You complain about vulnerabilities in Windows and then turn off the one feature that neuters 90% of all vulnerabilities because it's "annoying"?

Again, Windows 7 is essentially Vista, so if you think Windows 7 is a "good OS," then you think that Vista was a "good OS." The changes to Windows just weren't well-supported by 3rd-parties when Vista was released, leaving the impression that the OS itself was bad.

Well, then you're turning off one of the best things that Microsoft did to Windows since Windows 2000. Whether you like it or not, it fixed the single biggest security vulnerability that Windows had (by far). Most other OS's added elevated security prompts a looooooooooooooong time ago. It's a basic security feature that Windows was lacking for a very long time.

When was the last time you turned it on? UAC was annoying at first because most software didn't follow Windows guidelines for file system security (causing said software to trigger a LOT of UAC prompts). These days UAC prompts are much, MUCH less frequent due to the majority of software complying with security standards.

I didn't say that breaking EAX was good. I said the changes made that indirectly resulted in EAX being deprecated were good. EAX was just a sad casualty of that much-needed improvement. That's not my opinion...it's pretty much an objective fact. The changes to UAC and the driver model plugged most of Windows's glaring security holes, and believe me, they were huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge ones.

I didn't particularly like Vista when it was released. As I mentioned, 3rd-party hardware manufacturers and software developers just weren't ready for it yet at the time it was released, which is why it had so many problems. My parents have a PC that I built for them that is running Vista with SP2, and it runs well on older hardware and has no problems whatsoever now that the rest of the Windows world is up-to-speed with UAC and the new driver model. Like I said, it's pretty much Windows 7 at this point. You can say it's bad all you want, but in doing so you're essentially saying that Windows 7 is also bad.

No i didn't. i said it makes no difference what windows your using, your not reading my post's properly, i'm talking about EAX and games

i never use UAC, and i've never had a problem not using it, i don't like it, i've used Windows since 3.1 and Dos 6.22 and it gets in the way for me. and again Vista and 7 don't perform the same do they, so being essentially the same doesn't make much difference in the real world,

And EAX was still better in games for me, which is what this topic is about, i know Creative had problems with the new driver system and i am saying that even Win 7 wasn't as good with EAX as before Vista, i stated above Alchemy didn't really make up for it.

The only time I get UAC prompts is when I'm installing software, installing drivers, changing system settings, or editing files in secure parts of the file system. So...very rarely. If it's getting in your way to the point that it really bothers you, you must be doing the above things quite a lot.

Incidentally, my first version of DOS was 3, and Windows 3.1 didn't exist until I was in my second year of high school. Not sure what that has to do with anything, though.

Actually, they pretty much do perform the same. The only significant differences as of Vista SP2 are boot and hibernation times, on which Vista is a bit slower.

I really liked EAX too. I wouldn't trade the improved security for it, though. Even though I use good security practices and expose myself to risk very little, there's the concept of "herd immunity." When others are protected from infection, it reduces the spread and in turn reduces everyone else's exposure to infection. When people are protected it's better for everyone. Not to mention all of the sensitive information that's pretty much everywhere these days. More than a few really damaging information compromise events that have been in the news over the past 5 years or so have been traced back to machines running Windows XP.

Maybe they did perform similar eventually but it was too late for Vista then, i used it earlier than that and it wasn't good at the time gaming or otherwise, and i would trade EAX for the added security as you make it sound like UAC has cured all problems , and i've never noticed much difference personally apart from, i don't want that " do you want allow this program etc etc" popping up all the time,

i use a firewall and an antivirus, that will do for me, any infection's i've encountered were my own fault mostly other than when the worms were flying in off the internet in the XP days.

I was getting them all the time with games - because, between modding & altering ini's & similar stuff, the stupid thing was constantly going off. Pain in the neck.

(And now Apple's jumped on the bandwagon. They've got some annoying new "security" crap that's constantly demanding admin passwords whenever you try to do anything in the Application/System/Library folders. Even if it's just moving files around..... sure, if you're a simple user who just uses Apps off the App Store, that might be fine. But I've had stuff going on in those folders for decades. Having it suddenly treat me like an idiot/criminal/child when I try to manage my files is obnoxious. At least UAC, you can turn off.)

Creative could of continued EAX with developing it on top of OpenAL. Games liek Quake 4 used EAX on OpenAL. Translating EAX on DirectSound3D to EAX on OpenAL didn't work well as some effects were missing or interpreted incorrectly. Why they chose to ditch OpenAL is baffling. As for the Aureal 3D API, one day it will emerge like Nelson Mandela and get the standing ovation it deserves.

Fair enough, I guess. No, UAC didn't cure all security problems, but it does prevent the biggest ones from being exploited without giving the user an opportunity to block them. The real EAX killer was the new driver model, which really did need to be updated to prevent malicious software from installing drivers that could directly access system memory and completely circumventing any of the OS's security features.

The security features are very important for information security in general. You have to keep in mind that these OS's are used by companies that work with sensitive data.

Well, I hope your luck continues. Cheers.

Thank's much appreciated lol, you seem a little paranoid to me, it's not as if i don't use any protection at all,

you keep saying that but i could find no mention of the dangers you say, just Microsoft being Microsoft, but looking forward to finally getting flac support with Win 10 only 10 years after Winamp!

http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/21649/what-has-happened-to-eax-and-other-hardware-sound-enhancements

http://cboard.cprogramming.com/brief-history-cprogramming-com/97585-no-eax-directsound-directsound-3d-support-vista.html

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-277657.html

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3082184

http://community.futuremark.com/forum/showthread.php?47288-Why-did-MS-remove-EAX-from-Vista/page2

i'm going to stick with my opinion of Vista and EAX thanks, and i'm only concerned with my PC's, companies can set theirs up how they like.

Nah, I'm not paranoid. In fact, I could probably even be a little better than I am about security in my day-to-day computing. I've just been intimately involved with the IT industry for a long time (and a PC geek for a lot longer), so I see what can happen in the world of PC security and have a sense for how often it happens. I can tell you for sure that a firewall and an anti-virus don't protect you from a lot of things, and that when people don't follow good security practices it puts everybody else at higher risk as well (again, "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity").

EAX in unto itself doesn't cause any danger, but Microsoft changed the way Windows handles drivers. With the exception of video drivers, they've made the drivers a bit more "sandboxed" to help mitigate some stability and security issues. Along with that they removed the audio hardware acceleration layer that allowed audio drivers to have a lot of direct access to system resources...similar to the access that video drivers are still allowed to have. The reason doesn't really matter anyway. The fact is that the layer was removed from the Windows HAL (hardware abstraction layer), and that's that.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were at least some non-technical reasons for this. Creative had a stranglehold on the hardware acceleration API standards for a long time, and it's possible that part of the decision involved a desire to put an end to that.

Even Microsoft doesn't make decisions to change things like that just for giggles. There's always a reason, technical or otherwise. In the software world, sometimes you need to make a change that breaks compatibility with some things in order to move a codebase forward. It's unfortunate, but it's a reality of software development sometimes.

Me too. I primarily play FLAC files when I play music, and I have gotten tired of using unreliable plug-ins to play my FLACs in Windows Media Center.

Sure, you're entitled to your opinion, of course. In the case of Vista, they just had to break some eggs to make a better omelet. It's unfortunate that people experienced a lot of aggravation as a result, but sometimes things have to be broken to move things forward (the success of Windows 7 is evidence that this was a good move on their part, IMO). On security in general...I am of the opinion that we all have a responsibility to keep our computers secure, because infected computers spread infections.

For the record, I did say that I liked EAX.

The new audio stack in Windows is also for DRM purposes. (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd756608(v=vs.85).aspx)

We will just have to agree to disagree about a firewall and antivirus being good enough as protection, as a gamer too much security affects gameplay and the reason i miss EAX is i played a lot of games with it on,

As for the reason why Microsoft stopped supporting hardware acceleration, it's more likely they just didn't want to support PC gaming tech at that time in 2007, due to their Xbox 360 as they started to see PC gaming as competition rarther than for any secutiry reason, or a money reason anyway knowing them,

Glad you miss EAX, i was starting to doubt you

Yeah, agree to disagree on the first two paragraphs there.

"Good enough" is pretty subjective. The fact that anti-virus software doesn't protect you from a lot of malware isn't...that's a fact.

Yeah, the results of EAX were really cool, and I wish something like it still existed. The fact that I liked it doesn't mean I don't understand why it had to go away, though.

Good point. Allowing audio drivers to be a free-for-all the way they used to be would easily allow a driver to bypass DRM.

devs seem to put more priority to Visuals rather than a games Audio these days..

and not just sound quality wise, but the Background Music itself is not composed nearly as well as some older games

examples of some games that had OSTs that just sounded beautiful:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leX9GLacmUU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGGp3mvffyg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z_avCG9tPs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10pfxaWQsHA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLh2TrxBJr0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnMR6SOBa9k


Sure, some games these days still have great OST's, but it seems to me that back when Graphics weren't as advanced as they are now, they put far more effort into a Games OST to help immerse the players

noticed your unnecessary edit,

In your opinion! you mean, i couldn't find any proof of your facts about EAX, and that's why i said good enough for gaming, i didn't say antivirus protect's from every or nearly all threats, Your claiming i have, and putting words into my mouth, maybe you should stay on topic, you mostly haven't.

All I know is on XP I had music flowing through all my 5 speakers when playing Oblivion. With Win 7 only front right/left speakers have music and I haven′t found a solution in which I get music through all speakers while still keeping the surround effects.

Flufferhokerr...

Maybe for you.

I, sadly, have a different experience. I only upgraded to better speakers few years back, and played games either on PC with those speakers you get with the rig for free, or on a small TV and it's tiny speakers that svcked balls. I do find some melodies to have more "spirit" than today though, as everything is composed to sound "epic", and it essentially all started to sound exactly the same.

With old games being limited to MIDI or very limited orchestras composers were forced to focus on catchy melodies to make their music as memorable as possible.

With new hardware and growing budgets composers were able to focus more on sweeping movements through several sets of instruments with a full symphonic orchestra.

I rather liked the fact that the Vista new driver model killed EAX. I was never a fan of EAX but felt it was rather overrated, and Creative had lost my support years before that. Also, by the time Vista was released, Creative had had lowered their own sound R&D quite a bit, so it was just a matter of time really, they can't rehash the same thing forever.

When the Sound Blaster Live! Series was released there were some horrible drivers for it for quite some time. Not to mention that that Live! and Audigy were essentially the same, the difference was pretty much just in the drivers. They could have given Live! the same functionality as Audigy, but they didn't. Instead it was up to the kX Project to do that with some excellent fan drivers. And when fan drivers appeared for Vista that improved things, http://www.dailytech.com/Creative+Says+Custom+Drivers+Are+Stealing+Gets+Rocked+by+Protests/article11297.htm.

Creative did little good for the PC audio after the DOS days. Instead they proceeded to buy and kill their competitors. For example, Aureal went out of business because of the legal costs were too high after being sued by Creative despite they won and then Creative bought their assets cheap. We could have cheap, high quality MIDI (E-MU), compatibility with ISA cards (Ensoniq), superior 3D sound (Aureal), and Dolby Digital encoding in hardware (Sensaura), but no, that didn't happen. They also pushed developers into implenting EAX, http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2004/07/4048-2/.

So I welcomed XAudio2 with opened arms, and really like the fact it worked on any sound hardware because it was done in software. And audio processing in software is cheap, I remember playing 128 channels in software in real-time just fine back in the late 90s, I can only imagine how little percentage of the CPU sound processing now use in this age of much faster multi-core CPUs.

Now I just hope something similiar happens to Nvidia and their PhysX, as http://www.realworldtech.com/physx87/ (it's does not take advantage of multiple cores or of SSE2 which would improve the performance greatly) to make their hardware version more appealing.

hmm...what sound setup do you use? I get very decent four channel surround in Oblivion from my Windows 7/ Soundblaster X-fi / Alchemy combo. That said, it seems to me that the adjustment module for my old Soundblaster Audigy / Windows XP combo had much more sophisticated surround positioning controls than what my X-fi offers.

Seems like I have pretty much the same; Win 7/Soundblaster X-fi (external device though). I can set it up to have music on all speakers in Oblivion but then I lose the surround effects (fire burning behind you or to the left etc), or I can have it like I said; music in the two front speakers plus surround effects.

I have tried and tried but there is no way for me to have it like on my old computer; music in all speakers plus surround effects

You likely know about and have tried this, but just in case....

With Windows Vista/7 (don't recall about earlier versions) configuring the X-fi control panel alone is not normally enough to guaranty multi-channel sound. What you need to do is right-click the speaker icon on your task-bar and select playback devices. From that menu choose the appropriate playback device...for me it's Speakers: Creative SB X-fi (default device). Right click that and choose configure speakers. You'll then, in theory, get all the various channel options your computer or sound card has to offer. Configure that for what you want, do the same with the following "full range" selector, and finalize. You should then be able to properly utilize the X-fi control panel speaker settings. Leastwise that's how it works for me.

Been there, done that, failed that

Maybe I missed a tiny thing somewhere but I don′t see how. I fiddled with all settings I could find several times and to the point where I just didn′t care anymore, I was out of options. On my last computer I didn′t have to do jack and it just worked..

Thanks anyway

That was fixed with PhysX 3.0 released in 2011. Yes, PhysX 1-2 were crippled but those were pretty basic ports of AGEIA's ASIC architecture with most of the development effort going to getting the thing even running on consoles.