Quake 4 with EAX & 3D spatial sound 🎧 (CMSS-3D HRTF audio)

Channel:

I Drink Lava - 3D Game Audio

Subscribers:

2,029

Published on August 12, 2018 10:00:07 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h53hC-E4nxs

Game:

Quake 4 (2005)

Duration: 20:33

704 views

10

Use headphones only with any virtual surround features turned off.

Next up is Quake 4 with EAX reverb and CMSS-3D HRTF on a Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium. I wouldn't ordinarily do this since OpenAL Soft is an option, but Quake 4 is a very special case. Unlike the first 3 games, Quake 4 was actually created with HRTF in mind as it launched the same year as the X-Fi line of soundcards. Quake 4 was not only a flagship title for the latest EAX 5.0 and CMSS-3D technology, but also one of two games to support the 64MB of X-RAM on the Fatal1ty model for better performance. Despite this huge leap in audio technology, however, Quake 4 would be the beginning of the end for hardware-accelerated sound in gaming. A combination of Windows Vista killing off DirectSound3D and game developers switching to console-friendly software like FMOD spelled the end of the Sound Blaster era.

So how does Quake 4 sound with EAX 5.0 and CMSS-3D? To be honest, it's kind of underwhelming. There's nothing special about Quake 4's effects when compared to F.E.A.R. which was EAX 4.0. Hell, even some older games like Halo: CE used EAX better. As usual, EAX 5.0 was nothing more than hype and advertising buzzwords from Creative. There's no reverb panning to simulate acoustics, no smooth transitions between large and small rooms (12:17), and no "obstruction" or "exclusion" effects. Like Doom 3, occlusion effects seem limited to sliding doors and sometimes they glitched out on me (6:00). Even the much-touted binaural audio through CMSS-3D sounds really flat in this game when compared to Doom 3.

I'm playing Quake 4 with a tweaker that is pretty much mandatory in 2018 since this game is an awful pain to get running on modern computers. Sorry for the quiet footage; I had to use the old "reduce volume by 3dB" trick because Youtube would compress the ambience and make the HRTF less apparent.


HRTF grade:
B+

Settings:
Windows Control Panel: Stereo
Creative Audio Panel: Headphones
CMSS-3D on
MacroFX & ElevationFilter: Auto
seta s_libOpenAL "openal32.dll"
seta s_useopenal "1"
seta s_useEAXOcclusion "1"
seta s_useEAXReverb "1"
g_fov "100"

Links:
https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/1009-quake-4-tweaker/

Credits:
https://www.dafont.com/quake.font
(Use of this font falls under fair use laws.)



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