A2D drivers
Aureal's A2D drivers are required for non-A3D cards to utilize applications that have been written to take advantage of A3D 2/3.0's A2D component (such as Quake 3: Arena and Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force). What it does is basically just passing on the positional instructions to DS3D if the soundcard supports it. If the game uses wavetracing it will also try to pick the most appropriate EAX 1.0 room. It doesn't work that well with all A3D 2.0 games but it's worth a shot. If you find the selection of EAX effects odd/weird you can always disable EAX before you start the game and you will still get 3D sound.

It's worth noting that some games that support both A3D 2.0 and DS3D with EAX may pick A3D 2.0 if it detects the A3DAPI.dll file in the system directory. To prevent this just rename the a3dapi.dll file located in the Windows\System directory to a3dapi.old. You can download version 3.12 from our site   (312kb)

AC97 Mixer
AC97 Mixer allow direct access to AC97 compatible audio codec present on supported PCI sound cards. Chips currently supported are Yamaha YMF724, YMF740, YMF744, YMF754; Aureal AU8830 (Vortex 2, MX300); VIA integrated VT82C686A; Creative EMU10K1; Intel 8x0, MX440; Ensoniq ES1371/ES1373; ESS Maestro 1/2/2E/3i, Allegro; Cirrus Logic CS461x; Trident DX, NX; ForteMedia FM801. The AC97 Mixer can display codec specific information, including vendor, model and DAC/ADC resolution. It can also be used to change codec specific controls, not available in standard Windows mixer driver. You can find out more about the AC97 mixer and download version 1.8 of it from the author's (Alex Mina) Home Page.

Audiosphere v2.0
Svetlana Software Audiosphere is an audio control package including volume, balance, tone controls and presets. Here's a bit on what's new in the last release:

This release features a very aesthetic analog clock, smoothly integrated into main window design. Also, there are several other enhancements to make AudioSphere even more usable and convenient for you.

For example, now you have more built-in color schemes and system tray icons to choose from. The random colors generator was advanced with the "Harmonize" option, which allows you to get a very balanced and elegant color schemes with just one mouse click.

You can find more info from the official site

DirectX Uninstaller 0.13
Just as it sound, this program will uninstall DirectX8 if you are unhappy with performance and revert your system back to your previous version of DirectX. The current version will not work with WinME or Windows 2000. It's of course completely unsupported and not sure if it support latest DirectX8 release or just the original one. You can download it from TweakFiles (will close soon) or Ebrink (currently just saying will be up soon). You could also try the direct FTP link (700 kbyte)

Gravis Ultrasound Emulator (GUSemu)
From 1993 up to the end of the 90s the Gravis Ultrasound aka GUS was one of the most popular soundcards among programmers and musicians. Many demos, intros, games, trackers and players support it, a large amount of them is written primary or only for the GUS. However, the GUS is no longer produced, new computers do not even have ISA slots to stick a GUS into them and a GUS cannot be accessed out of a DOS box in Windows 2000 and similar environments. Waiting for a replacement of the GUS has come to an end, the release of GUSemu allows you to hear sound and music instead of silence. Head over to the Official Homepage of the Gravis Ultrasound Emulator (GUSemu) to download the Win9x/ME and Win2000 emulation drivers

Digit-Life/iXBT RightMark Audio Analyzer
Digit-Life/iXBT.com has officially introduced its non-commercial project - RightMark Audio Analyzer. The idea of the project is to develop an independent open-source testing application to check the quality of sound paths of any audio devices (for example, analog and digital in/outs of sound cards) in the same system of measured parameters. The application which was used in Digit-Life/iXBT.com's reviews now is available for downloading (with all the documentation). In addition to the amount of digital and graphic information the testing program also provides more simplified marks of measured parameters and the whole device like 'poor', 'good', 'excellent'). The source code of testing library is also available at the official web-site (projects for Microsoft Visual C++ and Borland C++ Builder are ready). The latest version of the testing software available for downloading is RMAA 3.0. They are also very much interested in your opinion and encourage you to join their forum at the official web-site at Audio.RightMark.org where you will also find the download links and more.

Sensaura's Utilities
Sensaura offer 4 utilities for download. One of them (SensInfo) is only intended for soundcards using Sensaura and detects the version numbers of all software related to sound reproduction on your machine. The purpose is to help Sensaura when they are assisting developers. The other 3 (Donuts, Athene and Player3D) are of more interest for end users and will run on any audio hardware device that supports DirectSound3D (DS3D), but also include optimisations for specific Sensaura features as a result of a number of menu options. The most interesting is Player3D that is a simple but very effective application that lets you position a single sound source (in the form of any WAV file) in 3D space whilst allowing full horizontal and vertical positioning. This utility also allows you to apply reverb effects using EAX 1.0, EAX 2.0 or I3DL2. It's a good way to check if your soundcard support these APIs. If you have a card that use Sensaura you will also find out if your drivers features the MacroFX and ZoomFX technology.

In addition to these 4 utils Sensaura also offers a screen saver that is said to feature Sensaura 3D positional audio sounds .

SiSoft Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant)
SiSoft Sandra is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software. Among many other things it's a good tool to see if your soundcard shares an IRQ with some other card which could cause problems.

Sound Control Plus v 2.10
Sound Control Plus v 2.10 is a freeware replacement Windows Sound Mixer applet which together with most of the features of the standard Windows mixer it also allows you to add hot keys to adjust any combination of your sound mixer volumes. Support to control Winamp with a series of hot keys, an on screen display, multiple languages and audio CD player is also included. Supports Windows 95 / 98 / NT4 / 2000 / XP and Millennium-Me.  Visit the official website for a full list of features, license and download information

Vortex 2 and EAX Support
If you have a Vortex 2 card with the 2048 drivers you will know that some games that support both A3D and DS3D with EAX autodetect the A3D support and won't let you enable EAX for that reason. The fix is to rename a couple files to trick the game into thinking there is no A3D support. Forum regular BrianL has posted a couple of simple batch files that you can use to automate this process. For details check out the post.

Vortex ID
Useful utility to determine which Vortex chipset is present on your system. Helpful for when you get a computer but aren't sure which Aureal product is in it. Just run in a DOS box or from the DOS prompt. You can download it from Vortex of Sound.

Vortex Tuner
The Vortex Tuner is a configuration utility for people using Vortex 2 cards with the 2048 drivers. Pavel offered the following info on the new 0.3 version:

-Added Xtalk cancellation and routing controls
- Added registry applying controls
- Added EAX 2 files and install button
- Changed interface, added values indicators
- No dll files needed to work now
- Some documentation about options