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.

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. )