It's depressing to see developers abandoning OpenAL. No more true binaural 3D sound. Fortunately, only FPS is really affected...
I don't agree here. Are you refering to CMSS-3D ability to use OpenAL and DS3D's 3D sound coordinates to create true binaural 3D sound instead of just plain flat virtualization from 7.1 source? Because I can't think of any better way to improve positional cues than using 3D coordinates. CMSS does not just have positional cues improvements as a byproduct of the processing, that's not right. It's the whole point of it. In DS3D and OpenAL games, CMSS uses the 3D sound APIs to render a 3D sonic scene then process it to create binaural 3D on headphone using head-related transfer function (once for each ear), the process is analog to 3D graphics rendering you would see in 3D with glasses (rendered once for each eye). (7.1 surround virtualization is probably rendered the same way, except the 3D coordinates are arbitrary, which are the 7+1 sources arbitrary distance from the listener, and everything is essentially on the same plane. It's binaural 3D on one horizontal plane.)
If that algorithm you are refering to doesn't make use of 3D coordinates which is only provided by 3D sound API, I can't see how it can improves positional sound cues other than doing some kind of in-house virtualization à la stereo to surround virtualization. Furthermore, if I understand it correctly, if one enables CMSS over the "positional cues improvement algorithm", it would mean the sound is processed twice for spatialization. That can't be good, the source for the 2nd processing would already be biased, unless CMSS takes it into account. It makes no sense to me to separate that algorithm from CMSS.
All this to say, I don't get your positional cue improvement thingy. Where did you get the information? I'm a scientist I can't just believe, sorry.
With all this, I'm hesitating again... Maybe I should get a Titanium HD for older games and CMSS. CMSS's Binaural 3D sound really intrigues me. The 7.1 surround virtualisation sucks on paper compared to binaural. Damn you guys!
But I have this question now, can THX TruStudio Pro or the new SBX ProStudio use DS3D and OpenAL 3D coordinates? Or should I say can they produce real binaural 3D sound?