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

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.

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.

It's the drivers

[Nutter9182]

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.

Sounds Good enough to me!

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

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.

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.) :E

Re:Sounds Good enough to me!

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

Price isn't the only factor involved. For example, I could go out and by a 5.1 or better system right now but I don't, in fact I only ever use headphones.

Why? Well for a start, housemates would be less than happy about me playing half my games at ridiculous times in the morning on a surround sound system. Then there is the fact that, with thow machines in the room, the fan noise would make any low volume sounds inaudible. I'm certain I'm not the only person here in this situation. Yeah, I'd love to have a good 5.1 setup but until I get a soundproof room with watercooled machines getting one would be pointless.

Until then, it's headphones.

PC Audio is much more mature

[martinthebrit]

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.

Where's the marketing?

[Vincman]

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.

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.

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. )