Microsoft Vista will soon be available to everyone on 30 January, but gamers may have an unpleasant audio surprise in store.

Older, or legacy, games, like F.E.A.R and WoW reportedly revert back to basic stereo when they're run on Vista.

This has prompted Creative to work on a new piece of software, ALchemy, to fix the problem and bring back surround sound.

According to Guardian blogger Keith Stuart, gamers may also find that Final Fantasy XI doesn't work properly on the operating system.

“The result of Microsoft's removal of the hardware audio abstraction layer for Vista will confuse many gamers”, said Steve Erickson, VP of audio at Creative.

“Many people who have experimented with popular legacy games on the Vista beta release have been unable to experience multi-channel audio, with Creative and other sound cards, and even with the motherboard audio."

“This is not something that a driver update can fix.”

>> Read - A Creative solution to Vista sound problems
>> Link - Creative ALchemy