Do you remember when PC games had more audio options than volume sliders and basic speaker channel output? Scalability options like being able to choose which API you could utilize. Options like DirectSound3D, EAX, OpenAL, and Aureal for the high end users with expensive sound cards. Also, options like DirectSound3D Software, Miles Positional 2D, and OpenAL software for low end users. Options like the amount of channels that could be processed (number of sounds that could be heard simultaneously).

I remember playing Halo Combat Evolved for the first time with my Soundblaster Audigy4. Granted the game only used EAX 2.0, which any HW sound card supported at the time. I was playing the first mission on the Pillar of Autumn. When I got up to the corridor right before entering the bay room where Covenant ships are docking and unloading soldiers I was dumbstruck. I was still around the hall to that room, but could tell exactly where some Grunts were located based on their sound alone. I knew where they were from previous play-throughs of the game. That's why when the actual 3D position of the noise was revealed I was struck. The position of the sound was about 99% correct. I could play this game blind-folded.

I remember playing Warcraft III in like 2003 (back when Warcraft was a real-time strategy game). I had options of Miles 2D, EAX 2.0, and Dolby. That's a lot of options for an overhead RTS game.

I remember playing an old game. This was a pretty popular title in the day. GTA 3. It also had many audio API options. My favorite was Aureal 3D. This is absolutely the best HRTF I've ever heard in my whole life. GTA 3 became real with a pair of headphones and Aureal 3D. Your fps took a real nose dive though. Wonder what it would be like on a modern PC? Maybe I should try? What ever happened to that API? Well, Creative Labs bought it up, took the tech and IP and locked it up in a dungeon with Goro defending it's exit.

There were also games that advertised the usage of modern API effects, but failed to deliver with half-hearted implementation of the features such as Rainbow Six 3.

Then came Windows Vista. Vista began a new era of Windows operating systems (Vista/7/8/8.1/10). They differed enough from the previous versions of Windows OSes from the fact there was no longer a HAL (hardware abstract layer). Audio API's such as DirectSound3D depended on it. EAX depended on DirectSound3D. And began a trend.

Vista and newer still had hardware support for OpenAL. Creative Labs even made a wrapper called Creative ALchemy which would translate DirectSound3D and DirectSound3D dependent EAX code into OpenAL for hardware support. While it did work, the EAX in OpenAL was not as good as the EAX for DirectSound3D. This was an issue for those of us that noticed it. Playing an EAX game dependent on DirectSound3D sounded much better than playing an EAX game dependent on OpenAL.

Later on into the late days of Windows 7, OpenAL became more software oriented and improved somewhat on the quality front. Some people including many respected developers and programmers would say the new software OpenAL is actually better than hardware EAX w/DirectSound3D. Which may be true. Only problem is it is all CPU dependent and will effect performance. XAudio2 stuff won't hurt performance even on outdated CPU's. New-age OpenAL DSP stuff will harm performance even on modern CPU's.

Upon the release time of Skyrim I 'upgraded' my Audigy4 to an X-Fi. Turns out the X-Fi's while having support for EAX 3.0/4.0/5.0 did not have support for EAX 1.0/2.0 and thus these games are gimped EAX-wise. Skyrim has nothing to do with this. It's just a reference of timeline here in my story. Skyrim instead uses the modern Xbox 360/Windows audio API, XAudio2.

XAudio2 is a cross-platform audio API that makes porting easier. It's easier to setup. It's easier to make games for that even have 5.1 support. It works on any audio chipset because it's all software. It has much better latency than PCI sound cards. It's rendering quality is really clean, crisp and overall good like hardware DirectSound3D. Problems are: It's all software (most games limit channels to 32 or less). It's 5.1 support is only on par with Miles 2D positional audio (low-end multichannel). It's reverb effects consist of muffling, echo, louder echo, and obnoxious bass-stuttering echo. The last sound card I heard of that only has hardware support for only 32 channels was the Soundblaster 16 (circa: 1992-1999).

I remember playing a really old game, Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption, made in 1998-1999. I had options to choose 7 different audio API's, including EAX 2.0. The fact that a game made in 1999 has better audio options (and quality) than any game made in 2013 - 2015 means we have truly taken a step back. There have been some redeemers such as Razor with their version of OpenAL (in software only DSP effects). At least the performance impact wasn't as bad as Aureal 3D was on Pentium III and IV machines.

Microsoft is supposed to be making a new XAudio API that supports hardware acceleration. They call it something else for XAudio, but regardless, the info about it had been around for years with no realization of it.

Remember when games used to sound better?

The visual seems to be more important do developers these days. Not only in PC this happens, few are the games on consoles that has great audio quality. I never saw any other console game do the sound like Black.

Also remember the days when sodas were a nickel and parents used to beat there children to get rid of the devils inside them? Remember when a tap on a women's rear was ok?

But on a seriouse note things change sometimes for the better sometimes for the worse depends on who you ask and what you ask. you could create a game and allow all the sound options you want the player to have access to. though they might mess something up and render the sound unplayable if they don't know what there doing.

My first computer had a 6-bit monophonic D-A converter as its sound system. It kinda svcked, but some developers could still work wonders.

Of course that doesn't invalidate your point, I just thought I'd go all Four Yorkshiremen on you.

Must be a British reference... I don't get it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

Not just PC, consoles have been having awful sound quality for their games: Primarily the music overpowering any voices. It's hard to listen to the details of the story when BGM is drowning it out Thankfully headsets help the issue there.

That's pretty darn funny!

Huh, I never really thought about that, but I guess you have a point, I mean, at least there sure hasn't been tons of progress. Then again, my current speakers are kinda crappy so I suppose I wouldn't hear the difference anyways.

@Vometia, I love Monty Python.

Likely has a lot to do with dedicated hardware sound cards getting increasingly marginalized over the years, as people became content with merely using integrated motherboard sound.

pepperidge farm remembers

Hm not sure I agree, Skyrim definitely sounds better than Morrowind for instance. I think most modern games simulate reverb and room types. The thing is many of the old technologies are not needed in today's games. You don't really even need a dedicated sound card anymore since most motherboards come with a decent one built in.

Unfortunately, no. For the majority of the 35 years I've played computer & console games, I've either used the built-in speakers (computer or TV), or a pair of 2.0 Radio Shack headphones ($10). Just got a 5.1 sound card and pair of $50 Audio-Technica headphones a year or two ago. Ah, well.

Using Morrowind is kind of a bad example. It used an audio engine called Dare Audio. It's 3D graphics processing was also heavily reliant on the CPU more so than the GPU. The game engine was already outdated before Morrowind was released.

For Windows Vista, Microsoft completely overhauled their device driver model to make it more secure. It did make it more secure! It also had some side-effects:

• Hardware manufacturers had to completely re-write the drivers for their hardware to comply with the new driver model. Some manufacturers did this well, while others released terrible, rushed drivers (caused a lot of instability for a lot of people...this is part of why people thought that Vista was a bad OS), and others took a long time to release new drivers or just abandoned support for the affected hardware (did even more to leave the impression that Vista was a bad OS)
• Drivers were no longer allowed to directly access system memory

That second one was a huge problem for companies like Creative, because their hardware acceleration technology for positional audio (EAX) depended on that direct memory access. Creative and Microsoft went back and forth about this for a long time, but Microsoft refused to make an exception for Creative (this was probably a good thing for everything except hardware accelerated positional audio). The end-result: no more EAX in most cases. That (IMO) is when people started to abandon premium sound hardware since there was less of an advantage to using it. I'm guessing this just slowed down the demand for a replacement for EAX. I'd love to see hardware audio acceleration make a comeback...it was pretty awesome.

Wow. That is an old reference.

I remember when the choices used to be ad lib, sound blaster, roland 32, and pc speakers. digital sound made games come alive.

I still have a Soundblaster 16 ISA laying around here somewhere.

Alien Isolation on a 5.1 system has about the best sound as far as being able to audibly recognize an enemies location. Tomb Raider is pretty good too. I'm running onboard audio from my mother board via HDMI to my reciever out of my GPU. As far as I'm concerned, discrete sound cards are no longer needed.

Ah, but you have not heard 3d positional audio. Alien Isolation uses 2D positional audio. 5.1 does not 3d audio make. It is simple panning left/right across channels around you (2d positional audio), as where in 3d audio you can pinpoint where a fly is located (x,y,and z axises). There is no 'vertical' audio in modern audio API's. Yeah, they sound good enough to get the job done. Technologically speaking, it is 15+ years behind what it could be like.

The goodness of HRTF can be applied across more than 2 channels (stereo/headphones) as well. Imagine HRTF in 5.1 (or more) channels. That is 3d positional audio.

@ Softnerd: OpenAL is still supported in modern OS'es. Considering Creative Labs pretty much owns OpenAL, you'd think they try to make it a replacement for DirectSound3D. Instead, they have shifted their entire focus onto wireless soundbar speakers.

EDIT: Also worth mentioning that discrete sound cards are not needed to use better audio API's. Basic m/b audio chipsets have hardware support for DirectSound3D, EAX 1.0/2.0, and OpenAL.

A large part of it is the technical confines that developers where subjected to which eventuated in them creating fairly simple songs, which in turn are typically more memorable than complex sounds.

It's far easier to hum and remember this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZBGmN5obkkthan it is to remember this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSDrVa39FvI

But there is still fantastic ambient tracks in games today like - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxSXm8qGjS8- final fantasy 13

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y97u-U0nvJM- The Last of Us

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-JXZWUenA8 - Fallout New Vegas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5PzaJELAJI - Fallout New Vegas

OK. You have me curious. Without speakers physically in said vertical positions, can software really reproduce sound in a meaningful way?

As I've understood it, AMD is using the graphics driver to bypass some of the limitations of Windows' audio drivers for their TrueAudio stuff. They're going a bit roundabout with the implementation by having audio-engine middleware makers such as Wwise implement the TrueAudio and offer it to game developers that way, but not many developers seem to bother to implement it because it only AMD's newer GCN 1.1 and 1.2 cards have the TrueAudio stuff.

I agree, i've had many Creative sound cards over the years. after the awful Vista, EAX was hardly used and Alchemy just wasn't as good as built in first party support i found.

5.1 Dolby is good but i remember being quite impressed with EAX playing FEAR 1 and even as far back as the 1st Call of Duty, in fact your lucky if you get a new driver off Creative once a year nowadays.

Vista was essentially Windows 7. It just had a horrible launch due to third party drivers and software falling behind the new driver model and UAC changes introduced in Vista (which were both needed). By the time Windows 7 was released those issues had been largely ironed out by said third parties, which is why it was received better (ok, they also streamlined the UI and scaled back some resource hogs, but Windows 7 is still essentially Vista in new clothes).

Anyway, the driver model changes that broke EAX were actually good and needed changes. Before that change, the driver model/HAL was a huge security vulnerability for Windows.

Still doesn't make Vista a good OS, i used it and went straight back to XP as quick as i could, the overbearing security and resource hog's is exactly why no one liked it where as i stayed with 7, being similar in design makes no difference if they don't work the same,

i always turn UAC off, it's annoying and, there are always vulnerabilities in Windows whatever version anyone is using, so no, i don't agree that breaking EAX was a good thing, you might have liked Vista, but games were better with EAX before that awful OS for me.