Creative ALchemy

still useful for old EAX-supported Games :)

check: List of games with EAX support

This version is out of date. A up to date version can be found here.

There's an even newer version 1.45.20 available now too (newer than the one above from SirYodaJedi): https://fichiers.touslesdrivers.com/61925/Creative_ALchemy_1.45.20.zip

Oddly enough I can't find this on the Creative website, but it seems to be legit, all files have a Creative digital signature etc. Seems it was released around May/July 2019.

Apparent changes (from this page: https://www.touslesdrivers.com/index.php?v_page=23&v_code=61925&v_langue=en)

Quote

- Updated the dsound.dll library to version 2.4.2.18.
- Support for Sound Blaster AE-7 and Sound Blaster AE-9 sound cards.

 

11 hours ago, infogram said:

the Creative ALchemy FAQ was updated: 

https://support.creative.com/kb/showarticle.aspx?sid=28967

 

 

I tried to create a patch for 1.45.20 using MST's diff on 1.40.03, sadly, it doesn't work.

Someone with better skills than mine would have to look into it sadly.

@camm I made a generic patcher for Alchemy a while back, only posted it on one forum though so it was probably pretty easy to miss...

Reposted here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/387vesqfe7o91f4/GenericALchemyDerestrictor-1.0.zip/file
Only tested with the 1.45.20 version, but it uses signature searching rather than offsets so should work with other versions too.

(hopefully this is fine to post here, seeing as the Glossary:Sound_card page links to similar patches too)

2 hours ago, infogram said:

@camm I made a generic patcher for Alchemy a while back, only posted it on one forum though so it was probably pretty easy to miss...

Reposted here: https://bayfiles.com/7fWdi8N4o0/GenericALchemyDerestrictor-1.0_zip
Only tested with the 1.45.20 version, but it uses signature searching rather than offsets so should work with other versions too.

(hopefully this is fine to post here, seeing as the Glossary:Sound_card page links to similar patches too)

Many thanks infogram, and you are correct, in my last few days of searching I didn't come across your patch anywhere.

After looking at your source code though, I'm feeling pretty dumb after my efforts from yesterday though :P.

Again, many thanks however :).

On 8/16/2020 at 12:07 AM, infogram said:

@camm I made a generic patcher for Alchemy a while back, only posted it on one forum though so it was probably pretty easy to miss...

Reposted here: https://bayfiles.com/7fWdi8N4o0/GenericALchemyDerestrictor-1.0_zip
Only tested with the 1.45.20 version, but it uses signature searching rather than offsets so should work with other versions too.

(hopefully this is fine to post here, seeing as the Glossary:Sound_card page links to similar patches too)

WARNING DOWNLOAD IS FULL OF TROJANS AND BUNDLES SOFTWARE AND GOODNESS KNOWS WHAT ELSE. I just had to disinfect my computer. It's a Flash installer downloader (at least that's the graphics it uses). Do not click !

On 3/21/2021 at 3:40 PM, michael z freeman said:

WARNING DOWNLOAD IS FULL OF TROJANS AND BUNDLES SOFTWARE AND GOODNESS KNOWS WHAT ELSE. I just had to disinfect my computer. It's a Flash installer downloader (at least that's the graphics it uses). Do not click !

Well I never put anything like that in there, not sure how that happened to you. Maybe the host is swapping the files or something like that, I just checked and it seemed to download fine for me at least, could it have been an ad that downloaded it?

The real download contains an ALchemyPatch.exe, readme.txt & src folder, if anyone finds something else is being downloaded please let me know.

Please is there any chance you could mirror this somewhere else, I was not able to get the download to work either, just constant popups, malware redirects etc etc, would be much appreciated.

On 8/23/2021 at 11:37 AM, BuckoA51 said:

Please is there any chance you could mirror this somewhere else, I was not able to get the download to work either, just constant popups, malware redirects etc etc, would be much appreciated.

Sure: https://www.mediafire.com/file/387vesqfe7o91f4/GenericALchemyDerestrictor-1.0.zip/file

Thanks! Going to try this on Alice when I get a moment.

On 8/16/2020 at 1:07 AM, infogram said:

@camm I made a generic patcher for Alchemy a while back, only posted it on one forum though so it was probably pretty easy to miss...

Reposted here: https://bayfiles.com/7fWdi8N4o0/GenericALchemyDerestrictor-1.0_zip
Only tested with the 1.45.20 version, but it uses signature searching rather than offsets so should work with other versions too.

(hopefully this is fine to post here, seeing as the Glossary:Sound_card page links to similar patches too)

I don't know why, but when I used this ALchemy doesn't allow me to add any games anymore.

On 10/12/2021 at 4:55 AM, idk said:

I don't know why, but when I used this ALchemy doesn't allow me to add any games anymore.

What version of ALchemy are you using? If you can't add a game, it might be because you have selected Registry Path instead of Game Path.

By the way, I've uploaded all of the publicly available versions of Creative ALchemy I could find: https://archive.org/details/creative-alchemy-all-versions

infograms' generic patcher seems to only work with 1.45.xx versions.

On 10/17/2021 at 10:21 PM, mrpenguinb said:

What version of ALchemy are you using? If you can't add a game, it might be because you have selected Registry Path instead of Game Path.

By the way, I've uploaded all of the publicly available versions of Creative ALchemy I could find: https://archive.org/details/creative-alchemy-all-versions

infograms' generic patcher seems to only work with 1.45.xx versions.

Oh wow, nice collection, had a quick look at an older version, seems 1.43.20 at least uses some kind of protection on both dsound.dll & Alchemy.exe, PEiD says that it's SafeDisc/SafeCast 2.80.012, seems the code for checking HW which we have to patch over is all obfuscated/encrypted in some way, can find some strings used by that func, but no idea about the func itself 😞

Not really sure how to get around something like that, I guess it'd need a SafeDisc/SafeCast 2.80.012 unpacker, but haven't been able to find one yet...

Good thing they stopped using it for 1.45.xx 🙂

E: hmm looking into it more, it kinda looks like ALchemy has a backdoor of sorts, if it's able to load the file "C:\Windows\SysWOW64\CTMBHA.dll" then it seems to skip a bunch of HW checks.

Maybe copying a small DLL like "C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Version.dll" and naming it that could work, doesn't seem like it does any other checks on the file, just need to make sure it's the same kind of CPU as ALchemy itself (only ever 32-bit I think?)

In 1.45.20 both ALchemy.exe & dsound.dll have checks for that file, in 1.43.20 I only saw it mentioned inside dsound.dll though, not sure about ALchemy.exe, but could have just been obfuscated somehow.

I'm not completely sure this backdoor code actually gets used or not though, don't have a way to test it out right now, would appreciate if anyone can try it and see if it works with a non-patched ALchemy.

(also on 32-bit windows it might need to go inside System32 instead of SysWOW64)

I fixed it by deleting the contents of the ini file, but you should back it up because it has some game specific settings for some games.

4 hours ago, sean8102 said:

Just curious. Is there any reason to use a version like "1.45.03 Universal" over just using the latest version (as of right now 1.45.20)? Just wondering what "Universal" means really. I've been using 1.45.20 and for the few games I use it on (Condemned, Max Payne 2 etc) it's been fine.

Do you have a Creative sound card installed? If you do, then using ALchemy Universal is not needed.

If you don't have a Creative sound card installed, then using the latest version of ALchemy Universal is recommended since it officially supports Windows 10.

Hi,

Anyone knows if Alchemy still works in Windows 11 24/H2, I recently reinstalled my X-Fi card using some drivers I found on techpowerup forums and all eax3.0 and older as well as OpenAL games work correctly, I can hear the EAX effects but F.E.A.R. it's not working despite adding it to Alchemy, the only thing I found different to other games is that this is a EAX5.0 with Direct Sound API. I'm thinking maybe Alchemy no longer works with this version of Windows.

On 1/18/2025 at 5:21 PM, Dantrigger said:

Hi,

Anyone knows if Alchemy still works in Windows 11 24/H2, I recently reinstalled my X-Fi card using some drivers I found on techpowerup forums and all eax3.0 and older as well as OpenAL games work correctly, I can hear the EAX effects but F.E.A.R. it's not working despite adding it to Alchemy, the only thing I found different to other games is that this is a EAX5.0 with Direct Sound API. I'm thinking maybe Alchemy no longer works with this version of Windows.

Maybe try to get DSOAL working first with the suggestions here and then swap the dsound.dll with ALchemy's?
https://airtable.com/shrtTsUtiAJQ7wFGI/tblNOTdmp5nHXfFGU/viwjDPuKOjBnIQunv/recg8ppdNkjRgFC7S
Particularly the script to fix dsound.dll loading, also mentioned in this relevant thread: https://github.com/kcat/dsoal/issues/34#issuecomment-1139239755

Also, I think DirectSound only supported up to EAX4, which some reports say is the max supported by FEAR.
Apparently EAX5 is only available in some native OpenAL games (which wouldn't need DSOAL/ALchemy wrappers anyway)

1 hour ago, 3dj said:

Maybe try to get DSOAL working first with the suggestions here and then swap the dsound.dll with ALchemy's?
https://airtable.com/shrtTsUtiAJQ7wFGI/tblNOTdmp5nHXfFGU/viwjDPuKOjBnIQunv/recg8ppdNkjRgFC7S
Particularly the script to fix dsound.dll loading, also mentioned in this relevant thread: https://github.com/kcat/dsoal/issues/34#issuecomment-1139239755

Also, I think DirectSound only supported up to EAX4, which some reports say is the max supported by FEAR.
Apparently EAX5 is only available in some native OpenAL games (which wouldn't need DSOAL/ALchemy wrappers anyway)

Thanks for the suggestion but I fixed it by installing an old version of Alchemy which I had on my HDD, I installed ver 1.41.00 and now EAX is working as expected in F.E.A.R.

I tried installing 1.45.20 and 1.45.19 but none of them work with F.E.A.R.

 

I can't find any other post mentioning something similar but it looks like Creative broke support at least for F.E.A.R. at some point when updating Alchemy, I can't find any other explanation for an older version fixing the issue