Why is Creative ALchemy necessary?
As part of a major re-architecture of the audio subsystem in Windows Vista, Microsoft made the radical decision to remove the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) for DirectSound and DirectSound3D. The HAL is the layer that on previous Windows Operating Systems enabled an audio accelerator such as the Sound Blaster X-Fi to provide DirectSound3D applications with hardware-accelerated audio. Creative ALchemy allows SB X-Fi owners to run their favorite DirectSound3D games on Windows Vista and experience them as the developers intended – with full hardware accelerated 3D Audio and EAX support. This is achieved by translating DirectSound3D calls into OpenAL calls.
