Hi Thomas,
Guess I'm still good to go then since I do not use the DirectX 8.1 3d mixer,
just panning and volume.
BFN
----- Original Message -----
Hi Jim,
Actually, DirectX 8.1 doesn't really support 5.1 and 7.1 hardware
based mixing. DirectSound 8 was actually written for 4.1 stereo sound
cards like the Soundblaster Live which was the top quality cards of
the late 1990's and early 2000's. However, since most modern cards
have 7.1 surround sound support, and the fact Windows Vista and
Windows 7 has a fully updated software mixer Microsoft pretty much had
to either fully upgrade DirectSound or replace it with something else.
They chose to drop DirectSound in favor of a new audio library called
XAudio2 which handles 5.1 and 7.1 sound cards, speakers, etc much
better than DirectSound. On the one hand Microsoft's XAudio2 3d
virtualization is light years better than DirectSound, but on the
other hand it doesn't have any simple 2d stereo pan controls etc. So
anyone who wants to use XAudio2 to do some simple panning will have to
write his or her own 2d pan control using the 3d virtualization like I
had to do for OpenAL on Linux.
FYI. The other issue with DirectSound's 3d mixer is that it is
incompatible with Windows Vista and Windows 7. As you know I've been
working on a new 3d engine for the blind, and the biggest problem of
using DirectSound is that it doesn't properly render 3d audio on
Vista/Windows 7. The reason is that under Vista and Windows 7 there is
a new software mixer designed for newer sound cards, which DirectSound
doesn't really support, and as a result rendering audio isn't quite
the same as it was on XP. Why Microsoft didn't simply upgrade
DirectSound I'll never know, but as I said earlier they decided to
resolve the problem by releasing XAudio2, and it is now the default
audio API on Windows 7 now.
As to running older software on newer versions of Windows that really
all depends on the software in question. For example, I have a copy of
Microsoft Office 2000 around here and I'd much rather use it than
Office 2007. Thing is Office 2000 won't even run on Windows 7. I tried
and it gives me some kind of runtime error and locks up.
I've got several mainstream games here that work perfectly fine with
XP, but crash when I try and start them under Windows 7. That's the
one and only reason why my wife and I are holding onto one XP box for
games. Truth is with Windows 7 a lot of older software doesn't work,
but that doesn't mean some older software won't work.
Cheers!
Jim
The speed of time is one second per second.
j...@kitchensinc.net
http://www.kitchensinc.net
(440) 286-6920
Chardon Ohio USA
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