It had nothing to do with DRM. 3D audio on the PC was deliberately killed by Creative. They sued Aureal into bankruptcy, bought it in the court auction, and t

It had nothing to do with DRM. 3D audio on the PC was deliberately killed by Creative. They sued Aureal into bankruptcy, bought it in the court auction, and the day the sale closed they nuked the support website and took the drivers offline. They used similar scummy tactics to decapitate any other competitors. Then they considered their reverb based spatial audio solution sufficient, and promptly sat on their heels doing zero innovation while collecting a rent. And them as chip technology improved, a basic "Soundblaster 64" chip became so cheap that motherboard manufactures started bundling it in as a selling point (which made a ton of sense for non gaming PC users btw). Additionally MS stepped in and provided some software spatial functionality within DirectX, as processors had improved to the point where dedicated hardware for it wasn't necessary. Back then I worked in gamedev, and I briefly considered going into competition with MILES et all with a 3D audio library after the Aureal fiasco, after I stumbled on some interesting papers doing Fresnel Zone Tracing variations as low overhead spatial audio, but ultimately wasn't serious about it vs other options at the time.