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Topic on Glossary talk:Sound card

Mirh (talkcontribs)

In the beginning Creative created the EMU10K1 chip.
Unfortunately they forgot to build a card around, so even though they started to announce "a completely new concept in PC audio".. nothing happened at that time. Hype was preserved with bimonthly updates.
Finally on the 6 August, 1998 the already showcased soundblaster Live! saw the light of stores, with first EAX compatible games scheduled for "that fall".
Not everybody knows that every PCI SoundBlaster card was made supporting EAX. And that included even boards prior to Live!, such as Ensoniq AudioPCI cards (which had been acquired by Creative by then), with a program called "EAX upgrade"

In the same year, EAX 2.0 was also introduced.
Microsoft eventually decided to license all the previously mentioned stuff to include it in the upcoming directX 8

Relentlessly after just 5 months the shiny new third revision was at the starting line.
Omitting the fact that they promoted its support for older boards (which didn't happen)..... There won't be any further news for more than 2 years.
In the end, after 881 days, EAX 3.0 EAX ADVANCED HD was revealed, a week before Audigy boards debut and this was the first time forward compatibility was ruled out.
First EAH games were released after another year though (even if that claim is challenged by some less famous games)

Contrarily to wikipedia assertions EAX 4.0 did not come out with the Audigy 2. Instead, that became an exclusive of the even newer Audigy 2 ZS, with the first game to ship being Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy

Finally, latest -forever- revision, EAX 5 was suggested on May 12, 2005 at the reveal of the Xtreme Fidelity audio processor, but I believe the right date for the debut should be set on August 2, 2005 (and indeed the following day it started to be featured on the Creative website)

And that was the story (with more to come!)


Just for additional reference here are the EAX reference websites for the past nearly twenty years
1997-1999
1999-2000
2000-2005
2005-2008
2008-2010..nuthing! thanks to our friend, Adobe Flash. Some news were still posted here in the good old html though
2010-2013 (the list wasn't update in this time frame)