kelesh

Hi. I play counter-strike alot, and have good 3d audio (360 degrees and elevations are both important).

But I also want to have the best music possible, using an audigy 2, WinXP, Foobar 2000, a $190 Meta42 Headphone Amp and Sennheiser HD580's.

Is it possible to have decent 3d sound with the kx drivers? From what I've read it seems they make music sound noticably better. Currently I'm using EAX Special audio effects (rock equalizer and cmss2), with creative's drivers.

Rogacz

That makes a huge dillema.

Great music quality + no EAX support in games = kX
Moderate music quality + full EAX support in games = Creative drv`s.

I found that some games work slower with kX drivers and of course without effects, but lossy music decoding goes awesome on those drivers.

It makes great dillema. Actualy I`ve faded back to Creative drivers, cause I must test some sounds in games, and default drv`s work better than kX ones in this case.

I`ll definitly be using kX drivers when they fully support EAX.

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HunterZ

kX does support the 3D positional sound components of EAX and DirectSound3D. I play Counter-Strike regularly with them and it sounds good on my 4.1 system. I've heard that kX may have issues handling elevation, but I've never noticed. The big downfall is that kX doesn't support any environmental effects yet.

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Athlon XP 3200+, Gigabyte GA7N-400Pro2 Rev 2.0 (nVidia nForce2 chipset), 1 GB DDR400 (CAS 2.0, dual-channel), ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB AGP 8x, WinXP Pro SP2, DX9.0c., Logitech Z-5500 5.1 speakers

kelesh

wow, thanks Hunterz!!! I will uninstall creative's drivers and install the kx drivers tonight.

I'm guessing I need to uninstall every creative audio application as well? THe EAX console, volume stuff, etc?

dj_stick

jsut do a full uninstall of everything creative

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HunterZ

Yeah most of the Creative stuff will break if it doesn't have its own drivers to talk to. I uninstalled it all and even dug through my registry and hard drive for anything left behind.

Sometimes I'm temped to reinstall the Creative drivers, but I just can't give up the ability to decode Dolby ProLogic and to use the discreet subwoofer output with my 4.1 system (Creative's drivers will only let you use the subwoofer output in 5.1 mode last I checked).

My only hope is that Eugene will start tackling EAX effects support sometime in the not-too-distant future

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Athlon XP 3200+, Gigabyte GA7N-400Pro2 Rev 2.0 (nVidia nForce2 chipset), 1 GB DDR400 (CAS 2.0, dual-channel), ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB AGP 8x, WinXP Pro SP2, DX9.0c., Logitech Z-5500 5.1 speakers

kelesh

well i have the kx drivers installed, and I must say that I do NOT notice an increase in sound quality. If anything it might sound worse. (this may be because I know how to resample to 24bit instead of 32bit in foobar 2000, but I doubt that's the cause). Am I crazy? Is there a way to tweak these drivers? Is it even possible that the kx drivers (3534) could sound worse than my creative drivers?? this is baffling.

using audigy 2, klipsch promedia 2.1's sennheiser hd580's, foobar 2000 (kernel streaming 24bit 48khz), windows xp - listening to beck, cake, weezer, radiohead, tool, nirvana, classical, etc.

Rogacz

I`ve noticed that the hiss level is more less in kX than in Creative. Also MP3 decoding is better, kX doasn`t create so much chorus effect.

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Eugene Gavrilov

>> kelesh

use the following in foobar2000: device: 'wave hq' [kernel streaming], '24-bit padded to 32', 'dsp resampler', frequency=96000, precision: 64bit

this should give you quite good results

/E

kelesh

"precision: 64 bit" ?? where do I choose the precision?

Eugene Gavrilov

in the resampler properties

/E

RIV@NVX

No longer available in 0.7+ releases

kelesh

creative's drivers seem to sound pretty good with Foobar 2000 using upsampling and kernel streaming output.

has anybody compared creative's drivers w/ foobar 2000 w/ kernel streaming vs kx drivers ?

kelesh

humbug, after listening some more i am not sure, so i uninstalled creatives wdm drivers and installed kx's... if it messes my system up i'll just reformat again.... i decided now was the time to test

kelesh

Rogacz

What sampling rate exactly? 48 or 96 KHz?

And what other settings in DSP do You use?
What overally should I do to eliminate hiss level on maximum level?

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kelesh

With creative's driver's I was using 32bit / 48kHz (i read here that 96kHz was in fact worse)

With kx drivers only 24bit works, so i'm using 24bit/48kHz.

Dsp's:
Volume Control
Crossfeed
Gap Killer
Crossfader
(was experimenting with Convolver with LP 12kHz 36dB)

Rogacz

Audigy 2 doasn`t support 32 bit streaming, so why You selected 24bit on creative drivers? And why don`t You use adv. limiter?

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kelesh

What does advanced limiter do?

Rogacz

I`m not sure in this one, but it prevents clipping, especialy high tones. Well it should, I don`t have much clipped audio so can`t say for sure.

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wilho

If you like to play youre CS with headphones too, you might want to try out head phone spatilizer effetct hpsp as I do, check out http://www.hardwareheaven.com/showthre...threadid=26487.
It's now bundled effect in v3536.

Tov

If you're using foobar2000 you should apply replaygain to your files. Just right click them in the playlist, there is a option for it.

kelesh

yeah, i have replaygained all of my files. its awesome.

i also ordered an RME Digi96/8 Pad. its a $300 soundcard. i will be keeping the audigy 2 around for gaming purposes, and to play music on my speakers. I will continue to use the kx drivers, but if i ever reinstall windows XP, i will just use creatives drivers since I will only be playing music from the audigy when I am using my speakers and not my headphones. and foobar 2000 with kernel streaming and creative's drivers produces sounds almost as good as the kx drivers.

xan.pl

Taste Eugene Asio output which plays yet better than Kernel Streaming .
http://www3.cypress.ne.jp/otachan/

kelesh

already tried it, but it wouldn't work with foobar with my current setup. any way to make it work?

wingfeather

I'm something of a Winamp fan myself. - I can't get the ASIO SSE (I have an AthlonXP) output plugin to work. When I select this as my output Winamp simply won't play anything. Also, the Shibatch mp3 input won't seem to upsample up higher than 16 bits.... what am I doing wrong? (I currently use the MAD mp3 decoder with WinAMP which does 24 bits, but I like the 64 bits option in the Shibatch one! )

MechanimaL

about EAX and Counter-Strike:

it would be very cool, if kx could implement the eax functionality for half-life +mods that was with the sound-blaster 4.1 under win98.

this was the only creative card i ever found eax really working.

because, when there was someone walking or shooting behind you, you could differ the sound from the sounds coming from in front of you.

i never found this feature under xp (where the sb4.1 drivers are crap anyway..) either for my audigy under xp.

this feature would be really great and many ppl would love kx project then and play with those drivers only

Rogacz

And did You set "s_eax 1" and "s_doppler 1" under config.cfg file?

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MechanimaL

you mean with the audigy ?

not sure about s_doppler, 1 is standard isnt it ?

s_eax 1 sure



greetz

mech


ps: kx drivers rox! i really hate my terratec card ,which i bought for recording, but now i rather gonna record with less khz but therefore have a good workin card on my system without a bugged driver

/edit: s_doppler what exactly is it for ?


my problem with eax and k-x is not only that it s not that good as it was in the old days (like mentioned above) - but there s no difference between original and kx - driver.

another point beside this is, that im not hearing what comes direct from my back, i mean from the center of my back.

i dont use a 5.1 system or sth. else, just a good headphone (like most gamers )

and the newest kx driver and win xp.

--

now i got it nearly to work nearly means, i now have the sounds from my back, but they are very very harsh in the game and thin.

i changed some things in the kx options and turned on the surrounder plugin and put 3dSE on normal.


what do these things have to do with eax in games (especally under my settings, described above) ??

how do i set it perfect for the eax possibilities of kx-drivers ? please tell me. (and maybe we can make it a point in the faq = how to set up eax (for hl&mods) using headphone or surround sound system)

thanks !

greetz.
mechanimal

MechanimaL

i m really nearly satisfied with the eax in my game. but one thing, perhaps some1 can help me with it.

if someone is EXACTLY behind me in the game (i see this on the radar) i dont hear anything. nothing!

if he s a bit more left, or a bit more right and behind me its ok, but exactly behind me i cant hear him

as i said, i use headphones. so i need the sound from behind a bit more on the front speakers to perhaps ? i dont know :|