Recently got a laptop which runs BG2 wonderfully, save for one little problem: I have no environmental sound. I didn't think I would really miss it, but I do. It really helps immerse you in the world.
Did a little reading and apparently EAX hardware does not work on Windows Vista. But I've also heard of EAX emulation, which supposedly many modern cards can do.
Anyone know anything about this?
Vista and EAX
EAX is not disabled in Vista, rather the hardware-accelerated portion of DirectSound3D is disabled. Any game that uses OpenAL instead of DirectSound to do their EAX will be fine. Older games were made before OpenAL existed, so you will need something to wrap them if you want EAX. ALchemy is a program you can download for free from Creative for Vista for just that, but it only works on Audigy or X-Fi products.