What's Up With Computer Audio? 327
Mr.Tweak writes "Last month during QuakeCon it became clearly apparent that computer audio has become somewhat of a forgotten component in the computer industry when talking to gamers and listening to companies at the gaming event. We'll present some benchmark numbers of five different sound solutions as well as provide commentary along the way on our thoughts of computer audio solutions and what should be done to improve things using nVidia's SoundStorm APU as an example."
Pfffft... whatever! (Score:5, Interesting)
No game since has ever matched DOOM/DOOM2's music effect upon the player, in my opinion.
Re:Pfffft... whatever! (Score:2, Insightful)
So, I don't know how it compares, but the music on Diablo added an awful lot to the atmosphere. It's reasonably scary, and when it gets the sound of an angry charger put over it you end up almost jumping out of your seat.
Oh, Total Annihilation had a great score, but it didn't actually do much for the game, it just sounded great.
Re:Pfffft... whatever! (Score:5, Funny)
They had a neat trick. To unlock safes, you had to push the volume up of your monitor to the max to hear the "click". But when an SS entered the room and screamed "Achtung" at the max volume the C64 could produce, you would jump 3 feet behind and rush to take back control of your keyboard to take whatever action necessary to get out of this mess.
The C64... ahhhhh... the good old days.
Re:Pfffft... whatever! (Score:4, Insightful)
Totally agree.
For grins and giggles, go download "The Last Ninja" and throw it into your c64 emulator of choice (Vice). The soundtrack on that is absoluetly amazing, and it was made.. what, almost 16 years ago? One of the best gaming soundtracks ever.
Re:Pfffft... whatever! (Score:3, Informative)
I hate the thought that Last Ninja II may already be released when the download over my 150 baud line emulator finishes...
The soundtrack on that is absoluetly amazing, and it was made.. what, almost 16 years ago? One of the best gaming soundtracks ever.
Yeah - enjoy it in new glory [kwed.org]. (But please don't torture the little server to much.)
Re:Pfffft... whatever! (Score:3, Informative)
For all sorts of SID goodness check out the High-Voltage SID Collection [c64.org], though you probably already know about it if you can name SID composers =]
Re:Pfffft... whatever! (Score:3, Interesting)
Reading back perhaps you're being sarcastic
Re:Pfffft... whatever! (Score:4, Informative)
Ditto (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Pfffft... whatever! (Score:3, Interesting)
I've since made the synth an external stand alone sound module which I use with a MIDI keyboard.
Re:Pfffft... whatever! (Score:4, Funny)
Not even close to the days before they even invented sound. Walking uphill barefoot in 4 feet of snow and you needed nothing to get your adrenaline going.
Damn lazy kids these days.
Re:Pfffft... whatever! (Score:4, Interesting)
Not just by scaring the daylights out of you but in Doom3 and half-life its nice to hear things behind you as well as in front.
With advanced sound algorithms you can hear how far a battle is in Unreal tournament and how fast the rocket is heading to you.
A split second by your reaction time is all it takes for you to get fragged and your opponent to claim another frag.
I dont game as much but sound is essential as well as high frame rates.
Re:Pfffft... whatever! (Score:5, Funny)
THC !!! [thc.com] What have you been smoking ?
Re:Pfffft... whatever! (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course Bobby Prince didn't realize he was doing MIDI covers of metal bands for Doom, but if you've heard much Alice in Chains, Pantera, Slayer, etc. it's pretty damn obvious. To try to pass that stuff off as his own work was just shameless.
Of course, it's hilariously appropriate that the Doom3 title track is a ripoff of a Tool song.
article page 1 (Score:4, Informative)
Author: Cameron Wilmot
Editor: Steve Dougherty
Category: Audio
Created: 06/09/2004
What's up with computer audio? - Page 1 [Introduction]
Introduction
Last month during QuakeCon near Dallas, Texas in the United States it became clearly apparent to me that computer audio has become somewhat of a forgotten component in the computer industry when talking to gamers and listening to companies at the gaming event.
When nVidia released the mighty onboard SoundStorm APU (Audio Processing Unit) back with their nForce chipset for the Athlon XP platform, gamers and general PC enthusiasts around the world were thrilled and thought they were in for a change for the years ahead as far as cinematic quality computer audio goes. It seems like they were wrong though as nVidia basically confirmed at QuakeCon that the hardware powered SoundStorm APU which is the only sound solution capable of encoding Dolby Digital (or AC-3) on the fly would not be part of the upcoming nForce4 chipset. When nVidia let this news out to gamers in the crowd, it was clear that the group was thoroughly disappointed.
Not only was the nVidia SoundStorm APU the only sound solution capable of encoding Dolby Digital on the fly (which produces true and accurate 5.1 surround sound via either optical or digital coaxial cable to a set of computer speakers supporting these connections or to an external amplifier), it was also hardware accelerated meaning it does not chew up precise CPU cycles like other inferior onboard solutions which in turn reduces frames per second and do not have the ability to send separate digital signals to anymore than two channels. You'll get 5.1 sound using three analog cables but this type of setup is nowhere near as impressive or realistic as what the SoundStorm produces.
But you might as well forget about high quality and impressive sound solutions such as the SoundStorm as nVidia and their motherboard partners in Taiwan don't seem to think this type of quality sound solution is important to consumers. If you can't justify spending hundreds of dollars on an external PCI sound card from companies like Creative, Phillips or Terratec (which is very understandable), also taking into account that all these sound solutions don't offer on the fly hardware encoding of Dolby Digital, you'll need to stick with the cheap and nasty onboard solutions from companies such as Cmedia and Realtek. While these onboard solutions have improved a little over the past few years as far as CPU utilization and general sound quality production goes, computer users deserve much better.
Steve (our news poster and resident SoundStorm expert) and I collected a total of five different sound solutions including onboard SoundStorm via the ABIT NF7-S motherboard, Terratec Sixpack 5.1+, Sound Blaster Live! Value, Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro and a cheap Cmedia 8738 PCI sound card. We have then compared the true real-world performance (as hard as it was) of all five sound cards in a bunch of today's most popular games over an entire weekend via an expensive high-end Onkyo digital receiver and 5.1 Jamo speaker system . We'll present the benchmark numbers to you and the struggles involved in doing so as well as provide commentary along the way on our thoughts of computer audio solutions and what should be done.
It's the forgotten computer component but we are hoping today we can help kick start the revival of computer audio for the better, highlighting a few key points which seem not important to most of the design and manufacturing leaders in the industry.
article page 2 (Score:4, Informative)
What is so good about SoundStorm?
The best place to start is discussing exactly what is so good about SoundStorm and why it should be considered the benchmark for computer audio. In an ideal world, the standards the SoundStorm produce should be just that, the standard - and then we should be seeing improvements over those base standards much more often than we do at the moment.
First and foremost, the beauty of the nVidia SoundStorm APU is that it is capable of encoding Dolby Digital 5.1 on the fly via hardware acceleration and not software (CPU). This means that in any games you play and as long as you are using optical or digital coaxial cable with your surround sound speakers (anything above 2.1 channels), the hardware APU will do the intensive job of reproducing the sound from the game to Dolby Digital 5.1 or AC-3 so you get proper positional surround sound.
No other computer sound solution on the market is capable of doing this - Creative can do this with their EAX positional surround sound via enhancing the signal along analog cables (and others can do the same type of thing with Microsoft DirectSound 3D and less so A3D these days) but it will only work in games which support EAX (and DirectSound 3D via DirectX and A3D) and it's not as good as Dolby Digital in terms of true cinematic realistic positional sound. Onboard sound solutions utilizing their digital SPDIF output (whether it be optical or coaxial, depending on what the manufacturer chooses to go for) can only output to the front two speakers as without an encoded 5.1 signal from the computer end beforehand, what is being sent through your digital optical/coax cable is limited to stereo (two channels) of sound... so you can kiss your surround sound in games goodbye. The only way you can achieve proper positional surround sound in gaming with all other sound solutions on the market apart from the mighty SoundStorm is to utilize their analogue outputs (centre/sub, front, & rear jacks) but then it is not digital so you don't get the true to life effects of proper digital.
Gaming companies could (in theory) implement a feature within their titles for RAW Dolby Digital 5.1 to be outputted as you play but for all sound solutions that don't have real-time hardware Dolby Digital encoding capabilities, it means your CPU would be taking a massive hit, making the game run like a dog. The beauty of SoundStorm is that it takes the hit off your CPU with the encoding on the fly and does it with its own APU in isolated hardware. Some brand new AC'97 2.3 audio codec's are said to be able to provide Dolby Digital encoding capabilities but it is done via software which means your CPU does all the work and the performance hit of performing such an intensive task would be bad and we aren't even sure if it will be on the fly like SoundStorm.
The only time other sound solutions that are able to play back a pure DTS or Dolby Digital 5.1 signal is when it is already in RAW format at the computer end - like when you play a DVD with PowerDVD. This software has an option in the settings to allow your audio to be outputted in a RAW untouched format called "SPDIF". It's merely a pass-through of untouched audio content on the DVD. The amplifier gets the signal that way, and decodes it by itself, which is exactly the same principle as that of a standalone DVD player connected to your amplifier in a home entertainment setup.
The final point about why the SoundStorm is so good is the fact that it does all its audio processing via its own hardware controller which is a more expensive design. Cheap onboard solutions from companies such as Cmedia and Realtek rely on the CPU to take care of all the audio processing tasks. Since valuable CPU cycles are being used up, your overall frames per second will be reduced. When you play games such as Battlefield Vietnam (which is one of the most impressive games I have played as far as sound goes) you really notice the d
article page 3 (test setup) (Score:4, Informative)
Test System System
Processor(s): AMD Athlon XP-M 2600+ @ 3900+ (2.6GHz)
Motherboard(s): ABIT NF7-S
Memory(s): 2x 512MB Buffalo 2-2-2-5 BH-5 @ 221MHz
Video Card(s): Gigabyte Radeon X800 XT PE 256MB (Supplied by Gigabyte)
Hard Disk(s): 2 x 200GB Western Digital "JB" in RAID 0
Sound Card(s): nVidia SoundStorm via ABIT NF7-S (hardware accelerated), Terratec Sixpack 5.1+ (hardware accelerated), Sound Blaster Live! Value (hardware accelerated), Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro (hardware accelerated) and Cmedia 8738 PCI (software)
Operating System Used: Microsoft Windows 2000 SP4
Drivers Used: nVidia nForce 4.27, ATI Catalyst 4.8, Cmedia v0644, nVidia Audio driver 4.42, Terratec 5.12.01.3057, AUDIGY2_1_84_50 and SBLive! 1.03.001
We tested every game with a resolution of 1280 x 1024 with AA 4x / AF 8x forced on in the Windows control panel. Vertical Sync was disabled for all testing. Maximum sound detail was enabled where possible to make sure the SoundStorm was working the hardest - encoding Dolby Digital on the fly for true positional surround sound in all games. We also provided results with sound disabled to give you an idea of the overall impact of sound in games on frame rate.
We quickly discovered that providing you guys with a 100% true and accurate measurement of sound card frames per second performance would be a tough job. While we cannot be 100% accurate, we opted for a pure real-world testing environment instead. Except for UT2004 and Q3A (our testing showed a good and consistent difference in results) we did not use any pre-recorded timedemos as we want to provide a true indication of performance - as tedious as it was. Instead for the rest of the games we fired up FRAPS and measured the average frames per second while we actually played the game each time.
This is the part where we cannot be 100% accurate - we played the same stage in each game, shot the same amount of rockets, jumped the same amount of times and took the same line in the drag race but each time there were small inconsistencies which cannot be helped. This method of testing took us much longer (an entire weekend in total) than it would have if we used timedemos but the results are certainly truer than they would have been if we just timedemos.
The fact that it was such a time consuming and tough job for us is another testament to the fact that computer audio is a forgotten component because there is hardly a fraction of the audio benchmarks available on the web as there are graphics benchmark software. Everyone makes a big deal out of a few frames per second difference between graphics cards, but why is there never any mention of the differences that can be achieved in that same few fps between various sound card solutions? Some new audio benchmark software would go along way to helping this situation! Any developers out there listening?
Let's get started and see how the mighty SoundStorm shapes up against the competition. It is VERY IMPORTANT to remember although the SoundStorm is hardware optimized, it is working in several cases at least twice as hard as the other sound solutions due to the on the fly encoding of Dolby Digital from an original stereo format in all of the games. Plus the SoundStorm also supports a full 64 path sound environment meaning more sound effects were processed at the same time over other unsupported cards (Cmedia and Sound Blaster Live! Value).
- x-empt
Re:article page 1 (Score:4, Insightful)
This is pretty sad news.
I have a $300 pair of headphones which simulate surround-sound along with my nForce2 mobo. I'm basically locked into upgrading with an nForce3 board in order to keep using these great headphones. (Because I need real-time dolby encoding in order to get surround in games w/ SP/DIF out).
Maybe the problem isn't that audio is a "forgotten component". Maybe it's just another example of a company(Sony) charging outrageous and prohibitive fees to use a licensed(dolby) technology. =(
It Just Works (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It Just Works (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It Just Works (Score:2)
Re:It Just Works (Score:2)
Uh... hear a monster, see nothing in front of you, where do you think it is? Stereo can reproduce side sounds fine, so it's pretty easy for most people to figure out where something is in a game just with stereo (if you don't see it, it's either on the side from which you hea
Re:It Just Works (Score:2)
Agreed on the mess issue - it's a pain to install surround sound if the room isn't already set up in a way that suits it. But you really don't need to spend hundreds of dollars on a surround sound system. Most sound cards - including many onboard ones - support surround sound. And decent computer surround speakers by Creative, Logitech or wha
Keyboards and mice (Score:3, Insightful)
Creative and mainboard makers is what happened. (Score:5, Interesting)
the only other real alternative was Nvidia which basically is suffering from cheap mainboard manufactures who wont spend the extra 50 cents on a decent DAC. the vast majority of boards with it are nowhere near soundstorm certified, thus its removal from A64 boards. I expect Intel to go the same way with their new chipset coming out too.
Re:Creative and mainboard makers is what happened. (Score:4, Informative)
Kicks serious arse. Runs into my 5.1 amp and off to my JBL speakers and Yamaha subwoofer. Runs my whole home entertainment system. No problems with cross talk, hiss or noise.
Recomended.
Re:Creative and mainboard makers is what happened. (Score:4, Interesting)
I know that when you want to do 5.1 "the right way" from a computer, you're going to bypass the DAC that's in the sound board to send the audio directly to the receiver. In my estimation, every sound card (onboard or what not) is about on par with very good quality this way, since the onboard DAC isn't sending amplified trace noise out of the board.
I've got a TB Santa Cruz in my machine (still about 50$ or so from your local retailer) and it kicks butt on it's analog outs -- I use a set of promedia 2.1's which were admittedly expensive, but good price/performance when compared to me buying a stand-alone reciever, speakers and sub. I haven't really found a good on-board solution that has (to me) no perceptible noise when pumping it through this set-up of mine.
I would love to buy a digital solution, but the 2.1's work fine for me, and while I'd like 5.1 sound, I just wouldn't see too much benefit from it... (not a hardcore gamer, more of a music afficiando[sp?]....)
Re:Creative and mainboard makers is what happened. (Score:3, Interesting)
No, I'm not.
I don't have a 5.1 per sé, rather a couple of very good bi-channel amps: JVC 65Wx2 RMS power amp running front left and right, a JBL 55Wx2 RMS reciever running the surrounds + an 8" 80W powered yamaha sub. The center channel is mixed into the left and right using a Mackie 1202 mixingdesk, meaning I'm really only running a 4.1 system. Short of reducing the size of the sweet spot, there isn't a practical difference.
Front speakers are two way built from
the space between the PC and the TV. (Score:3, Interesting)
A couple problems I see:
The computer is usually not even in the same room as the sound/entertainment system. The computer is a web/email/work machine that doubles as a gaming machine once in a while.
The computer doesn't come bundled with a really nice sound system and if offered, I doubt anyone who cared that much about sound wo
Re:Creative and mainboard makers is what happened. (Score:3, Insightful)
ReallY? Not my experience at Quakecon. (Score:5, Interesting)
Admittedly, there were not many vendors, but saying that audio is a forgotten component just doesn't reflect the reality of Quakecon. Or are you just trying to get readers?
Perhaps you've just noticed that reflex and knowing the maps better than your opponent are more important that hearing your bullets hit him?
Re:ReallY? Not my experience at Quakecon. (Score:5, Funny)
Excellent, finally a product for us people with 5.1 ears!
Re:ReallY? Not my experience at Quakecon. (Score:5, Informative)
The latest issue of Widescreen Review Magazine reviews a new "virtual speakers through headphones" technology and rates them as *completely transparent* and a revolutionary technology. Those of you who don't know, Widescreen Review is one of the most critical and technical magazines out there. They are the guys who first promoted DTS as better than Dolby Digital and championed it in the industry. A fact, many now agree with but at the time, DTS was poo-pooed as sounding the same as Dolby Digital. Gary Reber, who did the review, is an influential person in the industry.
The new headphones do two things different:
1. They measure in-ear results and tailor the sound for each user. This is done automatically (test signal sequences and such) and not in a lab. There are default settings but they sound a lot like what you get from the typical 5.1 virtualization which sound fake or like the sound is coming inside your head.
2. They headphones measure which way is forward. In normal virtualization, as soon as you move your head, the virtual sound is immediately made false. This is because the sound moves with your head. In this new technology, if you turn your head left/right, the sound is still locked in place, towards the screen/monitor.
Finally, Gary Reber and a bunch of test experts themselves could not tell the difference between their very expensive speaker/amp setups (In the tens of thousands) and their headphone setup. They were walking around the room, up to speakers, etc. and were having a hard time. And Gary himself admits he didn't even want to take the review at first because it sounded gimicky.
Of course, to get the sound of that room and the speakers, you have to "set up" the headphones in that room because it uses the speaker system and in ear results to make adjustments to the sound. But wouldn't it be awesome to have a reference room to make measurements in (say the audiophile store in the city center), then come back home, and play games or watch movies with the equivalent of $100,000 speakers that the experts can't tell the difference with?
You bet.
I'm excited about this and it is all software that is to be licensed. It is going to be expensive at first but I can see this being the killer consumer technology of the future.
Re:ReallY? Not my experience at Quakecon. (Score:4, Funny)
Last I checked, most humans have two ears, and one headphone goes over each ear. What about the other 3.1?
-ben
Re:ReallY? Not my experience at Quakecon. (Score:3, Informative)
See this paper [headwize.com] for more details, including circuit board layouts and a bit of math.
As a sound tech... (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:As a sound tech... (Score:2)
They've gone up, actually. Top of the line used to be a $150 TNT card. It's progressed to $600 GeForceFX 6800U.
-Erwos
Re:As a sound tech... (Score:2)
If you pick the most expensive card now, you should pick the most expensive of the corresponding time periode,too.
Re:As a sound tech... (Score:2)
I really don't understand why people shell out so much money for the entirely crappy speakers from Creative or for these other "computer" sound systems. If you're willing to pay for quality audio, then you will be buying quality audio equip
Re:As a sound tech... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:As a sound tech... (Score:3, Informative)
I agree. While I don't have the phat cash like many out there on the 'net I've got particular taste. For example, my receiver used for watching movies cost more than my tv and dvd player (almost combined). While it isn't a several thousand dollar stereo system it works damn good. The worst thing about watching a DVD at a buddies house is the sound. I could care less about the *l
Re:Don't forget MP3s encoded at 96Kbs.... (Score:2)
I think the only reason Compaq called it Business Audio was because of the common perception that audio was only useful for home users and playing games.
After a certain point, why bother? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's only so much fidelity you need for "Argghhhh" and "Kaboom" and "Zap."
Let's take Doom3 as an example.
Which would you rather have-- Doom3 on a Hammerfall pro audio card with a Voodoo2 or Doom3 on an Nvidia 6800 with a $20 Soundblaster Live?
For me, there's no contest. I do happen to have an Audiophile pro card, but it's because I make music, not because of gaming. For music applications there are SCADS of high-end cards. I just don't think the typical user needs them, unless he's some bling-fanatic who defines himself by how many of the latest, blue-LEDest IPOD-things he has.
Re:After a certain point, why bother? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:After a certain point, why bother? (Score:2)
Re:After a certain point, why bother? (Score:3, Interesting)
on the Live... because it's pure stupidity to use a low-end pro audio RECORDING card for playing back audio.
the Hammerfall has ok playback circuitry that is not 5.1 capable, but it's indended design and pourpose is for recording and that is where all of it's value it.
If you want something that is better than the live and can record only 2 channles of audio as good as
My MOBO came with output jacks for 5.1 (Score:5, Informative)
It works pretty well. We use Adobe [adobe.com] audition for the audio editing, and we have a near-pro setup for well under 6K total. Quite a bit cheaper than the old days!
Re:My MOBO came with output jacks for 5.1 (Score:2)
But that shouldn't have any negative effect on your work, though. Adobe Audition works on the audio data files, and the file never even touches the audio card. The Soyo Dragon won't degrade the audio in any way, but it might mask some problems before t
mirror (Score:5, Informative)
wait a little, eventually it should load.
It's All Downhill (Score:5, Interesting)
For many years there were advancements in sound back in the DOS days. You could make audio sound better with 16 bits, or 44.1khz. You could do wavetable systhesis so MIDI sounded realistic (at least compared to the beeps and boops of FM systhesis). There was advancement.
Then CDs came. As games moved to CDs and hard drives got bigger, suddenly it was possible to play real music, and it didn't matter how good your MIDI was because the game producers could use real music. Now we see it in MP3s and Ogg files used to store the music.
So for a long time, the sound world has been stagnate. Years ago we saw "3D" sound, but it never took off. Creative had EAX, which simulated it somehow, and Aureal had A3D which did wave-tracing or something like that. What I can tell you was that A3D was QUITE superior. But many games didn't use it, and it did have a CPU impact. People were more interested in better 3D graphics, sound didn't seem that important. Aureal eventually died and was bought by Creative Labs. As far as I know they haven't used any of the technology that they aquired.
So without competition things stagnated. With Aureal dead, no one really cared about 3D sound. So all we've gotten is "standard" sound cards that do 2D. Sure you can get 5.1 and 7.1 and stuff, but nothing amazing. And worst of all, there are no drivers for my favorite soundcard for newer versions of Windows or for Linux (at least not without paying).
So here we are. Aureal is dead, and people are starting to care again. Now all we have is Creative. There is no real competition. But now that Doom 3 supports it (HL2 probably will too) and it's claimed that you really need it for the best expiriance you can get, things will hopefully advance again. Now that graphics are very near "good enough", perhaps sound (which in many ways hasn't changed since the SB16 as far as today's games are concerned) will catch up.
So long... Aureal.
Re:It's All Downhill (Score:2)
Its not dead and esential to hear 3d otherwise you will be fragged right behind with a buddies rocket.
Re:It's All Downhill (Score:2)
Re:It's All Downhill (Score:2)
Re:It's All Downhill (Score:3, Informative)
MIDI is used today in professional music studios. It's not limited to old video games.
Just a nitpick...the rest of the post sounds (pun not intended) good.
Re:It's All Downhill (Score:2)
Re:It's All Downhill (Score:3, Informative)
What is your favorite soundcard? If you mean Aureal cards, they are supported by ALSA. Manuel Jander and Jeff Muizelaar reverse-engineered the closed source OSS driver and the Windows drivers, and produced hardware documentation as well as a ground-up ALSA re-implementation. Manuel even figured out the 3D side of things, but his questions asked on the OpenAL list regar
Re:It's All Downhill (Score:2)
PS: My favorite card was my Aureal 2 based Turtle Beach Montego A3D Xtreme Studio Edition (or something like that). I still have it. It had a little daughter board that had RCA and optical S/PDIF interfaces for in and out. Hook it to my MiniDisc player to copy things on, it was great. Too bad I could never
Creative and the future of PC audio (Score:2, Informative)
Since they have all the patented wave-tracing algorithms Aureal used there won't be any third-party solutions and that means no competition for at least the near future and that means more profit for the shareholders - can't blame them for that.
I owned a MX300 and it was far superior to SB Live!, my personal opinion is that the last good card Creative made was th
Re:It's All Downhill (Score:2)
I don't think graphics are anywhere in the realm of "good enough." Everytime I get a window seat in an airplane, I look out the window as we descend over a city and wonder how computers will ever approach all that detail and complexity. And then there's the extremely narrow field of view on a computer.
SB16 audio was already far, far closer
Re:It's All Downhill (Score:2)
As a side n
Re:It's All Downhill (Score:2)
Yes, and you possess 40,000 hair cells, and exactly two lenses ;)
But sure, the bandwidth of our vision is much larger than what our auditory system processes. However, when it comes to content creation, graphics have come a lot further than audio. There's lots of completely photorealistic artwork that has been created from scratch with computers. Compare that with any computer generated sound (that isn't based on samples).
Re:It's All Downhill (Score:2)
They had come out of the Media Vision company when they decided that they couldn't compete in PCB manufacturing, so they did audio chip and software design. Although some of them were resource hungry (IIRC, my Memphis took 3 IRQs, two for two different kinds of sound, making it full duplex, and the third for SCSI), they were the most advanced at the time. They had a kick-ass VLB t
All-in-one solutions (Score:4, Insightful)
Pretty much musicians and audiophiles choose their sound chipsets (or cards) carefully, most people buy the Fry's special or just make sure it says "sound included" on the motherboard box.
Not to mention people who buy prebuilt PCs, in which case the manufacturer chooses the cheapest (integrated) chipset.
Since relatively few people pick sound chipsets carefully, the "demand" is effectively "low," and that drives the supply down (and into specialization).
Re:All-in-one solutions (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:All-in-one solutions (Score:2)
- don't need CPU cycles
- don't use the analogue audio port (and have decent D/A convertors with your speakers)
- don't care about crappy drivers and (shudders) software
Then you're fine.
If you hear the difference between my Asus integrated audio (CMedia) and the soundblaster audigy player in my system
Maybe Intel will change this wi
XBox / PS2... (Score:2)
Computer Audio always takes a back seat. (Score:2)
Last night I was looking at Croquet, that new Net based 3d graphical environment and I saw no mention of how to deal with sound in this new environment. Sound is a very important part of our lives, I fail to see why it is always has such low priority with the computer industry.
Wasn't there supposed to be an article about audio (Score:5, Insightful)
It is quite ironic (yes, this is irony, not coincidence) that an article that purports to bemoan the neglect of sound in favor of picture proceeds to rate the audio gear based on how it impacts graphics performance.
Most people sadly don't care.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Most people sadly don't care.... (Score:2)
Now, many people can't (or don't care to) discern the difference in quality, but it's there. Of course, you need decent speakers or headphones to be able to hear differences in sound quality in hardware, or formats like MP3. Most people think that cheap speakers or fine, since, again
Quality, not "enhancements" (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to name names, but I have switched away from a formerly reliable company's sound hardware because they got too "creative" (ahem) with their gimmicks and forgot about the basics.
The reason is mostly psychological (Score:5, Interesting)
Humans have focused on pretty much just two senses; sight and touch, especially with respect to our hands. If we want to identify something we almost always look at it or pick it up and feel it.
Our sense of smell/taste is notoriously crappy compared to many other animals and unless something is particularly smelly we usually don't pay much attention to that aspect. Our hearing is adequate and is very usefull for communicating language and for tertiary analysis but it isn't usually what we focus on.
We have very exact words for defining shape and size and color. We can say a secreen is X by Y pixels and if we have a general idea of the pixel size that gives many people a pretty good sense of the size and quality of the image. We can say it can display Z colors and although that's a little more inexact it still gives us a reasonably good idea.
On the other hand our words for describing audio in common usage are generally less specific and hace less conotation. If you say that a sound system has seven channels then i and a lot of other non-audiophiles will have very little idea what exactly that means or how it differes from more or less channels. I expect two monitors with the same stats to look pretty similar, but for audio equipment you need to go listen to it to find out which is good and which is bad.
All of which means that when making games or any other mixed media product you will get more bang for your buck if you invest more in video over sound. People will notice it more and be able to describe it better when talking to their friends or writing reviews. Good audio can certainly make a game a lot better, but how many people buy a game just because it has good audio vs. just because it has good graphics? There are certainly a few, i myself happen to know a single hardcore audiophile who builds his own speakers and such, but they're not that common.
Audio is content-driven (Score:5, Insightful)
There's an interesting rant from one of Halo's programmers here [livejournal.com] about the state and future directions of game audio.
Analog baby (Score:3, Funny)
Now how do I mount valve in the PCI form factor?
Re:Analog baby (Score:2)
Sound quality (Score:2, Informative)
Silicon Graphics had it right in 1993-1994 (Score:2)
A good quality DAC/ADC setup capable of 48khz audio. The Indy/Indigo^2 could change the electrical characteristics and turn the headphone port into line out 3+4 and mic port into line in 3+4 for 4 track recording, this was a nice perk.
It featured SPDIF in and out as far back as 1992?. Newer systems had AES/BEU ports that could do several protocols for 8 track communications to ADAT and similiar systems.
Simple and effective. A DAC/ADC setup with low noise floor, high
Sound is just fine (Score:2)
For some tracks I can hear the difference between 192kbit and 256kbit mp3's so I'm not quite tone deaf, yet I feel absolutely no urge at all to shell out $$ for a 5.1 soundsystem with 15 speakers all around my PC setup.
For a more immersive experience, good quality head phones will do just fine with medium quality sound hardware,
Re:Sound is just fine (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, surround sound does also make a big difference. I never thought about it until I bought surround sound speakers.
biased article... (Score:5, Insightful)
These guys actually try and claim that a $149 add-on card cannot provide 5.1 (6-channel) sound. Seriously, look at their comparison chart. It's so wacked you'd think it was Microsoft's work.
I mean, seriously, for less than $30 you can get a SB Live! 5.1 that will provide a lot of what's being listed on their page 2 chart. And certainly by the time you've reached their $149 price-point you're able to get yourself a nice SB Audigy2 that can do everything they want but hardware AC3 encoding.
And I have to be honest -- is the hardware AC3 encoding really going to be much of an issue for most people? I don't see audio enthusiasts being geared for onboard audio (no matter what it is capable of), and the value segment rarely goes for some fancy surround sound.
Basically, I'm saying this article is bullocks from the second page on. I know it's easier to critisize than to write a good article... but still, these guys seem to be entirely too biased towards this product to make their 'review' worth my time. Personally, I think it's worth a grain of salt.
Now go ahead and mod me down for being a crotchety old man.
It's hardware - not software (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people don't have surround sound at their computers and never will, I would if I was able to physically have the speakers surrounding me. I can't. Alternatively the only other speakers I can get are 2 satellites plus a sub. No ones offers a 3.1 dolby pro logic setup for computers. We have to make baby steps to surround sound - let's get that centre channel speaker in there.
The only time surround sound will ever become as big of a focus as graphics for developers is when someone can buy a single canister speaker that does surround sound in the entire room.
I love my computers audio (Score:2)
I do wonder ... (Score:5, Informative)
It *is* possible to get 3D sound with just two speakers/headphones. Headphones are of course much preferable. Finally, humans have just two ears, not five or six. Trick is in the processing - the feeling of space is achieved not only by using intensity but also phase of the sound. The algorithms to do that are known, just Google for HRTF (head-related transfer function) - e.g. here [ucdavis.edu].
If you have a good HRTF and a geometrical model of the space, you can recreate very accurate sound reproduction, with just two speakers/headphones.
EAX and DirectSound took a very rough approximation of HRTF and some rough approximation of the space (e.g. concert hall, church, etc.) and give you list of filters. The effects have nothing to do with reality and you will not get better spatial feeling using even twenty speakers. You do not take into account reflections, material on the walls, standing wave effects etc.
For people interested in accoustic, have a look here [dat.dtu.dk]. I had a short course with prof. Rindel, who is one of the authors of the ODEON software (there is a free demo on the page) and the stuff is really impressive. It beats things like EAX or very expensive 5.1 setups hands down. If modelling of this sort was supported by hardware, that would be the real revolution in computer audio. BTW, this technology was used as a part of CAHRISMA EU project, which we participated in (for the virtual reality part), the stuff is pretty much usable in real time already ( CAHRISMA at DTU [dat.dtu.dk], CAHRISMA at our lab [vrlab.epfl.ch], Something on the VR aspects of the project [ligwww.epfl.ch]
My middle-aged ears (Score:2)
I do appreciate good sound but it is something that I can do without to save a couple of bucks.
Still I run with sound off on my computer because there are so friggin many cheesy websites that think it is cool to play MIDI music or other sounds.
I only turn up the volume when I want to listen to something. Usually, my inexp
Re:My middle-aged ears (Score:2)
I'll tell you what's up (Score:2)
Am I the only one... (Score:2)
Hello?
Am I the only one who immidiatly thought of a comic character of indian descent here?
What killed Soundstorm. (Score:4, Interesting)
We all like to lament the loss of Soundstorm, with it's hardware audio mixing and on the fly dolby digital encoding, but it died for two reasons, one major, one minor.
The big one was marketing. Nvidia failed, on every level, to market and push the Soundstorm APU. It wasn't advertised, it's features and abilities were no explained, and info about it was buried deep within the then current nvidia web page. Nobody knew what it was, and while everyone understood 5.1 sound on a motherboard, no one understood why nvidias was better. And by no one, I include motherboard reviewers, who would talk about the dual channel features and onboard firewire of the nforce chipset, but completely overlook the sound, failing to even mention it in most cases. This feedback lead motherboard manufacturers to question the premium nvidia charged for the solution, and often opt for the cheaper AC'97 chipsets they had in stock instead. Nvidia never published benchmark and review guidelines for the soundstorm, so nobody ever cared about it. They needed to push it's excellence as a gaming and home theater chipset, and it's ability to blend digitally with home audio setups, and never did.
The second reason is, in fact, Creative Labs. To understand, some technical details of the soundstorm are needed. The Soundstorm APU is a semi-custom DSP, not a dedicated audio solution. It runs a customized version of the Sensaura 3D engine, doing all the work on APU that is normally left to Sensaura versions that run within the drivers of other soundcard makers. Additionally, the final mix stage of this engine has had the Dolby Digital Live encoder added, allowing the 5.1 output to be packed into an AC-3 stream. In other words, Nvidia was dependent on Sensaura technology. Now, guess who just bought Sensaura? That's right! Creative Labs. Do you think they'll be licensing their new acquisition to the one company that actually competes with them? Now, they'll keep licensing it to other AC'97 makers, because who wouldn't want a cut of every motherboard ever made, and the opportunity to make more when they buy a creative soundcard to replace it?
So, it's dead. Replacing the Sensaura engine with an in house solution isn't possible, as there is to much contamination of IP, nvidia would have to hire all new dev's and engineers to clean room it. Licensing from Creative will be prohibitively expensive, and motherboard makers aren't interested in it anyway.
Why not make a PCI version? Well, the PCI bus can't handle 64 16bit/48Khz audio streams, that's more bandwitdth than PCI has. It worked fine on soundstorm, thanks to the fast north-southbridge link. You could produce a PCIe 1x card version, but nvidia would have to re-engineer a good deal of the chip to do so, and then we are back to licensing anyway.
Nvidia never made Soundstorm enough of a brand to be worth noticeing, and then killed it when the costs got to high and the support got to difficult. Strangely, drivers for the soundstorm have finally matured, with the most recent 4.31 audio producing decent sound and having wide compatibility. Ah well, looks like our next hope is the highly DRM protected Intel HDA standard. At elast it offers realtime dolby digital. Sort of.
The problem with gaming audio (Score:3, Interesting)
Eg in doom, each type of sound is exactly the same, only slightly pitch shifted. The same goes for the quake series - every sound only differs with a little pitch. Whether the surrounding geography is a small room or a huge hall, it sounds the same.
what I want to see is true dynamic audio - each sound effect being created dynamically out of base sounds, so that each time you hear a particular effect, it's sound varies according to the immediate geography - big booming echoes in large halls, crisp, close and loud shrieks in small spaces.
THAT is what would make audio advance in gaming to the next level.
Audio Render (Score:4, Informative)
To be fair, until recently sound render capability and fidelity in games has really not been much of a concern with good reason; games and game design haven't offered the level of play detail and subtlety to take advantage of much more then crude 'positional' sound render capabilities, and as far as fidelity is concerned most game Fans listen to game sound on the most abject sound hardware as far as fidelity is concerned even when under the illusion they have purchased State-Of-The-Art rig.
There are a slew of issues and challenges unique to game sound rendering that will only be overcome when some generous or concerned Developers and Programmers assumes the onus of seriously addressing them -- to date no one has. Fundamental issues and serious limitations of game sound render that bring it in way below the bar of what's technically feasible can be summarized (in no particular order):
limited dynamic range (due to the following)
crude sub-mixing of multiple sound channels
gross compression/companding
simplistic, crude compression and companding algorithms
gross interactions between mixer, compression and companding
lack of sound and level designer control over aforesaid parameters
complete lack of even the most basic engineering documentation of the aforesaid
no (or very crude) steridian based boundary effects
use of cheap canned DSP & positional libraries
very poor perspective (first to third person) and proximity effects
crap-tastic tools (worst in the industry)
no security
poor sync
undocumented black-box sound manipulation
As just about everything that can be wrong with sound render in games is wrong even the smallest concerted attempt at addressing some some of these issues with the crudest of solutions would be a [i]God Send[/i]. In many cases issues and limitation of crusty sound renderer 'back planes' and features could be overcome by the simple expedient of documenting how they perform and at the very least offering Sound & Level Designers means to disable mixer compression, ACG, and DSP effects and features, and create or adjust these effects statically/manually.
Arguably the largest issue confronting fidelity in game sound render is having automated dynamic mixing of an indefinite and changing number of sound sources, of dynamic position and not have them overload. In essence sound renderers are required to automate the task of live show Sound Engineer that is setting up for multiple performers, performing different kinds of music with different instruments, different number of performers in each ensemble, and different musical genera on-the-fly -- a virtually impossible task with no automation, only crude DSP, and very crude compression schemes.
The current solution has bee to use massive amounts of audio compression and companding (not to be confused with digital file compression) reducing dynamic range on a heinous scale -- and while this is a better sounding solution gross digital overload -- the dynamic range achieved and double digit distortion figures obviate any need for high fidelity audio hardware beyond the cheapest EAX compatible card and discount headphones that aren't physically painful to wear. The surround sound processing offered by even the best audio hardware and game renderers is little more then laughable marketing gimmick to be polite.
The value of decent sound render performance capability won't be readily apparent unless or until it's available for a capable Sound Designer and Game Designer to collaborate and exploit and the results won't be the 'knock your socks off' kind of thing like HUGE explosions and cheap positional panning effects of jets, or magical plasma balls screaming past or behind yo
Been there, done that. (Score:3, Interesting)
Lets travel back, way back. There was the Adlib audio. Then Creative Labs introduced the 8bit, 11Khz Sound Blaster [thefreedictionary.com], then the Sound Blaster Pro which added stereo. Then there was the Sounds Blaster 16, Pro Audio Spectrum 16, and the Gravis Ultrasound (GUS) back in 1991.
The GUS was way ahead of the others. It could mix up to 32 channels in hardware. It always played the sound back at 44Khz via interpolation (unless you had too many channels active at once). It had up to 1meg of on board sound memory so it could be totally independent of your CPU. The Demo scene [hornet.org] loved it. It had faked 3d sound via QSound..
It never caught on :( Creative's control was too powerful. Even the GUS PnP which was based on the AMD Interwave sound chip failed. Eventually Gravis was bought and the exited the sound business.
Years later Aureal [alasir.com], attempted to bring good audio to the PC and break Creative's control with its Vortex sound card. They ran into money issues. Creative sued them. They won, but the lawsuit drained their money and they went bankrupt. Creative then bought the remains (patents) of the company.
But rumours are nVidia hired many of the out of work engineers, which developed the Sound Storm for the Xbox. Which then nVidia fortunately brought to the nForce. Which unfortunately won't be in future versions because nobody is willing to pay for it. Even if it is "free". Gamers are more interested in a "free" hardware firewall.
Looking back at how Gravis, AMD, Aureal, and others have failed despite having superior products makes me wounder how a company could successfully introduce better audio to gamers. Maybe if it helped you win at FPS games... Seeing nVidia leave the audio market is sad, but I've been sad about this many times before. I'm kind of numb to the pain of seeing a great new technology with high hopes of making things better fail due to lack of interest.
I have a feeling we'll be stuck using Intel's "Azalea" for a long long time. It's certainly not bad, but it has the CPU do the work instead of a coprocessor. What do you expect from Intel when they made a nice new DX9 graphics core, but didn't use hardware T&L? Gotta try to create a market for those faster CPUs somehow... Sure, it can output some Dolby signals if they are precomputed (i.e. DVDs), but it can't encode them if they are dynamic (i.e. games). Unless you have a really powerful CPU. Oh well, at least Intel High Definition Audio as it is officially known now beats AC'97 [digit-life.com].
Rats nests, sound quality and stagnation!! (Score:3, Informative)
5.1 AC-3 Encoding is the next big step.
Out of my own ignorance, I bought an AC-3 home theater decoder setup for my main computer, only to find my expensive (when purchased) Audigy didn't support 5.1 DIGITAL SOUND for anything but DVD playback.
How useless is that?
What it meant was that, for games, I'd have to switch to analog input (with it's attendent rat's nest of wires, noise, etc...) and for movies, I'd have to use digital output. WTF? That's totally asinine.
Here, I figured with a so-called "5.1" audio card, (3rd generation, at that!!) I'd be able to simply remove the rat's nest and plug in the digital connection - simple, no fuss audio, with brilliant, vibrant 5.1 audio, sounding the way it was MEANT to sound.
Instead of real progress, we get this nonsense about higher sample rates and pointless signal-to-noise (which doesn't mean squat with 12 wires running analog audio to an amplifier) ratios. Worse is the idiotic "5.1 headphone" garabage, which only obfuscates the matter even more.
Hey, Creative, Crystal, Turtle Beach, etc...: I'll pay $150-200 for a true 5.1 audio card. I want that card to have DIGITAL 5.1 OUTPUT for ALL Computer generated audio.
Until then, I'll probably be satisfied with on-the-motherboard audio solutions instead of shelling out for Creative Labs or Turtle Beach cards, as I used to in the past. If the big Audio Card developers can't deliver REAL imrovements in computer audio technology (particularly developments that should have been here 5 years ago), then they don't deserve our business, and can go straight to hell, for all I care.
Re:Rats nests, sound quality and stagnation!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Full Text up to page 6 (Score:2, Informative)
Ok, take two.
Well, TweakTown was promptly slashdotted, so here's the full text:
What's up with computer audio? - Page 1 [Introduction]
Introduction
Last month during QuakeCon near Dallas, Texas in the United States it became clearly apparent to me that computer audio has become somewhat of a forgotten component in the computer industry when talking to gamers and listening to companies at the gaming event.
When nVidia released the mighty onboard SoundStorm APU (Audio
Re:Early games (Score:2)
Re:I've not noticed any problems (Score:2, Insightful)
It is one of the pet peeves of mine that the word COAXIAL is used to refer to so many different types of cables, that it can sometimes be confusing. This is what may have the parent AC confused.
While you CAN convert a normal 1.5mm (hereafter referred to as miniplug) female jack that 99% of people have on their sound cards to a what he refers to as coax
Re:Doom 3 (Score:2)
Re:Doom 3 (Score:3, Interesting)
Half-Life's actually a lot simpler than that - in the single-player game, you control the DSP algorithm with the env_sound point entity [valve-erc.com]. There are a bunch of presets, and park 'em either side of an entrance, for instance one with 'Cavern Large' and one with 'Tunnel Small', and as the player walks past their audio changes...
Re:Bah (Score:2)
The ability of a card to perfo