The changes to the way Windows Vista plays audio mean that surround sound has been disabled for many people.

Creative has produced this software for owners of Sound Blaster X-Fi sound cards to return this feature.

Alchemy is free for most X-Fi cards but $10 dollars for owners of SoundBlaster Audigy cards.

Once installed, this software tells the soundcard to use the OpenAL technology rather than Directsound. The upshot of this is that games that use EAX or Directsound3D will have surround sound restored.

This requires some files to be installed into the game folders directly. The Alchemy software can do this automatically or advanced users can opt to do it themselves.

Work is under way at the moment adding this capability into the X-Fi drivers.

System requirements:

• Microsoft Windows Vista
• An appropriate Sound Blaster X-Fi series sound card
• An appropriate Sound Blaster X-Fi series driver installed and functioning properly

The beta implementation of ALchemy relies on the presence of DSP capability found in these products:

* Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro
* Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty
* Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum
* Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtremegamer Fatal1ty Pro Series
* Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtremegamer
* Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtrememusic

Note: The Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio uses a host-based DSP architecture, and will not work with this implementation of ALchemy.