wow so does this mean that any Bmax games will sound awful on Vista?
For the most part, yes. But it's mostly down to the state of the drivers for your soundcard. Mine, for example, are still in beta, but I get the impression that they're simply waiting for certification from MicroSoft.
The new driver from Skidracer goes a long way towards fixing the current issues. There's no longer a delay, but we do now get the crackle. Increasing the DSOUNDFRAG value of the driver does improve on this, but at the expense of greater latency, but nowhere near the second we are currently getting.
Most games sound *shite* under Vista
Actually, the games I tested sounded just fine, although a little flat when EAX options were not available.
I'm actually taking another look at FMOD and going to convert one of my freeware games to use it to see how it works. If all goes fine then I'll consider it for my shareware games, but then there's a licence fee to consider as well. Ideally, I'd like the sound driver with BMax to be fixed to a usable state.