sNeaksieGarrett on 2/9/2009 at 15:39
cyclops, where did you get this toshiba device from? do you have a weblink?
sNeaksieGarrett on 2/9/2009 at 18:28
Hah, funny, I did a quick search and found that exact same item on amazon.com
Strange, I don't understand how it could possibly work. The description says it's got EAX Advanced HD, and that almost like having a (modern) creative card. (Which is what I already have in this desktop - a Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit.)
Are you sure it "works perfectly" with acceleration on?:confused: If I run thief gold with EAX on it sounds really echoey (best way I can think of describing it) and quiet. I much prefer acceleration off. I think the only way to truly make thief sound the way it was meant to is to have a really old sound card. (Or so I thought...)
mudi on 2/9/2009 at 21:29
^^ A SB Live 24-bit was the only way I could get acceleration to work right in Thief 1... ever. All the other cards I've had have had the muffled echoey stupidness. I was thinking of buying a new SB card just to get that, but they don't make Live drivers for Vista/7 (ANNOYING :mad:) and I don't know what cards people have had luck with...
sNeaksieGarrett on 3/9/2009 at 03:29
What? How is this possible?:erm: You must have a special SB Live 24-bit, cause mine sounds like shit with thief.:o:confused: I wonder if it's the drivers being used, and the settings in the sound blaster control panel thing that are making it work right (or not work right.)
(Note: I'm not saying that I can't turn acceleration on, just saying that there's just something about the way it sounds that doesn't seem right to me. Unless, EAX is supposed to sound that way. ?)
cyclops1101 on 4/9/2009 at 16:25
Quote:
Are you sure it "works perfectly" with acceleration on? If I run thief gold with EAX on it sounds really echoey (best way I can think of describing it) and quiet. I much prefer acceleration off. I think the only way to truly make thief sound the way it was meant to is to have a really old sound card. (Or so I thought...)
Yeah it appears to be working perfectly, infact the sounds are louder using the Hardware Acceleration and EAX 'ON' - There is a bit of an echo but isnt that what EAX is supposed to do? I.e the sounds of footsteps creating an echo or the echo of a door closing etc It is these sounds that make thief more enviromental to me. Its supposed to add an echo isnt it?
My sound card came with the drivers that are mentioned at the start of this thread - the ones that my C-media didnt like. So im inclined to believe that the sounds are as they are supposed to be, are they not??
sNeaksieGarrett on 4/9/2009 at 16:42
Quote Posted by cyclops1101
Yeah it appears to be working perfectly, infact the sounds are louder using the Hardware Acceleration and EAX 'ON' - There is a bit of an echo but isnt that what EAX is supposed to do?
Hmm, interesting. Yeah, it should be loud, not quiet. With mine it's the opposite.
Maybe I should post a video, it's too hard to explain..... All I know is, I CAN set it to on, but it sounds wrong on my computer.:erg: If yours isn't extremely echoey, I'm baffled as to why. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it's a USB toshiba device and not an actual creative card.
As to your question about echo: Environmental sounds are vast. There's not just one setting of 'echo.' If you have a creative card and look in your EAX settings, you can change the environmental effects: Such as, emulating how it would sound in a bathroom, or a theater... (I could be wrong in my understanding though, someone correct me if I'm wrong here.)
EDIT: I did some searching for a3d drivers and found this: (
http://thief.wikia.com/wiki/Sound)
This page shows you the rundown of how each room should sound with EAX enabled based on the room type. :) The room I've been comparing a3d dll versions with is bafford's basement - the room right before the two guards, and after going through the room where garrett says "inside at last." This room sounds incredibly echoey (guards are loud and sound like they are in a large echoey cave or something) with
a3d.dll 80.0.0.3, a3dx5, hardware acceleration On, EAX On. (This is with my SoundBlaster Live! 24-bit.) Today I bought a USB sound device for experimentation to see if it would sound better, and it halfway does sound better. The device, using the same a3d drivers and settings in Thief Gold, has less echo. The room in question has almost no echo, but it's still present unfortunately. Other rooms appear to sound alright. I also found (
http://www.pro-hl.com/a3d.shtml) this link, but the file didn't work for me personally (EAX forced off, thief would crash, etc.), but maybe it would for someone else. It's intended for half-life, but I don't see why it couldn't work for thief as well.
What I would love is to be able to find or emulate EAX 2.0 for thief gold/2.
PsymH on 7/9/2009 at 08:28
Not sure if this will be helpful, but with a X-Fi soundcard (in my case the SB X-Fi Xtreme Gamer) you can change the intensity of EAX effects in the mixer.
cyclops1101 on 8/9/2009 at 14:36
Well looks like this Toshiba audio/usb hub isnt brilliant afterall. Thief Gold and System shock 2 run perfectly with it but Thief 2 it does not like :sweat:
Quote:
Hmm, interesting. Yeah, it should be loud, not quiet. With mine it's the opposite.
This is whats happening with Thief 2. The sound is quieter with Hardware acceleration on but with it off its louder and a think better. Guess I wont be having enviromental effects with Thief 2, Dang it :tsktsk:
baeuchlein on 8/9/2009 at 19:56
Quote Posted by cyclops1101
There is a bit of an echo but isnt that what EAX is supposed to do? I.e the sounds of footsteps creating an echo or the echo of a door closing etc It is these sounds that make thief more enviromental to me. Its supposed to add an echo isnt it?
Depends on the room you're in.
I have not experimented much with Thief 1, but with Thief 2, and my favourite test ground is the cellar in the Rumford mansion of the first mission. Sounds in the cellar room outside the kitchen, where a lot of crates and some guards are located, should have an echo with EAX, even if you're using only two speakers. Outside the mansion, there should be no echo.
With four speakers or more, you should even get positional audio (AKA "3D sound")
everywhere. Sounds emanating from behind should be heard in the rear speakers only, and so on.
Unfortunately, there are many cases where you get a variety of distortions when turning on hardware accelerated sound, sometimes even if you leave it at that and do
not enable EAX.
I mainly found three kinds of errors:
1. Muffled sounds.
2. Sounds which are too faint, while other sounds are playing at full volume.
3. Sounds coming out of speakers where they're not supposed to emanate from.
(You may notice as well that
overall sound volume is lower with more than two speakers configured, but since you can just raise sound volume in Control panel or by turning the knob on your hifi amplifier, I do not consider it a serious bug.)
Sometimes, these problems occur every time you play Thief. In other cases, a setup works at times, while it fails at other times, without any kind of pattern.
I have found one case where I could get sound right with the latest drivers for a sound card (Sound Blaster 4.1 Digital with Windows XP), while in another case (same card and latest driver, but for Win98SE) it never went right. Two other sound cards (Realtek ALC650, VIA3059/CMI9761) work correctly sometimes, but may produce wrong sounds right after the next reboot.
In these cases, the sound fix mentioned here did
not work, while other people reported some successes and some failures.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. Don't spend
too much time trying to get it right!
