I'am interested in buying a New Sound Blaster SC but it says that it requires OpenAL to run as follows:-

"OpenAL is a cross-platform 3D Audio API that unlocks the full potential of Sound Blaster cards and is required if

used with Vista"

Q1) What the hell is OpenAL?

Q2) Is it another Add On that needs to be installed in vista before installation of sound card?

Q3) Do all new sound cards require it to run on Vista?

Thanks,

basically, uptil now windows sounds have gone through direct sound which is part of directx. however, they have done away with that and now hardware uses openal which is a open source replacement, developed mainly by creative.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAL

here is the wiki link, sorry not much help, however, you will need openal in anythnig where direct sound was used before.

Creative and other decent sound cards support OpenAL out of the box. So there is no need to install anything extra. If a game was written to OpenAL, its audio will be fine under Vista.

If a game was not written to OpenAL only to Direct X then this stream can be converted into OpenAL on-the-fly with an add-on software called ALchemy:
http://www.soundblaster.com/alchemy/

The problem is caused by Vista's lack of backwards compatibility with Direct X.
One of the reasons why Vista is such a failure in the marketplace.

Thanks, all of question answered plus more