardinally improved and got the main EAX4 feature - Multi-Environment. Game Developer Forum 2005: X-Fi specs are known to a chosen few long before the announcementīut the end justified the means. It can be interpreted as daring developers to do it. After such scary details, EAX4/5 SDK newsletters and Creative's appeal to game developers to introduce OpenAL into their games sounds ironic.
Besides, it had to rewrite drivers for all its sound cards for DOOM3 alone. Creative had to overhaul the entire OpenAL and release a special new version.
Support for DirectSound + all existing EAX4 features was hardly introduced by rewriting the audio code from scratch. For example, the soft engine operated 256 channels with a dozen real-time OGG decode processes in memory and the algorithm of random time shift of channels to avoid buffer overflow. It was interesting to listen to Carlo's report at Game Developer Forum 2005 with heart-rending intimate details about updating the sound engine in DOOM3. Including Carlo Vogelsang, the man who designed the audio engine in UT2003/UT2004. The best talents were rushed up to fix this omission. Moreover, there was absolutely no difference between integrated audio and the latest Creative cards neither in quality nor in performance. Creative was not content with the situation when the world bestseller didn't use hardware DirectSound, to say nothing of the latest EAX, which would have allowed high-quality 3D sound algorithms.
Later on, the situation with system memory became not that critical, but developers mechanically followed the beaten track for some time.įor example, the recent DOOM3 had an alternative software audio engine planned to outperform all existing engines, implemented hardly by a tenth part, with low quality samples, compressed into OGG and uncompressed into PCM on-the-fly for mixing and playback. So they either reduced capacity of samples, which deteriorated audio quality, or they compressed them into lossy formats, MP3 or OGG, which loaded processors at sample playback stages. Developers had had a problem with insufficient audio memory for a long time. All new hardware, all new software, makes this thing all the better.Here are prerequisites for the appearance of on-board memory on sounds cards. The X-Audio does provide a good value with decent performance, stability, and last but not least, is does sound good.Ĭreative's entry level X-Fi turns out to be pretty killer. The EAX gaming enhancements are gone, however, in favor of the more usable Crystallizer and CMSS3D functions. This card has many aspects in common with existing X-FI designs and a few new features and modifications to appeal to the newer crop of demanding soundcards enthusiasts.īordering on false advertisement, Creative's latest X-Fi isn't an X-Fi at all, it's a new rev of the Audigy series using the X-Fi drivers and gliding on the PCI Express bus.
It is small, light-weight and doesn't look half bad either. Lets read on and find out what's really under the, er, hood.Īrmed with a small sub and two satellite speakers we'll today have a look at Creative Sound BlasterX Kratos S3 speaker kit. Perhaps theres something wrong with it? Well, don't let the skillfully androgynous chick on the box fool you. At least stick PCIe on their top of the line Fatal1ty boards? It just strikes me a bit odd that Creative would rev the APU and not make such a big deal about it. This X-Fi also has the same basic set of features that youll find in all other X-Fis, namely the 24-bit, 96KHz record and playback, the Crystalizer, 7.1 surround sound, and the CMSS3D. The delays from then until now, about 12 months, were officially acknowledged as technical issues relating to the PCI Express bus itself. Creative showed this X-Fi at last years CES (that's 2006) sporting the PCI Express. It blew the DACs off the Audigy series, hands down.Ī case in point is todays specimen, the X-Fi PCIe XtremeAudio. There were also major improvements in the architecture too, including a nearly flawless sample-rate conversion engine, and seemingly limitless processing power. I mean, I still laughed, but that was about the XRAM.
The X-Fi offered so many improvements over the Audigy series, it wasnt funny, new EAX, new Crystallizer, new driver model, new black PCB. It really was a great day for gamers and music lovers. When the original X-Fi came out it was the first major new architectural change for Creative and for sound cards in years.