Well since I make a living supporting Windows here is a little more information to ponder.

From here: http://www.openal.org/openal_vista.html
Quote
EAX has become the de facto standard for real-time effects processing. It has been incorporated in hundreds of games and has become the method of choice for game developers wanting to add interactive environment effects to their titles. Some of the best selling games of all time use the EAX extensions to DirectSound 5.0 and beyond, including Warcraft3, Diablo2, World of Warcraft, Half Life, Ghost Recon, F.E.A.R. and many others. Under Windows Vista, these games will be losing the hardware support that came as standard under the previous Windows Operating Systems, and will no longer provide real-time interactive effects, making them sound empty and lifeless by comparison to the way they sound on Windows XP.

Welcome to the Creative ALchemy Project Beta Site
http://preview.creativelabs.com/alchemy/default.aspx

Some applications which use OpenAL:
http://www.openal.org/titles.html

Which Vista Edition is Right for You? (none ?)
(actually a better chart than Microsoft has on their site)
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2068721,00.asp

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