Environmental audio extensions

From Free net encyclopedia

Revision as of 09:30, 6 April 2006; view current revision
←Older revision | Newer revision→

The environmental audio extensions (or EAX) are a number of digital signal processing presets for audio, present in Creative Labs later Sound Blaster sound cards and the Creative NOMAD/Creative Zen product lines. EAX displaced the alternative A3D (Aureal 3-Dimensional) in 2001.

1 Sound card versions
- 1.1 Environment perception
2 Audio player versions
3 See also
4 External link

[edit]

Sound card versions

[edit]

Environment perception

The aim of EAX is to create more ambience with 3D sound in games. This is accomplished via simple HRTF functions for discrete sound, and a global environmental reverb effect. Newer versions of EAX added multiple reverbs to be applied simultaneously with smooth transitions between. Most versions of EAX increase the number of simultaneous voices able to be processed: the original EAX 1.0 supports 8 voices, EAX 2.0 allows 32, EAX 4.0 supports 64, and EAX 5.0 allows 128 voices (and up to 4 effects applied to each).

Games that use EAX

[edit]

Audio player versions

In the portable audio players produced by Creative, especially the Creative NOMAD and Creative Zen lines, EAX means something else than for sound cards. Here, it applies a few possible effects to played back audio on the device, including:

Different reverb-like environments (most similar to the sound card EAX)
Speed-shifting (slower or faster)
Environment adaption (train, plane, public place etc)
Sound image (broad, narrow etc)
A simple graphical equalizer

The first NOMAD jukebox also had support for pseudo-surround sound using rear speakers by supporting two different audio output plugs on the device.

The addition of these effects to the audio is not very popular, will use up additional battery resources and is generally a quite mysterious feature to most owners. It might have been introduced only to sell players to computer-game people who were familiar with the EAX concept and would therefore hold this feature in high regard.

[edit]