Aureal 3rd Dimension Technology

Aureal 3rd Dimension Technology ( A3D ) is a sound process developed by Aureal to make ambient noises in computer games appear as real as possible and to convey spatial sound.

The sound process was used for the first time in 1997 at NASA for flight simulations and then found its way into the PC game area.

A3D was a direct competitor to Creatives EAX and was published in two versions (A3D and A3D 2.0), with only a few sound cards supporting A3D 2.0 . Support and development for A3D was discontinued in 2000, as the Aureal company was bought by Creative after several legal disputes over sound technology.

An important advantage of A3D over EAX was that with A3D the entire path of a sound could be calculated. This not only took into account which materials a sound encounters, but also from which direction reflected sounds come. While with EAX a sound only comes from one direction or from anywhere, with A3D it can be calculated that the sound first reaches the character, then reflects again from wall XY and so on. EAX only calculates reflection effects for reflections, A3D calculates the correct path of the sound and thus no reflection effect, but the reflection itself as it really takes place.