ms is trying to do away with "eax" as it is now, moving to use OpenAL based sound in vista, most game makers are starting to see that eax3/4/5 arent getting them any extra sales but causting them extra on game dev, most off the shelf avrage gamers dont buy an addin sound card or if they do its a cheapo one with via,cmi,Crystal (cirus logic) or an old cheap creative card that only supports eax2 and lower.
i did some reading
...majority from the wiki
1) OpenAL is hosted (and largely developed) by Creative Labs with on-going support from Apple.
Speak of the devil
2) EAX has nothing to do with actual 3D audio positioning. Positioning is done by Microsoft's DirectSound3D API. An alternative to DirectSound3D, called Open Audio Library (OpenAL), surfaced in 2003 in several titles. OpenAL allows direct hardware acceleration of audio, like DirectSound, including EAX.
So basically the comment "ms is trying to do away with "eax" as it is now, moving to use OpenAL based sound in vista" is false because eax and OpenAL are different. Also M$ already has Directsound, why do they want to replace their own product?
3) Creative was not content with the situation when the world bestseller didn't use hardware DirectSound, to say nothing of the latest EAX, which would have allowed high-quality 3D sound algorithms.[..]Support for DirectSound + all existing EAX4 features was hardly introduced by rewriting the audio code from scratch. Creative had to overhaul the entire OpenAL and release a special new version.
Creative is not happy being one of the worlds highest provider of soundcards, which lack Directsound. To implement DirectSound, Creative would have to rewrite the audio code from scratch, which will cause Game Devs to recode the game (and possibly any software that produces sound) and drivers to be remade. So Creative had to overhaul and implemented OpenAL so that they can achieve a similar DirectSound, w/o the trouble.
OpenAL has nothing to do with replacing EAX, but accepting it as a practical counterpart for DirectSound.
4) Programmers should use OpenAL API for full control of all available modes and functions. To get maximum gains, we should unpack samples from OGG, MP3 formats into on-board X-RAM, when a game level is being preloaded into memory. But even old applications can benefit from X-RAM, as samples will be cached.
X-ram in layman terms is audio cache and cache is "A temporary storage area where frequently accessed data can be stored for rapid access." Frequently used sound samples will be decompress in to raw data and will be quickly accessible. If "Programmers should use OpenAL API", average reported FPS performance to +25%
(tested on a modified UT2k4 which used OpenAL API ; basic is the same xfi card with x-ram force off)
Xfi is mainly good for gaming, but doesn't show performance gains in synthetic tests.
"Does X-RAM provide real advantage in games? It does, but it can be said for sure only about new games that were created in cooperation with Creative programmers. There are only a few such games so far, but they are all hits: DOOM3 1.3, DOOM3:ROE, Quake4, BattleField 2, BattleField 2:SF. Taking into account that EAX5/X-RAM SDK has been released only recently, we have some grounds for optimism – we may have more games soon. But as OpenAL is too slow to take roots among developers because of its differences from DirectSound, we can make a conclusion that the situation will not change much here."
In conclusion, it seems Creative holds the upper hand in future audio products.
Also, i have a feeling that is post is gonna get raped with arguments. This post is to inform you that there was intention from Creative for X-RAM...not to say creative is the best and everything else is crap, because i say X-fi sucks (basically a beta sound card), but seems to have potential
....humm that might not be all bad, at least ms is better at patching stuff they make so its at least useable