Slashdot Mirror
What Happened To PC Gaming Audio?
Thanks to The Adrenaline Vault for its feature discussing why computer audio has become a critically undervalued part of a PC purchase. The author indicates the worry that "computer audio is taken for granted, and that other components make the difference between high- and low-end systems", and voices concern that "most new [PC] computer games - including major releases - don't take advantage in any significant way of the capabilities of the latest generation of audio cards." He ends with the heartfelt wish: "I'm waiting for the day when I hear someone say, 'That game sounds so great, I have to buy it!' I hope people become more educated about audio so they can talk about it with the same enthusiasm that they discuss 3D video hardware acceleration or high definition plasma screens."
guys, the target audience, experience love with their eyes, girls with their ears, or so the old saying goes, paraphrased for lack of decent memory
oh and uh I almost forgot, FP! :)
H&D 1 had surround sound support and it's years and years old. It was fabulous, you could hear yourself getting shot from all sorts of directions.
But seriously.
Recently I bought a Creative Labs Audigy 2ZX, a reasonably good quality gaming card, sitting just below professional audio specifications.
The Audigy 2 ZX supports EAX4 and EAX3 audio standards. EAX3 makes a tremendous difference in 5.1 audio output when gaming, it's very precise and the environmental effects are amazing to listen to. The quality of output is vastly superior to any onboard sound solution.
Nonetheless, very few games use EAX3, I don't know of any that use EAX4. But for the games that do, the difference is noticeable.
Also, the Audigy ZX is very independant of the CPU when gaming, so when you do play games with full audio, you get better performance from your hardware. Many review sites run benchmarks with the audio disabled for the game, just to remove that area of confusion - however this makes benchmarks even more obfuscated from real world performance.
So there are two reasons why you can benefit from a little spending on your game audio. But unless you're a particularly hardcore audiophile, most mainboards have onboard 5.1 sound nowadays. So no real need to splurge, unless you want the luxury, or the cutting edge responsiveness from your hardware, or the trippy environmental effects.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
The answer is very simple - audio drivers are *SO* incredibly bad that they can't be relied upon for anything more than the absolute bare minimum functions.
Working at a well known PC game studio, we (and many other studios) have had to implement all audio mixing in software, only using the soundcard for raw playback.
That wonderful audio card you have? It's no more useful than on-board audio.
Don't like the situation? Neither do we - blame Creative and the other manufacturers who constantly pump out junk drivers.
I can see where your coming from with this article but really when you think about it, sound is just not that big of an issue, in games or any other application.
:E
Given that most people will listen to games with headphones or a set of desktop speakers, what is the point of improving sound quality. The classic example, I think, is Metal Gear Solid 2. Apparently in parts of the game dolby surround sound was of a major advantage in game. But who even HAS surround sound? No-one I know. And who on EARTH has surround sound on their PC?
Most people also aren't big into sound quality. The tone deaf masses usually encode at 128kbps and like it! (I know I do) Top this off with the fact that even stereo sound is technically quite difficult to implement and that most programmers aren't versed in phonic theory, you can see why most users could buy a ten year old sound card and see no loss of quality.
(N.B. The author still thinks music from old sonic games is groovy. As such its comments should be modded down at the earliest possible moment.)
May the Maths Be with you!
..is plenty.
almost all modern mobos have that built in, if the da's shit it's still good enough. very few of us are hifi freaks, people just don't care that much about something that isn't going to save a crappy game anyways. If the audio would be the only thing making you want to play the game, why the hell not just put some music on?
on the other hand there's plenty of games with superb audio, but audio isn't just about 'quality' as such - the one game I played shitloads just for the audio was Star Control 2.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
its easier to tell the difference between a DVD and a Divx of the same movie than it is to tell the difference between an audio cd and an mp3 of the same song. heck, most people cant even tell the difference if you play the one after the other.
now why exactly is that sort of person going to fork out more cash for better hardware with features they probably wont even notice? I know im not paying the extra bucks for an audigy3 (or whatever the latest and greatest may be) when these days built in sound or an old SBLive sound exactly the same to my ears
TIAEAE!
One game whose sound effects grabbed me lately was Call of Duty - there are superb stereo effects when all the bullets and explosions are flying around.
I think one reason that we don't see Games taking advantage of the latest gee-whiz auto card features is that PC audio cards have been able to deliver realism for a long time now. Sounds are sampled, environmental processing effects applied (which are, in the main, not processor intensive enough to require much hardware acceleration) and, with a decent pair of stereo speakers - to say nothing of a 5.1 system, the effect is realistic enough that you feel immersed in the game. The same is only just becoming true of 3D graphics with the current state-of-the-art hardware, and there's still a long way to go.
As many people point out, for the unwashed masses who cannot tell the difference between a 128kbps MP3 and the original audio, pro-level audio soundcards like the Audigy are just overkill and will remain in the domain of the musician and those who care about sound quality. We are a lot more forgiving about audio quality than visual quality; I know I will happily listen to a LW radio broadcast, but I find a low signal TV broadcast unwatchable.
Until games use more audio gimmicks; real-time physically modelled sounds generated on the fly for example, we will have no requirements over those currently implemented on all on-board audio.
Most people probably sit in front of their crappy PC speakers connected to their onboard sound cards and are perfectly happy with it. They don't know what they are missing.
If you have decent headphones (or a surround system) and a sound card with EAX support some games really do become more enjoyable.
I can't imagine the Cradle mission in Thief 3 being half as scary without proper sound gear. Playing it with headphones on in a dark room was very immersive and it really freaked me out.
My mobo has 5.1 audio built in as well as an optical digital output. I tried to use/"upgrade" to the top of the line soundblaster, but it crashed my computer over and over again, till I removed it. I don't use computer speakers, but a 500 watt amp and real speakers. Very rarely does any game take advantage of my setup, but conversly, my XBOX takes full advantage of the 6.1 setup in the main room. As does the Gamecube. The problem with computer audio, is the flexibility problem; always designed to accomodate the lowest common denominator. Most people have the same two crappy speakers that came with their computer. On the other hand, I can now get a good 500 watt home theater system with a powered subwoofer for less than $300. Needless to say, most people are not going to spend $300 for a good set of computer speakers and another $100-200 on good sound card, just for their computer, but they will for their dvd player/tv.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
You want to hear people rave about sound, then it will have to be sold to them. In movies this already happens in the cinema, which makes people want their own home-entertainment system. Since there's no similar event for gaming (appart from cult-gatherings, etc), how many people will consider it an issue? At the same time, the integration of game-consoles into existing entertainment systems has raised the attention-level a bit.
There's also the matter of soundtracks, which is an underused option in games. A great soundtrack will make me want to see a movie and vice versa.
All that being said, I have not really found sound in games lacking, even though I have $7 pc-speakers. I find wearing earphones actually gives me an advantage in games like counterstrike, in which hearing the enemy approach is of vital importance.
Perhaps it's "undervalued" because you can still play a game with the sound turned off but you cannot play the game without a monitor. It's undervalued simply because it is of little value for the gameplay.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
There has in fact already been a game that people bought for the sound. Friends of mine actually went out and upgraded their PC sound purely to get a better play experience out of Thief: The Dark Project (1998). It was one of the first games that used positional sounds as an integral part of the game, making for an innovative play style that spawned the stealth genre which now also includes games like Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell. Thief works slightly differently to the other Stealth games, since you are very weak in open confrontation. Not paying attention to certain important sounds (like a guard's footsteps for example) can lead to a swift and painful death. This new genre is very successful at the moment, with sequels for all three games mentioned coming out this year - Thief 3: Deadly Shadows, Metal Gear Solid 3 and Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, all of which have received good to excellent reviews.
Playing poker with a joker and some Uno cards
As far as I've seen in my limited life experiences, nobody reallly cares about the audio quality, all they wanna do is turn it up real loud and if it sounds kinda good then, thats all they really need
I would think most of us just don't care. I am a pretty hardcore gamer, get everything that comes out, try most demos, upgrade my pc all the time, want the greatest graphics card there is..
but..
I have never found a need to get anything other then my 5 year old Sound Blaster Live Value card. Just makes no difference to me at all. I know a guy who bought a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 EX (or something) and I really can't tell a difference between his $200 card and my old $15 (today's price) card.
As much as I like neat sound effects and what not, I don't think it's really necessary for video games to use more sophisticated processing for audio.
I would rather the developers spend more time choosing and mixing sounds more carefully. I've played at least a few wonderful games with sounds and music that don't go well together, drown each other out, or are just plain annoying. And let us not forget games that are any combination of those.
There's nothing like a great game that sounds and looks great, and a good ear and eye can make reasonably low tech game achieve that.
-B
The sound is a little bit better when it is in use and the game makes proper use of it so I sometimes put it back in for certain games but I am certainly not going to buy another one.
Creative get your bloody act together and write some decent drivers.
You are loosing a customer who has had every soundblaster upto and including the live.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Do you prefer to VIEW pr0n or HEAR pr0n?
Gotcha eh? Next article please!
perception is reality
I am rather disappointed by the quality of this article:
"I just got a new computer with a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 card with amazing sound and music capabilities. For example, theres support for 24-bit EAX Advanced HD sound,"
What the fuck is 24 bit EAX Advanced HD Sound? Its not a feature, its a fucking marketing term. EAX may loosely refer to 3D Audio features but the author clearly doesn't know what he's on about.
Firstly let me get something off my chest - creative fucked ME over. my Soundblaster Audigy, a "24 bit" card is nothing of the sort. It only plays 16 bit sounds. Apparently it can (in hardware) mix 24 bit sound down to 16 bit, bypassing the windows functions that do the same, nonetheless marketed to me as a 24 bit card. So of course this means the card is completely useless if bought specifically for audio work.
Also my mate bought a soundblaster live, one of the selling points was that the "liveware" could be upgraded, providing more features/effects/whatever. His original cd came with liveware 3.0, since then (well last time I checked) creative have not bothered updating the SBLive liveware, which is a bit naughty.
Their drivers are SHIT, check this, this and this.
The last link hints on having the same FUCKED UP driver problems that I have been having: the original driver off the cd will install, but none of their updates off their website work. I have been through all the tech support and they have even sent me out a new driver cd (for free) but those drivers wont install. Creative seem to have some sort of fucked up hardware detection routine in the driver installation for every drivers apart from the ones on the original cd, and this hardware detection always tanks stating "No creative product found in this computer. Please ensure it is installed properly."
My mate has a soundblaster live and when he went from win 98 to winXP his SBLive just completely refused to work, with all the drivers from creatives website claiming that he had not soundblaster installed. The CHEEK! If only creative would allow MS' hardware detection to do the work, rather than have their FUCKED UP BUGGY hardware detection fail to find legitimate hardware. My mate now uses unofficial drivers for his soundcard that *arent even written* by creative. This was the only way he could get his sound card (that he paid 180 pounds 5 years ago for) to work.
Once I gave up on getting any semblence of modern drivers working, I moved onto getting 3d audio working in games. Like fuck was that going to work. Every game I tried refused to recognise the existence of EAX hardware. In every game without fail, the EAX option would be unselected. This was particularly galling with halo.
In the end I uninstalled my SB Audigy and used my onboard 5.1 surround. Which is recognised by games, shock horror! Admittedly when theres about 10 people firing at once in halo the sound gets choppy, but at least I have surround.
Also we have to ask about the quality of onboard effects on the soundblaster live. The reverbs are so shit and tinny that you cannot possibly use the for any audio application. This belies their claim that their soundcards are good for musicians.
Finally we have to ask: is the lack of decent 3d support due to game developers not being bothered, or is it due to the 3d support/hardware accelerated sound support being in such a perilous state?
I tend towards the latter. The author of the article states:
"Creative Labs has a virtual monopoly, due at least in part to aggressive techniques such as lawsuits or buyouts to take care of most potential competitors....Fortunately, even without competitive market pressures, Creative Labs has developed high quality audio hardware."
SURELY NOT!!!!!
I'm waiting for the day when I hear someone say, 'That game sounds so great, I have to buy it!'
I'm a semi-pro musician, and I was discussing coding Csound instruments with a friend of mine the other day. We were lamenting the lack of a centralized online repository of free instruments, but the problem is the number of instruments to wade through quickly becomes unmanageable (easy to recognize, difficult to solve). Why is this?
Because audio clips can't really be shown as thumbnails. Where you can show one page of sized down images and have the surfer quickly navigate to whatever catches his eye, there is no parallel for audio clips. They essentially must be listened to independently and sequentially. And of course people won't take the time for this.
That's why people don't get as excited about game sound. Marketers can't use it to affect excitement. They can't demo it [intuitively] on web pages, print ads, or even on the game boxes themselves, so graphics are used solo for promotion.
My recollection was around the time 3Dfx was huge in the graphics market, Aureal and A3D were introduced to the sound market and created a nearly equal stir (Creative soon followed suit with their Live). In particular, I remember that time as when 3D sound was actually a significant reason to buy a game or upgrade your system. I, for one, got my DiamondMM MX200 and was completely floored by the concept and recient practice of games having positional audio.
The thing is, as many people pointed out, now it's just not a big deal anymore. For the average user (as in, non-audiophile), not only are they likely to have the same, average setup of two speakers, but it's more than likely percieved that computer audio hasn't improvied much over the course of the past few years -- even from, say, the time of A3D and the original SB Live.
You make a point of EAX3 and EAX4 making a marked difference, but not only are these details often disregarded when plugging PC games, I suspect almost everyone has no general concept of how these perform any better in comparison to EAX or EAX2 (which, AFAIK, are supported on many motherboard sound chips now).
If the gaming industry's attention is to be specifically pointed towards audio again, someone or something will have to spell out why just as it clearly as graphics card manufacturers (e.g. pixel shaders), and for audio that's not anywhere near as easy a task.
... all my Xbox games are in 5.1 DD. Oh wait. PCs. Right. No luck for you guys. ;)
1. DOOM3 is using an extremely advanced (and impressive) audio system. There is an excellent write-up of it here. For an atmospheric game like DOOM3, that sounds absolutely perfect.
2. Beware the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum if you are a gamer. It sounds fantastic, but the live drive (or whatever the Augidy 2 generation 5.25" sized input access is called), consistantly crashed games in my system (3000+, 9800 Pro, 1 GB RAM). To my surprise, when I disconnected the live drive and left the PCI card in, everything ran beautifully again. I always thought it was my viedo card acting up, but when Quake3 started crashing consistantly I had to do some investigation and to my surprise the Audigy was the guilty party.
I know most casual gamers don't have a 5.1 surround system, much less a 7.1 that the newest gen of cards support.
There is one game I just read about that is focusing more on the sound of the game. It's called Black, and unfortunately I can't find a direct link for info from google. (Pretty poor name for a game)
But they want the firing of the gun to be actually like firing a gun. Nice LOUD bang, richocets, etc.
-- taking over the world, we are.
Anyone who's ever played the Myst series of games knows that audio is at the forefront of the experience, never off at the sidelines. I recently picked up Uru, the now not-so-online sequel to Myst. I have to say, it has some of the most immersive audio I've ever experienced with a game since Riven. A ton of work had to have gone into it to get all the distinct sounds, write the music, and put it all into a package that supports EAX so well you can close your eyes and just listen to the ambience.
Just my opinion, but I think there are a rare few developers out there that already have this down pat.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
All motherboards started including sound, it's dificult to find one whithout it, so the instaled base is of simple stereo speakears, so developers don't worry about improved sound systems for PC only games.
Around six months ago, I found an Audigy card at Best buy for around $50. It was roughly half the price of the new model with all the same features. It was in the clearance section.
I brought this card home, and tried it out. I could not hear a difference from my motherboard's onboard audio. I thought there might be a little less static, but without the ability to listen to them side by side, I could not be sure if I was actually getting a better audio experience.
I then tried the card out in Team Fortress. I turned on that special 3D sound support they had... and I was APPALLED.
I tried adjusting the sound card... There were settigngs for speaker distance, and a setting you were to adjust until the sounds appeared to be coming from the sides of your head, but it was no use... It just soudnedd terrible.
What I was hearing in all the sounds was some kind of flanging... The kind of sound you get when you take two copies of the same signal and offset them from one another a little bit and remix them. It sounded like a subtle ray gun, over all the sounds.
It was ANNOYING AS HELL.
I then considered things and relaised that a 5.1 surround system would be much better. But then I realised there weren't any games I knew of which would support such a system! Why bother buying 5.1 speakers if no games support them?
So, the next day, the sound card went back. But I still improved my audio experience.
I went to a site... tomshardware I think, and I looked at benchmarks of various speaker sets. I already had a set of speakers with a subwoofer. And I rememebred how awesome they sounded compared to my regular desktop speakers, so I wondered if I could not get a better set of speakers, since those I purchased were cheap, and I hadn't gone online to chekc any benchmarks for them.
Well, I looked at the benchmarks, and I picked out the best set of speakers that I could find that had sound comaprable to the high end models but were within my price range, and I picked a set of Altec Lansing VS 4121 2.1 speakers with subwoofer.
They're really nice speakers. They are built differently from most speakers. They have tweeters in these 1 1/2 inch wide sticks that prodtrude up from the table top, which are mounted on a round speaker case with medium range speakers that point down at the desktop to reverberate off it. And then there's a big subwoofer which powers the whole system, so you only have one cord to plug in. Also they have easy to access controls, which tell you when they are centered, and a mic jack which is right on the side of the speaker for easy access.
Wehn I plugged these pupppies in, I was amazed. I plugged in my original speakers and then these again to compare them and the difference was like night and day. The old speakers in comparison to the new ones sounded muddy. I couldn't tell they were muddy of course when I had them, though obviouly I felt they were lacking something if I was shopping for new ones. But the new ones were crystal clear, and I'm much happier with them than I was with that Audigy card.
Anyhow, I will not be buying new speakers or a new sound card until such time as games have 5.1 surround sound. That is why I don't have a better audio card.
There hasn't been much in the way of audio for PCs because there's a lack of competition these days. There doesn't seem to be much innovation.
:)
Back in the day there was the good old A3D vs. EAX debates. Things steadily improved as Aureal and Creative Labs tried to outdo each other. Sadly, Aureal couldn't hack it and bowed down to CL. Soon after, CL became complacent (in my opinion).
Playing Half-Life with A3D and four speakers was so cool!
So most spiffy new games require spiffy new and FAST computers. Most new fast computers have a baseline noise level which is not so quiet, expecially after you drop in your turbine powered GPU.
Most audiophile-type distinctions in terms of fine quality can only be made in relative silence. I am not an audiophile, but I can tell a nice system when I hear it, but only with no background noise.
Therefore, for most people not blessed with silent hardcore gaming PCs (and even those who are but live in loud areas), the distinction is virtually impossible to make without the sound turned up so far that neighbors in the next zip code are complaining.
This is exactly why when I went to visit someone and they had an $8,000 plasma TV with a cooling fan I thought it was the dumbest thing ever. It totally defeated the purpose of the $5,000 sound system's capabilities.
I think people's emphasis on the visual has something to do with the fact that sight is an active sense. If you want to see something you have to point your eyeballs at it and adjust your focus, whereas hearing just happens naturally. Sight is a directed sense focused on some target, whereas you hearing is immersive...you hear everything around you. Since we tend to pay more attention to what we are actively involved in, sight gets top billing.
If God had had a computer it would have taken him 7 months to create the earth...if he even bothered to do it at all.
I did psychology as part of my degree and vaguely remember something like a human's overall perception is 96% from vision. that only leaves 4% for sound, smell and whatever else, so that's the reason we all focus more on game graphics than sound.
( Apparently a dogs perception is largely built on smell, so they would judge a game based on the odour of the box it came in! )
The major difference/benefit for gamers these days of having an expensive sound card over using the AC97 codec on your mobo is not overall sound quality, but to offload EAX/environmental audio calculations from the CPU so it maybe gives you 1 or 2 extra frames/sec.
Actually for games where it is useful to use audio for a positional cue of off-screen bad-guys, I find EAX just muddies it up. I get a much better idea just with clean stereo.
Drivers have a lot to do with it. Those of us that bought Soundblaster cards from Dell know all about this as we see non-OEM cards getting driver upgrades, but our non-standard OEM card does not, making the sound in games such as Neverwinter Nights to suck. A year later, we finally get an upgrade, but only after the support message boards are flooded with scathing complaints.
The other issue is setups. You know, number of speakers and their arrangement. The game/driver has to be able downmix the sound so it sounds good whether you have 2 speakers or 7. Relying on the hardware to tell you the setup isn't always possible, for example the card I got from Dell is capable of 5.1, but the best speaker set at the time was 4.1, no center speaker. This makes it so some software has to remix or downnix the center channel to come out of the left and right front speakers.
It was kind of fun playing Diablo II with 5.1 enabled and no center speaker. The surround effects were incredible!
You can lose something that is loose, so tighten the loose item so you don't lose it.
Developers do not have the time to write effects that only work on a limited subset of cards, Especially when driver and feature support is spotty and weak. It generally ends up being more trouble than it is worth.
Also, any of you folks with a Soundblaster card that think you are fronting "Pro" audio gear are completely fooling yourselves.
When I first saw this, I started wondering what tools are available for recording 5.1 surround. Google didn't find any in my searches (though I may have chosen poor search words).
Although I didn't find any free tools, I did find several commercial tools, which makes me wonder if you need a license to record and/or distribute 5.1 audio (sorta like mp3 - I'd assume this would apply to licensed technologies like EAX and Dolby). There also doesn't appear to be a good open format for 5.1 or 7.1 audio, meaning you're probably stuck licensing for it. Since most people only have stereo speakers, studios probably figure it's not worth the extra expense (especially if there's a per-CD license, though that fee often is only to display the logo, like THX, which is often a selling point).
Maybe, but one thing that bugs me about new mobos is the almost total lack of a game port -- which you need for MIDI. For those who may not know, MIDI is what you use to hook up keyboards/synthesizers/drum machines/other musical instruments to a computer.
I was considering a new DFI LanParty mobo for the Athlon XP (this was before I decided to go the Athlon 64 path). An e-mail to the company resulted in "Yes, it has a game port header. If you buy the mobo, I can mail you the cable to bring the game port out to a PCI plate." This is very nice of them to mail the cable, but it should come standard in the box! It seems that only the low-end boards even come with the game port these days.
Some people like to hook up a keyboard and play a little music. And I am not sure about the linux support for USB-to-MIDI adapters (anybody know about this one?).
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Something makes me think that you havent played a game w/ 5.1 surround sound. Playing SOCOM II is a different experience w/ the surround sound. I can hear where shots are coming from. its not pinpoint, but I can tell w/in 20 degrees or so where someone is hitting me from. In addition, I can feel it when grenades go off next to me. It adds to the experience. In games like Final Fantasy, those 5.1 scenes look and sound better than most movies.
This is on a PS2 hooked up to a very nice home theater system, something youre not likely to have on a PC. However, surround sound can be implemented in headphones (its in fact, easier), which is a better, cheaper option.
Good sound won't save a game, or make a good game bad, but it can really add to the experience.
The so called problem is that we've reached a plateau now where only audio engineers and musicians can really benefit from better hardware.
Ever since the SB Live was released, I've had no need to upgrade. The Live has a near-zero noise level (ie: no static or low level hiss during silence) and it has 4 speaker positional audio (ie: I can hear when something is behind me, to the left, or right, etc).
That's all I need. I must say though that anyone who thinks on-board audio is good enough, well now they are wrong. On board audio is notorious for getting interference from other electronic components. clicks, buzzes, hissing, etc is very common.
First, I will concede a few points:
1. On a regular pc game, 2.1 and regular stereo quality is really about as immersive as 95% of people will ever need. Not to mention the fact that there's something ironic about having a tiny little 23-inch screen and BIG FAT AWESOME 15.3 sound system.
2. Most games really don't do a very good job of utilizing advanced sound options, and that includes some pretty awful canned sound effects.
3. Creative is only at the top of the heap because no one else wants to be. No self-respecting audiophile would purchase one, and no gamer on any kind of budget should be trying to purchase one, when there are far better offerings from lower pxed competitors.
Now, the meat of my argument. I have a Sound Blaster Audigy ZX2 and a 6.1 Cambridge Soundworks set. I bought these for my computer when I didn't know what I was doing, but it's not the end of the world, and here's why:
1. I am now in charge of media for my church, and a decent sound card with the right software can really go a long way in an amateur operation. Creative isn't the best, but in this case, they hit the right px point.
2. I am now getting into building an amateur home theatre, complete with a sanyo plv-z2 projector, and a custom made HTPC. In this case, I could really spend a lot of money on a component system, but since I already have the parts I am going to be able to take the much cheaper route and simply mount my 6.1s in the ceiling, hooked to the HTPC. This, combined with an 80-inch HDTV projection screen, will most certainly create an immersive experience for both gaming and viewing, and given my current hardware, will surely impress everyone save the lone audiophile, who can never be truly impressed.
Now, there's been a lot of hating on computer audio, but given the convergence factor of pc's and entertainment centers, it's not worth throwing away your cards just yet. 3.
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
I recently purchsed a couple Bose PC speakers, and have been pretty happy with them.
I'm not a big audio person, but they sound fine to me. Not a ton of low end, but the mids and highs are nice.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
It not so much the upfront time as the support time and cost. Last time I was involved with this we had to contend with drivers that outright lied, not too bad as they are easy to spot, drivers that streached the truth, a pain in the arse and drivers that crashed randomly if you did anything other than plain vanilla stereo, so unsurprisingly there is a lot of pressure to drop everything except pan and fade and avoid all the headache.
The worst culprites were Creative, if your are interested use DirectX Caps viewer and see the specs of an SBLive change as you install different drivers.
A long time ago, on a platform far away (well, Amiga actually), there was a game called Agony.
It was a pretty simplistic little side scrolling shoot-em-up, which probably wouldn't have deserved anyone's attention if it hadn't been for it's awe inspiring sound track (and graphics too, but a lot of games had those).
The sound track of Agony was the reason I bought the game, and I still have the intro MOD file in my music play list tucked away among all the MP3s; it was that good.
So in answer to the heartfelt wish from the original post, there you have it - a game that sold well primarily because of it's audio. Just a pity it was so many years ago.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
I agree with you 100% on support costs.
On my recently purchases HP desktop I have an integrated Realtek ALS650 chipset with built in 5.1 sound. Its light years above my old computer and if Soundblaster has something better I dont care because its not better enough for me to spend $100 on.
What happened to PC audio? Creative Labs. When Aureal introduced their 3D audio spec the games made that supported it (Unreal, and Half-Life I believe) were incredible. I remember playing Unreal and knowing were a monster/enemy was by the sound! Then Creative had to f#$k everything up by putting them out of business (and eventually buying all the IP, but NOT USING THE TECHNOLOGY). I have not bought any Creative products since then, but since Aureal isn't coming back, I may give the new Audigy2 card a try. 8*( Anyone care to comment on audio quality in games with the Audigy2 ZS? Specifically is there any 3d sound features yet?
Oh, and you nay-sayers that say that 3d audio cannot be simulated using 2 speakers (headphones) might want to do a google search on HRTF's (Head Related Transfer Functions)
Man, I thought everybody had that. Last time I went to buy PC speakers (two years ago) I picked up a cheapo logitech set with four surround speakers and a subwoofer for $50. I guess I hang out with too many other gaming dorks. Beyond movie-watching, it's a large help in games, as you can tell by sound which direction someone is shooting at you from.
Companies think they can shovel "sound cards" like the Audigy on consumers, that's what happened to PC Gaming Audio.
[o]_O
People who use computers have accustomed themselves to a lower standard of audio quality. MP3 audio is inferior to lossless formats quite simply. PC audio speakers are equivalent to speakers 10% of their cost, the other 90% is in shielding and rediculous markup. The average headphones anyone owns these days are absolute shit. The connectors on your standard audio cards, if you even use a card and not the chips included on the motherboard, are a cheap afterthought riddled with interference.
Is it any surprise nobody cares about audio quality? They've all grown up on computers that have made them tone deaf to what good audio sounds like. The fact that 99% of people out there think 128kbps MP3 audio on their iPod using the (UGH!) bud headphones sounds "good" is a travesty.
The biggest issue that I have with sounds in games is that many companies seem to have put the bare minimum into their development, especially in comparison to the video. I hate playing a visually stunning game only to get voice sets that sound like Kermit in a tin can or sword fights that sound like dropping silverware in a drawer.
Given the current state of things, I don't even care about 5.1 audio. Reasonably good headphones like the Sennheisers HD280 Pros that I am using now have made a bigger difference to my gaming experience than any external audio system that I have used. Rather than effects, I hope that the developers spend more time making the sounds interesting, informative and appropriate.
There just aren't enough applications around to justify having a bunch of dinky satellite speakers. My roommate has a set of those from Logitech, they cost something like $150 and he has to shuffle them around all the time depending on what he's using them for - the PC, the Gamecube, the TV...and most of the time he ends up using his cheapo headphones because it's late at night.
Meanwhile, I bought some pretty good headphones(though not in audiophile range, they can really sound lousy at some low frequencies) for $30. Then, later, I replaced my aging $15 2 speaker set with $60 Altec Lansing 2.1's. They take up less space overall and I, too, can produce an obnoxiously loud bass now. (Which happens to be the only caveat of these - no seperate bass control and ALSA isn't mixing my original SB Live! correctly, so I can't really change the input either. Ugly problem.)
The extra speakers seem more gimmicky than anything else to me - unless you were REALLY into FPS games they just aren't going to add much.
As more people use their PCs for a home theatre component. I'm building a computer soon, and its geared towards multimedia, i'm getting a widescreen monitor, 7.1 speakers, and an Audigy 2ZS Gamer card (although my mobo will support 5.1 surround, might as well get the $120 card that comes with $200 woth of GOOD games). I'm also getting an ATI AIW card and dont plan on having a TV. So not only will i be doing my TV and Movie watching on my PC, i'll also be gaming and hooking my Xbox up to it. I realize i'm in the minority of users, but i can see this kind of thing becoming more common.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
This was a good post. However, I respectfully disagree. Much of the love (ok, slight obsession, but that's really none of your business) with Half-Life that kept me playing that game far longer than was sane, were the sound effects, the sound map laid over the entire game experience. It really doesn't make any difference to me what level of Dolby SurroundSound is used. I use headphones, and I use them exclusively. What matters to me is, does the sound in the game enhance the game play, or is it tacked on because, well, players need to hear _something_ when their gun goes off?
I'll never forget the yap-yaps of the exploding dogs, the hollow metal pounding of the massive claw stalks, the splats from the mutant crocs, the chirping of the homing rodents. All the sounds in HL1 were exceptional. There have been other games with similar levels of sound quality (Baldur's Gate II being one of them) and I for one consider the sound of a game extremely important to its overall effect as an immersive environment. That's what it's all about, right? Immersion? Imagine a movie with crappy sound and no soundtrack. Basically, you've just imagined about 75% of the games out there.
Now, I will be forthright here and tell you all I am a DJ and electronica music producer in my spare time, so I am very biased towards good music, good sound effects, and environmental soundpainting. But I'm no tech junkie, a pair of good headphones and a good quality soundcard is good enough -- provided the game designers spent the time necessary to do the sound right. That seems to be what's missing most often. Visuals have definitely taken the lion's share of development dollars, and I think that's a shame. Music and environmental sound is such a crucial element of life -- we do a lot in our lives based on what we hear, including our emotional responses.
With that said, I'll whip out the soapbox and bring up the topic raised above somewhere about onboard sound cards being the crappiest the manufacturer can get away with. My Alienware laptop is a good example. The onboard sound has to be the worst I've ever heard from a PC, some Avance card that's probably worth about $10. I promptly went out and got an external USB Creative card (forget the exact name) for some additional inputs and to take the pressure off the clearly non-performing Avance. Battlefield:DesertCombat was absolutely crashing because of the soundcard. The Creative USB (card? box? SPU?) took care of that, and made the sound in general on the machine smooth as silk rubbing against satin.
Don't be afraid to demand more from your computer manufacturers in terms of sound! Your ears provide a huge part of the emotional response in your life through music and other environmental sounds, as new fathers know hearing their babies coo. (Yeah, OK, and cry, too.) Your soundcard may not need to be the ATI 9800 of audio, but don't make it the 16 meg GForce 1 either.
I splurged and bought an Audigy2 AND some Creative 6.1 speakers. Ghost Recon was the first game I played with this setup, and it is because of the sound (mostly) that I will always hold Ghost Recon in very high regard.
There was absolutely nothing like sitting in a dark room playing, moving through a GR map with a squad, prowling towards a target, and then BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! from behind and to the right from a squad member who I forgot to tell not to open fire at the first opportunity. Absolutely lifts you out of your seat. Really makes the weapons and overall gameplay take shape.
Good enough? Sure. Until you move up to a better sound system like I did.
You know, the standard Creative drivers will work just fine with your OEM Soundblaster. I have a Dell 4100 with a SBLive and I've always used the latest drivers of Creative's website with absolutely no problems.
As a game audio guy I read that article with both a "hell yeah!" and a pissed off feeling. I'm so sick of people saying how important audio is, but not giving it the time and resources it deserves.
That's BS. Almost every card out there supports at least EAX 2.0. It's a matter of choice and most devs put more money and time into eye candy because it gets the quick results and the good box shots. It's all about choice and since a lot of people haven't bothered to sit down and listen to a game in proper surround they have no idea what they are missing.
Remember how monitors started off as monochrome... then 16-color, then 256, then 16-bit; finally 24 and 32 bit? We didn't go to 64-bit. Why? No one can see that many colors.
Same with sound - we've long passed the point where any video card can reproduce a sound well enough so that 99% of us can't tell the difference between the recorded version and the original.
If you're giving me the option between a $20 and a $200 sound card, and I can't tell the difference, why would I pay the extra cash?
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
I know in Unreal Tournament 2004, it really does help to hear which direction the action is coming from.
It's so important that I was recently faced with a choice. I'd bought some nice USB headphones with mic to use the voice chat, which is also quite useful, but the OpenAL library that ships with (Mac) UT2004 has a bug where you don't hear with a proper stereo image. Other versions of the OpenAL library fixed this problem, but do not see audio inputs.
In the end, I had to choose the accurate stereo image. Hearing which direction the battle's in, or hearing a rocket launcher being fired up to your right is just too important to miss.
There's all sorts of ways you can cut costs on stuff like video cards, harddrives, even processors (use bad ram, slow, big capacity drives, the Celeron), but I don't think you can really do that with speakers. It doesn't matter how nice you're sound card is if you're pumping it through a $5 pair. OEM PC sales is all about selling cheap crap with good specs (the #'s in the advert) for way more than it's actually worth. Adding a good pair of speakers makes it harder to get the kind of margines pc makers are used to.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/