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EAX Advanced HD is
supported by the Audigy much as it was with the Audigy (and
half supported by the Extigy). Feature wise there is nothing
particularly new to what the Audigy offered, though it has
been refined and best of all is that DREAM is gone (This
allowed you to “swirl” music around yourself and was nothing
more than a novelty as far as I’m concerned). The more
music-oriented EAX Advanced HD features can be accessed
using the new EAX Console.
The Effects
tab is essentially a more user friendly alternative to the
EAX Control Panel, allowing you to apply EAX effects to
audio playback or set an Equalizer preference.
CMMS 3D
has been updated since the Audigy and now supports both CMSS
(as available in
Audigy/Extigy)
and CMSS 2. Placing this in the EAX Console was a smart idea
as before it was tied to PlayCenter and obviously without
PlayCenter installed, it wasn’t accessible. CMSS is
Creative’s audio up-mixing feature, allowing you to up-mix a
stereo source to 4/5.1 or 6.1 channels. Similarly new is the
ability to adjust the Stereo Focus when CMSS is enabled.
Personally I’m fairly loathe to use any sort of stereo/mono
up-mixing capabilities (even more so with the Audigy 2 as it
means 16/48 re-sampling) though if you’re interested in
playing a CD in 6.1 channels then this is for you.
The Clean-up
feature performs pretty much exactly the same as it did
with the
Audigy/Extigy,
i.e. it can remove artefacts during playback of media files.
Compared with the Extigy & Audigy the only noticeable change
is that it features a new option, Noise Band Adjust.
Clean-up is perhaps the most useful feature available and
the artefact reduction during playback is fairly noticeable,
albeit it somewhat dependent on the quality (or lack
thereof) of the source you are playing.
Time Scaling
allows you to adjust the playback speed (slower or faster)
of supported digital audio formats. Though this shouldn’t
prove particularly useful for most people, the main claim of
this feature is that it can do this without changing the
pitch.
EAX Advanced HD
gaming features remain
unchanged from the Audigy. To re-cap, I’ll note what I
stated during my initial Audigy review using the provided
Goldmine demo.
Multi-Environment -
Whereas the Live! & other EAX supporting Soundcards can only
apply/render 1 EAX preset at any time the Audigy & Audigy 2
support applying up to 4 simultaneously. This will, as you
might guess, only be of use where multiple audio
environments may exist, e.g. Near the entrance of a cave you
may have 1 preset for the interior of the cave & another for
outside the cave. Not only is this be more realistic but
should also make locating audio sources that bit easier
given the correct EAX preset being applied to a source,
based on the example above this would mean that should
someone be shooting at you from outside the cave then the
correct preset will be applied to that source rather than
using just the 1 for the cave interior as would happen on
other Soundcards.
Environment Panning -
This makes spatializing & localizing environments in a 3D
Audio space possible. This can be used for simulating an
approaching environment in a Game, such as a tunnel in a
driving game.
Environment Morphing
- This feature allows for a much more seamless transition
between audio environments than currently exists. As many of
you have probably experienced when playing an EAX Game you
can probably tell with ease as you move from one particular
audio environment to another, in some cases the Soundcard
may even crackle at this change. The Morphing effect blends
the different levels together offering a much nicer
experience.
Environment
reflections - Audio reflections aren’t something all that
new, at least for those who previously had an Aureal Vortex
2 you may have been treated to this in some A3D 2 or 3
Games. Reflections allow for audio sources to be affected by
the environment in which they emanate, e.g. in a cave style
environment you’ll hear echoes of sounds & so on
(Reflections are essentially a further enhancement/extension
to Reverb). In the Goldmine demo this is shown off by a bird
flying around your head in a small enclosed canyon, with
reflections enabled you can hear the “Caw” the bird makes as
it flies around echoing &/or being reflected off of the
canyon walls, which is pretty damn nice indeed & as it
happens my mother even came into the room as she thought a
bird had actually flown into the room through the window.
Environment Filtering
- This accurately simulates the propagation of sound in both
open & closed environments.
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