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."

Comments

guys & gals, eyes & ears

[Arngautr]

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

Hidden and Dangerous

[gkelman]

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.

Re:Hidden and Dangerous

[kb]

Even DOOM 1 had surround sound. Had to find that out when we were playing deathmatch, I had my Dolby surround system with me and suddenly a chainsaw went on directly behind me. Talk about being scared ;)

It's not dead! It's just pining!

[obeythefist]

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.

Re:It's not dead! It's just pining!

[Frenchy_2001]

Yes, Creative has nice sound treatment, like EAX 3+, however, they keep them to themselves as a competitive argument and by doing so, they are slowing their market adoption.

Before them, you had also A3D2, which was actually coupled with the geometry environment to generate the sound (so, real 3D, but at the expanse of huge bandwidth).

Also, Onboard sound has probably improved more in the past 5 years than dedicated cards. Except for the cards in the ~$100 range, most onbard can cope. And Intel is pushing for even MUCH better onboard sounds, so it will keep pushing the creatives of the world into the high end.

That being said, the improvement in onboard sound (and as such average available sound on a PC) are equivalent to the ones in onboard video. They are still basic compared to the discrete ones, but we would have killed for those 5 years ago...

Contrary to video, where games require the top, sound can do with onboard. Not always a bad thing...

And games continue to push the enveloppe too, as Doom3 is supposed to have full Dolby Digital sound. Time will tell...

The Thief franchise

[Synkronos]

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.

This article has completely missed the point

[SkunkPussy]

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."

Uru

[Winterblink]

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.

No competition

[ksiddique]

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! :)

Re:Turn the monitor off

[Sigma 7]

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.

Actually, I'd have to disagree with you there.

As shown on Deaf Gamers, there's a significant amount of games that omit features that make it possible to play without sound. In particular:

1. Critical announcements - ceratin RTS games only have an audio announcement that you are under attack.
   
2. Speech - some modern FPS games rely on in-game speech, and forget to include the subtitles.
   
3. Cutscenes - as with speech, some cutscenes are not subtitled.
   
4. Directions - some games (e.g. Counterstrike) use audio to indicate where action is occurring. If you accidently reverse the audio channels (e.g. by afaulty driver or because you placed the earbuds in the wrong ear), you will be disoriented. The only game that countered this problem to an extent would be Ghost Recon. Most other games only alert you to the direction of an attack after you are hit.
   
5. Voice Chat - it's much faster than typing in text (and in most games, you can't defend yourself while typing. The only one where it was possible would be Rise of the Triad.)
   
6. Mandatory system requirements - some games, require a sound card to be present in the system, regardless of whether it is actually useful or not. Two examples would be X-Wing (Win95 Collectors Edition) from LucasArts (program will quit if it cannot initialize audio), and Machines from Acclaim (program will crash to Desktop if it cannot find a sound card.)
   
   1. 
      
      Of course, the amount of information gained from audio is being messed up in some aspects - in some cases, the noise is too low to be certain, while in others, it's being overshadowed by my CPU/Powersupply fan. (And I'm still looking for an easy way to quiet it down and take care of the heat problem as well. I have heard something that takes care of sound, but the heat problem still remains. )