Creative Introducing EAX and X-Fi Support
Reader Feld noticed on Creative’s Open-Source site mention of both X-Fi (Creative’s current line of sound cards) and more interestingly EAX support. Linux has never had EAX (3D hardware accelerated audio effects), and this would be a great boon to Linux gaming:
The X-Fi series of products are not supported under Linux. Closed-source drivers will be available for the X-Fi series of sound cards in the second quarter of 2007. These drivers will have full support for ALSA (playback, recording, mixer, MIDI, synthesis) and OpenAL 1.1 (with EAX effects).
Of course the closed-source nature of the drivers will probably upset RMS; we’ll see if this plan of added support comes to fruition. The X-Fi series’ main benefit is the on-board RAM of the top model for storing samples and whatnot locally to the card.
May 31st, 2006 at 6:51 pm
And RMS need to RelEAX
May 31st, 2006 at 7:14 pm
You can take your $20 cs chipset and play the game in the bathroom and get the same effect -
why bother supporting an eVIL corporation like creativeLESS labs?
hardlyOPENal has one vendor - creativeLESS labs.
where’s my linux releases?
let’s start an open soundcard project…
screw the suit jockeys
THE PAST:
ibm and the nazi
THE FUTURE:
microsoft and the chinese
May 31st, 2006 at 7:26 pm
OMFG I will not put other closed driver on my system. Until now I bought sound cards from creative labs because they are well supported.
But I will not buy a new source of problems. I’m fed with my nvidia ( and I know that with newer cards from ati is worse ).
RMS is usually right in his ideas.
May 31st, 2006 at 8:13 pm
I unfortunately need a closed driver for 3D video; I do not need 3D audio as badly.
Sorry, Creative: I like your work on OpenAL, but if you’re going to be like this, go screw yourselves. :)
May 31st, 2006 at 10:17 pm
it upsets me because it’s going to be nonstandard, it’s not going to work after every kernel upgrade, and it’s going to eventually be abandoned and useless and my hardware will be completely useless. I don’t like free drivers for my health (or even for my wallet), I like them because I hate having to rely on any one company to keep my stuff working.
May 31st, 2006 at 10:38 pm
Weird. I was curious about Xi-Fi on Linux. I was browsing the ALSA site earlier today and noticed that it’s unsupported. It’s quite odd that this article popped up literally an hour or two after I was on the ALSA site.
I would suspect that they are doing this so that they can keep their EAX routines closed from the public, and modify an opensource OpenAL that “plugs into” it like that http://lost.org.uk/ guy did with his hacked OpenAL drivers for EMU10k1 chips. The problem with this is that Creative’s custom OpenAL library will be useless on all other cards, because only the closed-source ALSA driver (that they’d provide) will be able to utilize its changes.
Talk about a bummer. It’s a shame that no other companies are manufacturing any real audio DSPs anymore. All of the hardware out there pretty much just utilizes the host CPU for anything worthwhile, and spits it out to some cheapo AC97 or “HD” audio CODEC.
Honestly, I think that it’s a bad way to go for Linux audio. Sure, it would be nice to utilize some of the finer features of the DSP on the Xi-Fi, but we’d only ultimately be in a position that is similar to what we have to deal with in regards to nVidia and ATI and binary drivers. I’m going to opt to stick to my Audigy 2 ZS for now.
June 1st, 2006 at 2:01 am
AFAIK even their Windows driver support sucks. I read a lot of people complaining about their support.
I cant belive they will do better for Linux.
And sorry - did I read Q2/2007? Why not announce a product for Q1/2019?
Michael
June 1st, 2006 at 4:33 am
In the time of the emergence of dual core and more cpu’s i’ll guess we can stick to cpu generated sound streams some time longer … but thanks for the try at least creative
Next time try to stick with, what 99% of the others on these platform do - open up your source or help others in interfacing to your hardware
June 1st, 2006 at 4:35 am
It’ll probably fucking upset me. Creative needs to die. NOt only for release non-free drivers/specs for these specific functions, but mostly for their business practices.
June 1st, 2006 at 5:15 am
It’s not like RMS is alone with his opinions. I don’t think linux would’ve got so far if there were not so many people who cared about freedom of the software. I for one won’t be giving up the freedom I have managed to gain. On this computer there isn’t and won’t be any proprietary software.
Ignorant people think this is only zeal. Just stop for a while and think what will happen if we let drivers and other software become proprietary again. “Oh these audio drivers only work in Mandriva and Suse version X.X”, “Um great and the motherboard chipset is only going to work in Linspire and Xandros”, “Display drivers don’t yet (if ever) support Xorg 7.X” not to even start with different platforms(PPC, amd64, sparc whatever). The vendors get to decide what they want to support, you can’t choose anymore the distro, kernel version, software X, platform Y you want to use. Most probably you’ll have a real headache getting all the software you want *working*.
What’s the alternative? Tell the vendor you’re going to wait until free driver is available. The only thing the vendor would need to do is to release enough specs and others would write the drivers for them, for free.
June 1st, 2006 at 5:22 am
I have an XFI that is just sitting here. Why can’t those bastards just release the specs to the alsa team so they can make an OSS driver?
Now we have to wait till “second quarter of 2007″ for their most likely buggy as hell closed source drivers.
June 1st, 2006 at 9:32 pm
…that thinks this is great news?
Linux is finally starting to see corporate attention when it comes to drivers; something LONG overdue. Creative doesn’t have to release a damn thing to Linux, neither does Nvidia or anyone else.
They don’t release the driver code to Windows either…
We all gripe and complain, but in the end, we will benefit from this…
Lighten up people…
June 2nd, 2006 at 5:52 am
>Linux is finally starting to see corporate attention when it comes to drivers; something LONG overdue. Creative doesn’t have to release a damn thing to Linux, neither does Nvidia or anyone else.
Wow. Corporate attention. All my desires fulfilled. But … wait! We already have open drivers for Creative sound cards …
>We all gripe and complain, but in the end, we will benefit from this…
>Lighten up people…
Benefitting how? Losing a free driver which works “out of the box” ,needs no installation nor configuration to get a new closed driver with:
-Conflicts sometimes with other drivers
-You have to download, because doesn’t come with your distro
-Requires more configuration
-Requires a specific kernel version, libraries, etc…
-Doesn’t work on mac’s with linux or on pc’s with BSD
-Or sometimes even doesn’t work for you
No, thank you.
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:14 am
You don’t want propietary drivers for your video cards so what cards are you going to use? Huh? Don’t buy nVidia even though they supply closed drivers for linux for their cards. Don’t by ATI because they do the same.
Same for Creative. The open drivers aren’t ‘good enough’, they just produce sound, and a receive input.
For those of you who really have used Creative sound cards in the Windows arena know that the creative drivers are pretty good.
I’ve bought memory modules for the ISA card for the AWE series for storing sound patches and at the time, there wasn’t a better card on the market.
In case you didn’t read the blurb, the following caught my eye:
MIDI, synthesis) and OpenAL 1.1 (with EAX effects)
Which currently doesn’t exist for Linux (at least good enough for the Windows counterpart)
None of that exists in the Windows world or Linux world without their drivers (EAX only through DirectX but then it’s DirectSound).
Yes, the default Windows drivers for Creative Cards are sub-par (like everything else they do).
My Linux box is still stuck in the Live! series because of lack of drivers and good MIDI synthesis.
I welcome their support and I will be a customer as I will finally be able to port my custom patches over the good side.
June 2nd, 2006 at 11:34 am
If you don’t want the new drivers, thats cool with me, I for one am glad to get the support.
Now I can get top of the like Audio cards and some earcandy :)
June 2nd, 2006 at 12:55 pm
>If you don’t want the new drivers, thats cool with me, I for one am glad to get the support.
:)
>Now I can get top of the like Audio cards and some earcandy :)
Yeah, I know. It doesn’t seems bad. In windows is the same :). Now, see. How much years old are the newest Windows XP? Do you remember the features of linux in that time? Even in the supposed stable 2.6 tree, new features and changes are normal(nice thing I think). And these features and changes break binary modules.
Closed support for windows is OK, because it is not a moving target like linux. At the end these drivers are not “real” support.
And these are only the technical points. I’m not telling anything about freedom now. But remember, Linux is Linux because it is free ( as in freedom ), and “closing” parts is the best way to stop it’s development.
Sometimes I start to question to lots of people. If you don’t value the “freedom” part, why don’t use Windows (or Mac OS X)? I think the game scene in Windows is brighter than in Linux …
:)
Perhaps I’m a bit boring, but I like to talk about this things :D
June 4th, 2006 at 9:14 pm
Linux isn’t just about Freedom. It’s about choices.
I like Linux not just because it’s free but because I can choose to look at the source and tweak it.
I will buy Creatives supported cards and I also choose to accept what they support it with as I choose with my dollars.
I agree to not bitch about not being able to look at the source for the drivers because whatever Creative will supply will have the better patch sets than is currently availble that is free.
June 5th, 2006 at 8:38 am
>Linux isn’t just about Freedom. It’s about choices.
>I like Linux not just because it’s free but because I can choose to look at the source and tweak it.
Nice try. The root of all is freedom. Without freedom you wouldn’t have any choice. Do you have the choices with windows?
>I will buy Creatives supported cards and I also choose to accept what they support it with as I choose with my dollars.
Nice. You will decide what you do with your dollars. Nothing to argue with this.
>I agree to not bitch about not being able to look at the source for the drivers because whatever Creative will supply will have the better patch sets than is currently availble that is free.
Closed drivers are one of the worst pains in Linux actually. My experience is that, with time, even reverse enginereed free drivers are way better. The closest example in time I can remember now is the closed driver for the nvidia network card.
You should remember that what the community wants are not always the same that what the companies want to provide.
June 5th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
They announced this 6 months ago, where have you all been?
June 5th, 2006 at 9:09 pm
Why all of a sudden does Creative only want to support Linux with closed source drivers?
Since they released code and specs with their older soundblaster stuff it has lead to excellent support in Linux with the audigy and probably audigy2 stuff.(although all I own is a Audigy 1 gamer)
I remember laughing at Windows users that had to put up with BSOD due to shit-tastic creative drivers. Mine was stable as all get out and had good performance even if I didn’t have the EAX stuff.
You ‘gamers’ don’t get sucked into this hell of closed source drivers. It’s a very shitty way to go. Remember that with windows a major cause of BSOD and other problems were buggy drivers and such.
Do you realy want to have to deal with that crap in Linux?
I know I don’t.
There are a lot of audio cards with great open source drivers support (unlike video cards) so don’t be stupid and don’t give Creative any money until they properly support Linux driver developers.
June 6th, 2006 at 4:15 pm
I am still using a dedicated/off the internet Windows 98 box because of the Creative AWE cards with expanded memory and custom patch sets that there is absolutely nothing like it in the Linux world.
If you don’t want closed source drivers, don’t use them, and by all means, don’t bitch about them because they aren’t free. I will glady pay for them and use them to upgrade.
June 12th, 2006 at 11:02 am
Buying computer hardware also comes with the disclosure of the technique to use the hardware. Opensource every software, for purposes of critique. As software sourcecode is closed, it is expeced to have support that is stable as well as an experimental branch for features that are beyond the expectation of natural processing of data.
On the same hand, a purchase of computer software is met by developers by the disclosure of an architecture for them to target. If the x86 architecture, BIOS, bus, and related localhost information wasn’t disclosed to developers of that closed-source software then they would complain as much as anyone else.
If Queen Richard is upset, then I was upset a few moments before him and it should be me running gnu.org and OSI and FSF.
Kniggets…
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