Sound hardware acceleration, EAX performance and compatibility of old games under Windows 7

I've read that Windows Vista and 7 stopped supporting hardware acceleration of DirectSound 3D. Many of the old games (most of them released in the 90's-early 2000's) that I used to play in Windows XP support EAX 1 and/or 2. I would like to know if there will be performance issues (speed and quality of sound) in these old games under Windows 7 if I enable EAX.

My laptop's motherboard has an onboard Realtek sound card. I am using Windows Update provided drivers. Should I install Realtek 3D Soundback (supposedly enables Realtek cards to support sound hardware acceleration under Windows Vista and 7)?

Realtek 3D Soundback description from its website:

 

Correct, Vista and 7 do not support hardware accelerated sound.

If you want support for EAX 1 or 2, just download OpenAL, a very small driver that will enable EAX 1/2 support.

I'm not sure what the Realtek drivers do, but it's probably similar (or a port of) OpenAL. They may re-enable the effects, but nothing can re-enable hardware sound acceleration in Vista or 7.

If you want EAX support above v2, you need to download Creative Alchemy, but that is paid software, and really not worth it, as it's resource intensive and kind of buggy.

 

That sucks. Was there ever an official reason or statement why support for hardware accelerated sound was dropped?

 

They completely re-did the audio (and driver) architecture for Windows Vista (and Windows 7 is really just a slightly improved version of Vista, but nothing fundamentally different).

My guess is that audio processing doesn't take hardly any computing power relative to modern processors, so audio accelerators just don't make a difference any more. Higher quality X-Fi cards still have better DACs than on-board sound, but their acceleration is no longer relevant.

 

Another guess would with people hooking up digitaly (HDMI, Coxial, SPDIF) the sound is really just getting passed from the computer to the decoder (home theater etc) where the decoder does all the alot of the work in terms of DAC's and EQing.

 

If I don't install OpenAL or any other software/driver, can Windows 7 still correctly emulate EAX 1 and/or 2 sound effects in old games if I enable EAX in the game settings?

I don't know much about OpenAL. Will installing it enable hardware accelerated EAX support for old games? Or will it just enable hardware accelerated sound for the newer games that are designed to use OpenAL?

 

No........

 

Nothing will enable hardware accelerated sound. OpenAL will re-enable EAX 1 and 2 effects. No, you can't use EAX 1 or 2 without OpenAL or Alchemy.

 

Alright. If I understood correctly, you guys are saying that hardware accelerated EAX 1 and 2 can't be done at all in Windows 7.

Also, if I understood the OpenAL article in Wikipedia correctly, it seemed that only games that are designed to support it will be able to take advantage of the OpenAL API (many of the old 90's-early 2000's games that I played don't have support for it). So, if this is correct, will installing OpenAL allow EAX sound effects from these old games that are not designed for OpenAL?

I have already installed OpenAL and just would like to know correctly if EAX 1 and 2 can be done at all in Windows 7 (even without hardware acceleration) for these old games.