What is A3D?

    Aureal A3D is a breakthrough audio technology that brings an authentic three-dimensional sound quality to a pair of ordinary speakers. With
    Aureal A3D, you hear dynamically created and positioned sounds while playing games or visiting websites that have been encoded with
    Aureal A3D - adding a whole new dimension to the gaming experience.

    A3D is a two-part technology; one part is the API – the code that enables A3D in a game; the other part is the algorithms – the actual
    processing of the 3D audio information. 

    The A3D API provides an easy way for game developers to write a game featuring hardware accelerated 3D positional audio. A3D is similar to
    Microsoft’s DirectSound 3D, but has many improvements. 

    All true A3D-capable sound cards use Aureal’s advanced algorithms for positioning the sound sources in virtual space. While the game uses
    the A3D API to specify where particular sounds will be placed, it is up to the sound card’s drivers and algorithms to actually make it appear as
    if sounds are coming from behind you, above you, and all around you. 

     

What is the difference between A3D 1.0 and A3D 2.0?

    A3D 1.0 is our original audio technology which provided for hardware accelerated positioning of 3D audio.

    A3D 2.0 is an update to this technology, keeping our top-notch 3D positional audio, but improving upon it by adding additional new features:

         Occlusions: how sound is affected when it comes from behind a door or wall or other object that blocks sound from coming directly to
         us 
         Reflections: how sound is affected when it bounces off walls, ceilings, floors 
         Environments: dynamic control to simulate the effects of real-world surroundings, such as air, water, fog, etc. 
         Wavetracing: Aureal’s process of using the game’s graphics geometry to process audio sources and environments and render the
         sounds with proper and accurate occlusions and reflections 
         A2D: based on a heavily optimized, feature reduced version of A3D, A2D runs stand-alone on any host CPU to emulate A3D through
         software allowing A3D 2.0 applications to run on any PC platform, even ones without A3D hardware support 

How do I know if a game supports A3D?

What games use A3D 1.0 and what games use A3D 2.0?

What is Wavetracing?

    Developed over many years in conjunction with clients such as NASA, Matsushita, and Disney, this new technology is a key advancement in
    audio processing. Aureal Wavetracing parses the 3D geometry description of a space to trace sound waves in real-time as they are reflected
    and occluded by passive acoustic objects in the 3D environment.

    So what does that mean is plain English? When a game programmer designs the various levels in his game, he creates different rooms or
    environments using walls, doors, ceilings, floors, windows, and other objects. All that information is sent to your graphics card in order to draw
    it on screen. Aureal wavetracing uses that same data to get the dimensions of the areas and where everything is located in them so that when
    we render sound, we will render it accurately with all the proper occlusions, reflections, and doppler shifting.

What are reflections and occlusions?

    When we hear sound, we hear it in many different ways. The first manner we hear it in is called direct path; this mean that the sound travels
    from the source of the sound to our ears with nothing in between – the sound has made a direct path to our ears.

    We also hear sounds through reflections; when sound leaves its source, it doesn’t just travel in a straight line. Sounds spread and will bounce
    into walls, depending on the room or area you are in. These sounds are called reflections because the sound reflects off parts of the room:
    walls, ceiling, floor, doors, etc. Reflections are a more precise way of rendering what most people refer to as reverb. These reflections will
    sound different depending on the various characteristics of the room.

    If you were to stand in a small cave and scream at the top of your lungs, it would sound completely differently then if you did that screaming
    while standing in your kitchen. The shape of the walls (flat vs. curved), what the walls are made out of (rock vs. drywall), how small the room
    area is, etc. will all change and shape the sounds differently. 

    Another method we hear sounds is after they have been occluded. Sounds do not always come from sources directly near us; they may come
    from behind a wall, through a partially open doorway, or through a closed window. All these sounds will be occluded; the sounds will hit the
    wall, the door, the window and – depending on the material it is passing through – the sound will come through very differently. The most
    likely effect is that the sound will be muffled. In some cases, if a wall is very thick and not porous, the sound will not pass through at all.

    Aureal Wavetracing was designed to use the game’s graphics geometry (where each piece of a "room" is) to create the reflections – to bounce
    sounds accordingly – and generate occlusions – to muffle or block out sounds accurately. This also means that each wall or door or window or
    other object can have different reflective and transmittance properties. A wooden door will reflect sound differently than one made out of
    steel. A solid concrete wall will occlude more sound than one made out of drywall. In the A3D 2.0 API, objects can be given distinctive
    properties so that they reflect and occlude just like they would in the real world.

What about A3D imitations?