
	Mikael Hagén and Mark Muschett take a look at 3D sound and Reverb Engines

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Gamer's Guide to 3D sound and reverb engines

Mikael Hagén and Mark Muschett - Last updated January 8, 2002

Introduction

This article offers a brief explanation of the effectiveness of 3D sound and an overview of 3D sound and reverb.

The 3D sound and reverb engine your soundcard use determines what APIs (e.g. DS3D, A3D 1.0, EAX 1.0) are supported and more importantly the accuracy of the positioning of the sound sources and the quality of the reverb. CPU usage, number of 3D sound streams and the basic sound quality can differ quite significantly between soundcards/chips using the same 3D sound and reverb engine, but the positioning and reverb quality remains the same as long as they use the same version of the engine. The most common improvement in the later versions of the sound engines the last couple years have been improved reverb quality and support for EAX 1.0 and 2.0, while the improvements in the 3D sound engines have been more subtle.

In the PC market only 4 companies’ 3D sound and reverb engines have seen widespread use. The companies are QSound, Sensaura, Aureal and Creative Labs. Of those, QSound’s Q3D and Sensaura’s S-3DPA 3D sound/reverb engines are the only two that are available for any chip company to license while Creative Labs 3 3D sound/reverb engines are only available as part of the drivers for their cards. The 3D sound and reverb engine that Creative Labs uses for the Live cards, what we will refer to as the Live 3D sound/reverb engine, is vastly different from the more basic 3D sound and reverb engine they offer for the ES137x based cards (e.g. SoundBlaster 16PCI, SoundBlaster PCI64, SoundBlaster PCI128). The Audigy engine is an enhancement of the Live engine but is not as radical an improvement as the step from a PCI64/128 to a Live. Aureal’s A3D engine is now the property of Creative Labs.

So on to the 3D Sound and Reverb Overview

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A Gamer's Guide to Sensaura 3D Audio

A Gamer's Guide to 3D Sound and Reverb APIs

A Gamer's Guide to 3D Sound and Reverb Engines

A Gamer's Guide to DS3D and A3D 1.x

A Gamer's Guide to EAX

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Visit to the Creative EMU Technology Center

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