The
Digifire Drivers support DirectSound, DirectSound3D,
DirectMusic, A3D 1.0/2.0, EAX 1.0/2.0, I3DL2, Sensaura
Macro FX, Zoom FX, MultiDrive, Sensaura 3D & Sensaura
Environment FX. For more in-depth information on the
supported Sensaura extensions & their features check
out the
Sensaura's White
Papers page. For what it’s worth, if the
following paragraphs seem familiar then it’s because
my experiences with any Soundcards that use Sensaura
for gaming generally don’t differ all that much and
usually raise the same issues.
As you
might be expecting, as with every other
non-SoundBlaster Audigy/Audigy 2 Soundcard, EAX
Advanced HD is not supported. That said new Sensaura
versions do claim EAX Advanced HD
compatibility, something over which there appears to
be some wrangling currently – whether this will mean
you’ll see the Digifire (or any other such Sensaura
Soundcards for that matter) supporting EAX Advanced HD
in the future is as such debatable, not to mention
that Hercules haven’t changed their Sensaura version
in a long time. No OpenAL Driver is included either,
though the only non-Creative Soundcard I am aware of
which does include one would be in the NVIDIA nForce
Drivers. According to Creative Labs featuring an
OpenAL Driver can provide improved CPU utilization in
supporting titles, e.g. Unreal Tournament 2003 &
Soldier Of Fortune 2. Of less relevance, A3D (Via
conversion to DirectSound 3D) & I3DL2 are
supported, which may be of some use to those of you
who like playing legacy titles, e.g. Jedi Knight.
Of most
importance is that MultiDrive 5.1 is still not
supported, which means that “true” 3D hardware
positioning can only be done for Headphones, 2 or 4
channel outputs. Other Sensaura soundcards that lack
MultiDrive 5.1 generally provide a virtual output mode
for 5.1 – 7.1 speakers, whereby the additional
channels are generated as a mix of others, e.g. the
front centre will be a mix of the front right/left
channels. Such virtual output modes aren’t
particularly recommendable for gaming given this
mixing of channels adversely affects 3D audio
positioning and thankfully the Digifire doesn’t appear
to support this either.
The
Sensaura Information utility reveals the following on
the Digifire Drivers (Note the standards supported):
The
Sensaura version used in the Drivers is an old build
(As hinted earlier), though for sake of comparison
other manufacturers aren’t necessarily using much
newer Builds either, e.g. the SonicXplosion uses
Version 2201, whereas the Revolution 7.1 uses Version
3506 & the latest nForce Drivers use Version 2311.
To test
out the Digifire 7.1 in games I used Operation
Flashpoint, Unreal Tournament 2003, America’s Army,
Enter the Matrix and a few others. Three-dimension
positioning is for the most part excellent with
Sensaura’s strength lying in front/rear transitions
and side positioning.
Two-channel 3D audio output is also good, much better
than what the Audigy 2 is capable of. Four-channel
output is another great area, though whether you
prefer it over Creative’s will be somewhat dependent
on your positioning preferences, e.g. Creative
Soundcards provide more obvious rear speaker placement
than Sensaura does, though Sensaura features better
side placement. Overall though 3D positioning with the
Digifire is highly favourable albeit it with the
limitation of true 4 channel output at most, which
does put it at a disadvantage to those capable of true
5.1 or greater output in DirectSound 3D, e.g.
Audigy/Audigy 2, Revolution 7.1 & nForce.
With
regard to EAX, the Digifire like all Sensaura
soundcards (bar the nForce) compare less favourably
against the quality and support offered by Creative’s
soundcards. Performance wise the Digifire performed
well, not particularly better or worse than the Audigy
2, though it did perform noticeably better than the
Revolution 7.1 when it came to Battlefield 1942 (which
chugged along a lot more with the Revolution).
Audio quality
in games was good enough and wasn’t noticeably
different to other soundcards I’ve used recently, bar
the generally weaker application of EAX where used.
Overall gaming with the Digifire 7.1 was decent enough
though clearly the drivers could do with some updates
to add an OpenAL Driver & MultiDrive 5.1 support to
make it more competitive with other gaming Soundcards.
Improved EAX quality/compatibility would be nice too
of course.
