Does anyone know what sound engine Witcher 2 uses and if it supports hardware accelerated audio?

I know the first Witcher used EAX... but I can't seem to find any info on the Witcher 2 sound engine.

EAX has been dead since Windows Vista came out... no new game is going to have that.

Every game supports hardware accelerated audio, you don't need EAX for it to use your sound card.

But only if your card supports OpenAL. You can still use ALchemy with TW2.

The Witcher 2 uses FMOD which can support hardware accelerated audio on sound blaster cards, though it is very likely that feature is not used.

Creative Alchemy may or may not accelerate the processing in hardware, but there is surely an additional overhead from the wrapper which probably make any possible performance gains dubious at best, if not a loss.

I too wish more games would support proper hardware acceleration. The X-Fi has so much processing potential it's a shame not to use it. With the power of today's multicore PC's though I understand why it's not.

I think that ALchemy only comes in to play if there are any Direct Sound calls.

True. I remembered reading that FMOD supports a DirectSound backend, which I just confirmed. However I also discovered that they recommend using their software mixer instead of DirectSound.

So it looks like the DirectSound calls are limited to playback only, if they are used at all. Which makes Creative Alchemy for The Witcher 2 either completely useless or completely useless and a waste of CPU cycles.

I'm going to request that you clarify that statement?

I agree with some of your statements but disagree with others.

What makes you think that the OpenAL conversion is not processed on the soundcard as opposed to the CPU? The x-fi line of card contain a 400mhz dedicated sound processor. ( see http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,1813721,00.asp and http://www.gog.com/en/forum/the_witcher_2/openal_eax_or_software/page1 )

We're taking a giant step backwards in moving the sound engine processing to the CPU in my opinion, all because people are too cheap to buy a soundcard or misinformed.

Entire companies have been formed around this concept. Look at Rapture3D, they basically wrote a software based sound card that chews up CPU cycles to mimic hardware accelerated EAX.

For lower CPU utilization and better audio, a creative labs sound card is the way to go: http://techreport.com/articles.x/8884/7 but I digress....

If W2 is using FMOD there may still be hope. See, the catch with FMOD is that if it determines you are running windows 7 or Vista it will disabled DirectSound calls.

If you run the exe for the game you're launching in WindowsXP compatibility mode, FMOD will still make the DirectSound calls which then can be snatched up by ALchemy and sent to the soundcard. I'll have to do some testing with the W2.

I wrote a similar blog post about this in regards to WoW and hardware accelerated sound.

http://blog.k1dblitz.com/2010/12/world-of-warcraft-how-to-enable.html

Just tried this. It might be placebo, but I think the sound is noticeably better run in this mode w/ ALchemy.