3DsoundSurge: Visit to the Creative EMU Technology Center


	Mark Muschett visits the Creative/EMU Technology Center

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Visit to the Creative EMU Technology Center
Mark Muschett Last revised on:28/4/99

On Monday April 26th I joined representatives from 3 other web sites (3D Audio Immersion, Thresh's Firing Squad and C/Net (Gamecenter) for an up close and personal day at the Joint Creative EMU Technology Center.

The day started off with a very interesting overview of the history of EMU. Co-founder and current chief wizard Dave Rossum led us on the trip down memory lane which told the story of his interest in synthesizers, how EMU was founded, how they developed their first analog synthesizer, their first digital synthesizer, right through to today's high end technology. Many of the sound effects that you hear on TV and in the movie theaters have been done on EMU Emulators. Some of that same technology is what was utilized in the development of the Sound Blaster Live which was probably the main reason that Creative purchased EMU in 1993. Dave Rossum also gave us a brief overview on the architecture of the EMU 10K1.

Before diving right into the Sound Blaster Live we moved over to one of the sound rooms where Tim Swartz gave an overview of some of the amazing EMU effects engine technology used in effects studios. Here I am talking about products such as the Emulator 4 and the Proteus 2000. He also demonstrated some of the power of sound fonts before we moved to another sound room where the Audio Production Studio was demonstrated. This low priced ($600-$700 street price) studio board is built around the same EMU 10K1 chip used in the Sound Blaster Live. The difference is the higher end components surrounding it and the way in which the DSP on the 10K1 is utilized. Also different is the software bundle as this board is designed to be an all in one recording studio that does multi-track hard disk recording, digital mixing, and real-time DSP effects!. All this recording studio stuff is a little out of my league so if this is something that tickles your fancy I will point you in the direction of the EMU web site for more details.

So I can guess what you are thinking by now...what about the Live?! Well, we were treated to a presentation and demo of host of new features that will be introduced through Liveware 2.0. Creative really wants to emphasize that Liveware is about much more than 3D audio.

In fact, a lot of great work has been done in making the interface of the Sound Blaster Live much more user friendly. With the release of Liveware 2.0, the days of clicking into multiple windows to configure speaker settings, application EAX presets, mixer levels, device selection, etc will be gone. Liveware 2.0 implements a very intuitive set of pull downs that makes running various applications a real breeze. The new interface allows EAX presets to be associated with an application so you only need to set the association once and from that point on your legacy applications will launch with your selected EAX preset. This ease of use carries through to the other applications such as having sound fonts associated with MIDI files so they auto load when the file is played and a cool new mini-disk software organizer for those of you into that technology. Of course, to use the mini-disk interface you will need the add-on optical IO card to connect it to your Live. There were really tons of tweaks to the interface but since its still in beta I will leave it at that for now.

So what about EAX? Liveware brings the the version up to 2.0. For starters, they have added a whole bunch of new EAX presets and made it much more tweakable for developers. I am not going to get into the details of EAX settings in this trip summary as we are working on a Gamer's Guide to EAX 2.0 and 3.0 which will go through it feature by feature. One of the new 'gimmicky' real time effects that was demonstrated using a microphone was changing a male voice to female and the opposite can also be done. Pretty neat!. The Sound Blaster Live experience has been revised to show off all the new features of the Live including a greatly improved (but still not flashy) EAX demo which does and excellent job of showing off two of the most important new features for EAX from my gamer's perspective.

What I am referring to is occlusions and obstructions. Creative uses the term occlusion to describe a situation where a sound is coming from behind an enclosed space. For example, the listener could be in one room with a stereo blaring in a second enclosed room with no opening. In these circumstances, Creative's statistical model simulates a sound where both the direct path and reverb is muffled as a result of the total occlusion of the sound. Obstructions refer to a situation where there is an object between the listener and the sound source but but there is not a complete blockage of all sound between the listener and sound source. Again, using the same example of a listener and a stereo, speakers may be obstructed by their placement behind a bar counter with the listener on the other side. The direct path of the sound to the listener in such a real life situation would be blocked, however the sound reverberating around the room would not be blocked. In these types of circumstances, Creative's statistical model simulates a sound where the direct path is muffled but the reverb is not.

The session then moved into some of the features to be implemented in EAX 3.0. Again, I will not get into details here as we will cover all of this in our upcoming Gamers Guide to EAX 2.0 and 3.0.

Next on the agenda was, for me, the other very important new feature of Liveware 2.0. That is improved 3D audio. The Live feature improved HRTFs for headphones and 2 speaker modes and a totally revamped 4 speaker mode which features HRTFs on all four speakers with cross talk cancellation. The new HRTFs, aside from adding an improved sense of front/rear, implements the challenging up/down axis for the first time on the Sound Blaster Live. For testing the newly improved 3D audio, we were sent into small padded cells :) the first of which had the Nov. 98 web release drivers with a 4 speaker configuration, the second with the new Liveware 2.0 drivers for four speakers, a third with 2 speakers and Liveware 2.0 drivers and a fourth with some nice Sennheiser headphones to show off the new headphone HRTFs. The machines were running either Half-Life or Aliens vs. Predator. Unfortunately, with multiple sets of FPS 1000s and 2000s firing away the best I can do is tell you that the 3D audio has definitely improved. By how much will have to wait for more testing of the Liveware 2.0 drivers in a controlled environment.

Liveware 2.0 is scheduled for release sometime in May and will be available for downloading (without the revised Sound Blaster Live Experience) or via a CD with the revised Sound Blaster Live Experience for a very small fee. Keep in mind that what I have just covered is by no means a comprehensive list of the enhancements in Liveware 2.0. It is intended to simply highlight a few of the features that caught my attention.

After the gaming demos we sat down for bit to check out the NOMAD, which is Creative's MP3 player. A 64 MB version of the NOMAD is expected to retail for $249.99 and a 32 MB version will be available for $169.99 from Creative. We also saw their new optical I/O card before moving through the Tech Center to check out some music/audio software that was currently in the early stages of development. No details to offer there other than what they had working was again pretty neat.

To sum up my visit, I would offer that there is some excellent work going on at the Creative/EMU technology center and at other Creative Offices such as the ones in Milpitas, California and Singapore and that Creative's scientists, techs and other staff are working hard to bring you a fantastic audio experience. Liveware 2.0 will definitely be a big step forward for the Sound Blaster Live!

If you have any comments, questions or see any errors in the article contact Mark@3dsoundsurge.com