What you hear is what you get

Being amused by new technological advances in text form is all very well but it does not go to prove how well things perform in practice. Ever since EAX was invented by Creative, its purpose has been to improve audio quality adding 3D special effects imitating environments, instrumental sounds and adding depth to audio. With the Sound Blaster Audigy these special effects have taken a leap ahead both in the number of effects possible as well as how realistic they sound. This is where EAX ADVANCED HD takes over. Being the third incarnation of standard EAX, it has been dramatically enriched with features previously unavailable at consumer levels. These would not be possible had it not been for the awesome power of the new Audigy chipset. It's even more capable than the audio processing implementations found in the Sony Playstation 2 or Microsoft's X-Box. Below, we compare how EAX has matured over the years permitting new levels in fidelity of monstrous proportion.

EAX ADVANCED HD Vs Older EAX technologies.

From the above table we notice the progression between cumulative versions of EAX over the years. One main advantage the Sound Blaster Audigy has is its ability to use EAX ADVANCED HD to process up to four complex simultaneous environment effects (EAX Multi-Environment Networks) with no degradation in audio quality. EAX ADVANCED HD comprises of many new resources available to the developer in the aim to create ultra rich acoustic effects. EAX Environment Filters are added to allow precision control of high and low frequencies. EAX Environment Morphing offers an the entire spectrum of 76 parameters to be fully controlled by the developer allowing them to implement seaming less environment transitions from one environment to the next. On the other hand EAX Environment Panning establishes a way to localize environments in 3D and early reflection content can be created by use of the new  EAX 3D Reflections feature.

Embrace yourself in an environment of EAX ADVANCED HD 3D effects. (Click image to view larger version).

In addition to the wealth EAX ADVANCED HD features offer, Creative have now extended its API (Application Programmable Interface) not only to serve as an addition to Microsoft's DirectSound but to also include features such as true Dolby Digital Decoding, cross-platform 3D mixing, and rendering based on the OpenAL specification. Developers have never been given such a vast diversity of features to use within future software releases, but the question remains, when, how much and will they at all make use of these powers locked inside the Sound Blaster Audigy sound cards. As with MMX, SSE, and 3DNow extensions, it all took time for the software to catch up, and here it seems to be very much the same story albeit in an acoustic form. Of course we can praise Creative for its achievements in EAX ADVANCED HD, and of course they deserve a pat on the back since it's a job well done. At the end of the day, it comes down to how it sounds in practice and that's what we plan to take a look at next.

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