Creative Labs 3D Sound and reverb engine for the Live

We refer to Creative Labs 3D sound and reverb engine for the Live as the Live 3D sound and reverb engine in lack of a better name. The early versions of the Live 3D sound engine only offered fairly limited 3D sound when using headphones and 2-speakers while the 4-speaker solution was simple volume panning. With the LW 2.0 upgrade Creative Labs added HRTF support for headphones, 2-speakers and 4-speakers. Unlike Aureal, the 4-speaker solution uses HRTFs for both the front and rear speakers. With the introduction of the Live 5.1 cards Creative also introduced a 5.1 speaker version that?s very similar to the 4-speaker version except it adds a center channel and an optional full frequency subwoofer output that?s a mix of all the other channels.

The Live 3D sound engine supports DS3D and can also support most A3D 1.0 games by translating the calls to the very similar DS3D. I have not been able to get it working in Windows XP/2000 though. The Live, just like all other non Sensaura cards, lacks support for ZoomFX (for details see our API article).

The Live reverb engine is definitely the most famous reverb engine on the market and was also the first to support EAX 1.0 and later EAX 2.0. That’s not surprising considering both of these APIs were created by Creative Labs. It currently lacks support for I3DL2 and EAX Advanced HD. As described in our API article the support for I3DL2 is currently not an issue and may never become one. It would also be easy for Creative to add support for it since it’s almost identical to EAX 2.0 in functionality. In the case of EAX Advanced HD, it appears at this time that only the Audigy will support it and with no games yet released it’s impossible to tell if lack of EAX Advanced HD support on other products will become a major issue or not. More details on I3DL2 and EAX Advanced HD can be found in our API article

The 3D positioning when using the 4-speakers and 5.1 speakers is excellent, overall better than Aureal’s A3D engine to our ears. The only weak point is the elevation cues where it’s noticeable behind Sensaura and Aureal’s 4-speaker algorithms. The 2-speaker and especially headphone algorithms are also good but it’s not on par with Aureal’s A3D engine or Sensaura’s S-3DPA. Compared to QSound the headphone algorithms are better, while we prefer QSound’s 2-speaker solution.

One until very recently exclusive feature of the Live engine is the Live!Surround. It?s basically converting the 4-speaker mode to a Dolby Pro Logic encoded stereo stream. This is for those that have a Dolby Prologic or Dolby Digital decoder and will allow you to take advantage of your rear speakers and also center if you have one. The rear speakers will have the same limitations as Dolby Surround with only frequency limited mono in the rear and while this is a big step down from 4-speakers I think it's still much better than 2-speaker 3D sound. While some may argue that the mono rear will not give as good circle as 2-speaker 3D sound can give in games where you have multiple sound sources, localizing rear sound is much easier with a mono rear than 2-speaker 3D sound. Once you turned in the virtual world you will again have the usual 3D sound cues and of course your eyes. In addition to that I found Live!Surround to offer a more immersive sound experience than 2-speaker 3D sound. Note I'm not just comparing with the Live's still relatively weak 2-speaker 3D sound but also with Aureal's and Sensaura's 2-speaker 3D sound technology. 

None of the other soundcards, not even the Audigy, offer a similar feature but both MS Xbox and nVidia’s nForce offer this feature but then of course based on Sensaura. As  you may know the nForce and Xbox unlike the Live also offer the much better option of encoding it to Dolby Digital 5.1.

The Live 3D sound engine is not the best one on the market but the reverb engine definitely is second only to the Audigy. The major advantage is its consistency, offering a good EAX experience in almost every game that uses it well. With that I mean is that, with one or two exceptions, the only games where I find the Live and Audigy reverb engine don’t offer a good EAX experience don’t work well with any other card. In addition to this consistency you also get great quality and the option to tweak the strength of the reverb levels.

Creative Labs 3D Sound and reverb engine for the Audigy

We refer to Creative Labs’ 3D sound and reverb engine for the Audigy as the Audigy 3D sound and reverb engine for lack of a better name. It’s an improved version of the Live engine. Just like the Live engine it use HRTFs for headphones, 2-speakers and 4-speakers. Unlike Aureal, but just like the Live and Sensaura, the 4-speaker solution uses HRTF for both the front and rear speakers. With the introduction of the Live 5.1 cards Creative also introduced a 5.1 speaker version that’s very similar to the 4-speaker version except it adds a center channel and an optional full frequency subwoofer output that’s a mix of all the other channels. The Audigy carries this forward with the additional feature of allowing you to select the cross over frequency to actually filter bass away from the main outputs and send only that filtered bass to the subwoofer output.

The Audigy sound engine supports DS3D and can also support most A3D 1.0 games by translating the calls to the very similar DS3D. I have not been able to get it working in Windows XP/2000 though. The Audigy, just like all other non Sensaura cards, lacks support for ZoomFX (for details see our API article).

The Audigy, just like the Live, features support for EAX 1.0 and 2.0. In addition it also feature support for the new EAX Advanced HD. It currently lacks support for I3DL2. As described in our API article the support for I3DL2 is currently not an issue and may never become one. It would also be easy for Creative to add support for it since it’s almost identical to EAX 2.0 in functionality.  With no games yet released using EAX Advanced HD it’s impossible to tell if the support for this will become a major advantage.

The 3D positioning when using the 4-speakers and 5.1 speakers is excellent, overall better than Aureal’s A3D engine to our ears. I also put it slightly ahead of the Live engine. The only weak point is the elevation cues where it’s noticeably behind Sensaura’s and Aureal’s 4-speaker algorithms (just front cues in the case of Aureal’s engine) but still better than the Live. The 2-speaker and especially headphone algorithms are also good, clearly improved over the Live, but not on par with Aureal’s A3D engine or Sensaura’s S-3DPA. Compared to QSound the headphone algorithms are better while we prefer QSound’s 2-speaker solution.

The Audigy 3D sound engine is not the best one on the market but the reverb engine definitely is, only the Live can really compete. The major advantage over every competitor other than the Live engine is its consistency, thereby offering a good EAX experience in almost every game that uses the API well. With that I mean that with one or two exceptions the only games where I find the Live and Audigy reverb engine don’t offer a good EAX experience don’t work well with any other card. In addition, you also get great quality and the option to tweak the strength of the reverb levels.

Creative Labs PCI 3D sound and reverb engine

It was quite sometime since we tried it and later drivers may have improved it but from what we remember both the 3D positioning and reverb quality was clearly behind the other engines. There also is really no 3D sound other than in 4-speaker mode. Once we test the later drivers we will update this section.

 The engines only support DS3D, A3D 1.0 and EAX 1.0. This is unlikely to ever change (Editor's note: This was in the context of not supporting A3D 2 and 3).

On to QSound's Q3D Engine