Adapted from my request to CarvedInside, developer of the UNi Xonar Drivers
All started by reading on wikipedia that C-media based chips used to support Sensaura audio extension and 3D algorithms thanks to an agreement. (though a bit lacking)
As usual, the more bossing and evil company ever existed in the PC audio world could not fail to spoil this. And so Creative Technology bought Sensaura back in 2003.
Anyway C-media license keep going on, but it couldn’t last forever. And in September 2008 it ended.
As soon as they could (judging by how stringent they had been in the announcement) all Sensaura technologies were removed from drivers. (cool pdf inbound: all the 3D audio rendering engine was Sensaura based..)
Now as rule, I wouldn’t be really worried, given that the greatest audio API (i.e. A3D) of the century is already dead and gone for more than a decade… but a review really stressed how Sensaura tech made a great difference in the overall gaming experience and surround accuracy of Xear3D.
So.. I was wondering.. Mr. CarvedInside.. wouldn’t be possible to add it back to the drivers? I already spent 3 hours probing the net for older drivers.
And I’m not talking about my Xonar DX drivers, but -hopefully- the c-media ones you use to work with. Let me post some links.
http://web.archive.org/web/20071019230809/http://www.cmedia.com.tw/forums/viewtopic.php?t=863&postdays=0&postorder
http://web.archive.org/web/20071019230809/http://www.cmedia.com.tw/forums/viewtopic.php?t=863&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=60&sid#4118
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.cmediadrivers.info/*
ftp://www.club-3d.com/Theatron/ (This includes Club3D c-media based sound cards.. but I couldn’t find accurate sources about their use use of CMI8788 chip)
Then, I think I ended. I would just like to link some goodies I found.
They seems to be the only precise articles describing the licensed technologies I could found. (C-media should have supported every Sensaura specs afaik).
Unfortunately they are either in Russian or in Polish. English editors seems to have been very skinny on the argument
“Sensaura CRL3D HRTF 3D positional sound enhancement with multi-drive” engine was used until the aforementioned end of contract. Funnily it was introduced in 1999.
Last but not least I finally discovered why when I install sound card drivers (including yours) I have this apparently meaningless pcm file (.\Customapp\GX30\3D_Helicopter.wav)
It seems it was one of the various asset cmedia took from Sensaura and it was originally inside a tech demo named Play3D (download). No explanation for its stay up to our days though.
Thanks for your time!
P.S. In the meantime I found out a damn good english round-up.
And I'd like to point out another thing: Before (2007) | After (2014)
Something is definitively missing.
EDIT: and guess who's half-assing monopolizing what again