Creative Labs beta-testing ALchemy: legacy sound on Vista
We don’t know exactly how hard Windows Vista works to make legacy programs compatible – we do know it’s pretty darn hard – but that might not extend to hardware, and not because they don’t have the juice or the megahurtz to handle it. Creative Labs has commented that Vista might not work for legacy titles that use its Sound Blaster Xi-Fi cards because, well, techno-jumbo:
The result of MicrosoftÂ’s removal of the hardware audio abstraction layer for Vista will confuse many gamers. Many people who have experimented with popular legacy games on the Vista beta release have been unable to experience multi-channel audio, with Creative and other sound cards, and even with motherboard audio. This is not something that a driver update can fix.
Hence, Creative is testing ALchemy – a free app that will bridge legacy audio with Windows Vista. It will convert the EAX or DirectSound 3D calls of these games into the OpenAL calls used by Vista, promising the same sound you’ve come to expect from the game as though it still were on XP. Hey, Fel Reavers are meant to be heard and not seen, after all – how ‘ya supposed to run away from them if you can’t hear them, and if you see them, it’s too late?
The Via link below takes you to where you can download a beta version of ALchemy.
We don’t know exactly how hard Windows Vista works to make legacy programs compatible – we do know it’s pretty darn hard – but that might not extend to hardware, and not because they don’t have the juice or the megahurtz to handle it. Creative Labs has commented that Vista might not work for legacy titles that use its Sound Blaster Xi-Fi cards because, well, techno-jumbo:
The result of MicrosoftÂ’s removal of the hardware audio abstraction layer for Vista will confuse many gamers. Many people who have experimented with popular legacy games on the Vista beta release have been unable to experience multi-channel audio, with Creative and other sound cards, and even with motherboard audio. This is not something that a driver update can fix.
Hence, Creative is testing ALchemy – a free app that will bridge legacy audio with Windows Vista. It will convert the EAX or DirectSound 3D calls of these games into the OpenAL calls used by Vista, promising the same sound you’ve come to expect from the game as though it still were on XP. Hey, Fel Reavers are meant to be heard and not seen, after all – how ‘ya supposed to run away from them if you can’t hear them, and if you see them, it’s too late?
The Via link below takes you to where you can download a beta version of ALchemy.
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