For some years now, we've gotten used to there beingessentially two choices for PC audio: either stick with what came on your PCmotherboard, or add something from Creative if you want a more immersive gamingexperience. But it looks like Creative's dominance of PC audio is at last facing some realcompetition - thanks to the continuing success of the games console.

Getting Aureal

Once upon a time, back in the 20th century,Creative wasn't the only company producing premium PC sound cards for theconsumer. You might remember the Sonic Vortex from Aureal, which pioneeredpositional 3D audio, only to be eaten alive by a lawsuit from Creative in 1999.

Since the demise of Aureal, though, Creative has had a virtual monopolyon high-end PC audio, at least for the non-professional. Other manufacturers have continuedto produce sound cards. But with decent audio integrated onto mostmotherboards, the market for something separate has been narrowed down to hardcoregamers and sound professionals.

Successive versions of Creative's EAX have traditionally provided the most advancedsurround sound options for many games. So an Audigy or X-Fi has been the bestchoice, particularly for games using EAX levels above version 2, which onlyCreative cards support anyway. OpenAL is now taking over, but here againCreative has a clear lead.

Console-ation prizes

However, the majority of games are created for consoles,because the market is so much bigger than for PCs. In 2005, for example, $953million worth of PC games software were sold in the US, but $4.7 billion worth ofconsole games. So games developers tend to target consoles first, then portover to PC.

As a result, they don't necessarily put huge developmenteffort into PC-specific technologies, such as the very latest abilities ofDirectX, or hardware-accelerated sound effects. Not many titles have taken fulladvantage of the 64MB of X-RAM on the most expensive Creative X-Fi cardsbecause consoles don't have this available. Instead, developers are keepingtheir surround soundscapes within console limitations. With such a small subsetof even PC gamers having 64MB of X-RAM available, it isn't deemed profitable toprogram for them - except with a few flagship titles where Creative has helped footthe financial burden.

It saves a developer a lot of time - and money - where PCand console technologies overlap. We've already mentioned how AMD hopes to takeadvantage of triple-core console optimisation with a three-core version of itsPhenom chip.Something similar could be about to happen with surround sound.

Titles coded for the Xbox360 are required to support atleast Dolby Digital 5.1, and the Playstation 3 also offers this for connectionto a lounge-based surround sound system. So games titles for theseseventh-generation consoles will be focusing on Dolby Digital Live, or itscompetitor DTS Interactive (already used on a bunch of PS/2 games), rather thanEAX or OpenAL.

Sound advice

This is where new sound cards from Asus and Auzen hope to steala march on Creative. Asus's Xonar D2 is putting its money entirely on DolbyDigital Live and DTS Interactive becoming the defacto standards for PC gaming,thanks to the influence of the console.

Even more interesting is a new card from Auzen. We reportedabout Creative licensing its X-Fi technology to third parties back in April.Well, now it's here in the shape of Auzen's X-Fi Prelude 7.1. But the Preludeisn't just an X-Fi with better sound fidelity, thanks to its use of highersignal-to-noise ratio converters. Auzen is promising Dolby Digital Live and DTSInteractive support in a future driver release.

So Dolby Digital Live and DTS Interactive could be the new gamingsurround audio standards on the PC as well as the console. Although Creative isstill set to make money from its licensing deal with Auzen, it won't be theonly force in PC gaming audio over the next few years.