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HEXUS.beans - No DirectSound 3D surround output in Vista?

by Matt Davey on 22 January 2007, 13:34

Tags: Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)

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If you are planning to upgrade to Vista as soon as it's out you should be aware that the hardware abstraction layer is not supported any more, not only that, but Microsoft has no idea when, or if at all, it will be fixed.

Therefore all those games you bought in the past which use DirectSound 3D won't be able to run with the surround sound you're used to.

Of course, if you are a stereo-in-two-channels kind of gamer then this won't really affect you, but those of us with surround sound who like to immerse ourselves in a bit of dog fighting or screaming crowds will be out of luck.

Rumour has it though that today will see the introduction of something that Microsoft failed to do. More news as and when we get it, but all we can tell you is it works, it's free and it's out very, very soon.

Comment in the HEXUS community here.


HEXUS Forums :: 14 Comments

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Posted by deleted - Mon 22 Jan 2007 14:48
As users of Vista and Creative sound cards will know, this has been quite a troublesome thing for hardware makers to deal with.

Creative have come up with a way of intercepting DirectSound and sending it to the sound card via OpenAL (which is still supported by Vista). This isn't perfect but it has allowed us to get our surround sound in games.

Any change from Microsoft, while welcome, is bound to disrupt CL drivers and cause even more frustration to current users.

EDIT: Seems that they may be referring to what Creative have actually done :S . I thought Microsoft were going to come in and fix it. Wishful thinking I suppose.
Posted by deleted - Mon 22 Jan 2007 16:29
I think its only the X-Fi cards that will be supported.
Lucky for me Auzentech are going to do the same for the X-Mystique,X-Plosion and X-Meridian cards. Two of my rigs have X-Mystique cards in them and I was getting a little worried. The drivers should be ready first week in February.
Posted by deleted - Mon 22 Jan 2007 17:15
reason number 7 why i won't be upgrading to vista soon. if ever
Posted by deleted - Mon 22 Jan 2007 17:19
^ what? Microsoft is simply clearing out a function which in the past the sound card should have been doing (hence the naem sound card). If anything this is the sound cards maker fault since they have been relying for a while now that most of the work be done by the OS. It's about time they took that away and let the audio card makers do it properly. It's almost like the graphics card makers assuming that Microsoft will code their drivers for them…
Posted by deleted - Mon 22 Jan 2007 18:12
Deleted
I think its only the X-Fi cards that will be supported.
Lucky for me Auzentech are going to do the same for the X-Mystique,X-Plosion and X-Meridian cards. Two of my rigs have X-Mystique cards in them and I was getting a little worried. The drivers should be ready first week in February.

No Auzentech is not doing the same work around like Creative has done with Alchemy. They are just introducing drivers for Vista in February. DirectSound3D has never been hardware accelerated on C-Media based cards, so there is no visable difference between XP and Vista for Auzentech users (aside from the lack of Vista drivers currently).

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