The Tech Report has been try to get a hold of Realtek to discuss some missing EAX features for quite a while now.  The original inquiry was back in November, and they revisited it in May with the 1.66 driver.  There was no change in the driver’s EAX implementation in that version either.  Today they try the 1.71 driver, so you can find out if Realtek has addressed their concerns.
“Realtek’s series of ALC codec chips are by far the most popular solutions for integrated motherboard audio. Unfortunately, we discovered last year that the company’s drivers didn’t correctly implement a couple of key EAX positional audio features—occlusions and obstructions—rendering some games unplayable. We contacted Realtek about the issue, but they didn’t respond.

Six months later, we revisited Realtek’s drivers and found that little had changed. With the then-current 1.66 driver release, EAX occlusions and obstructions still weren’t being implemented properly, if at all. Again, we contacted Realtek, but the crab remained silent.

I didn’t expect to cover the issue again, particularly because Windows Vista has dropped support for hardware-accelerated DirectSound 3D, requiring special software that thus far only Creative provides for its own audio products. However, last week a reader emailed me suggesting that Realtek had fixed occlusion and obstruction support in its latest 1.71 drivers, so I decided to take them for a spin, with curious results.”

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Audio Corner