Slashdot Mirror
What's Up With Computer Audio?
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."
The forgotten component - What's up with computer audio?
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.
/. were doing the review :P
I personally got the cheap Chaintech card based on the VIA ENVY24 chip. It panoolies Creative's lineup for overall sound quality any day of the week, though if you REALLY want EAX you have to get one of their cards. But I'd say it's not worth it - with this one I'm able to discern lyrics and finer details of music that never came out on an SB Live.
What's up with computer audio? - Page 2 [What is so good about SoundStorm?]
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
It works pretty well. We use Adobe 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!
Best Buy can have you arrested
http://www.tweaktown.com.nyud.net:8090/document.ph p?dType=article&dId=695
wait a little, eventually it should load.
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
What's up with computer audio? - Page 3 [Benchmarks - Test System Setup and Comments]
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
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 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.
What's up with computer audio? - Page 2 [What is so good about SoundStorm?]
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 improvemen
I've got an Abit NB-7S (?) with the Non-soundstorm certified Nvidia 5.1 chipset.
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.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Uhm, I don't know about your reciever, but as for coax --well, you can run coax off of any sound card line out. Go to your local Radio Whatever and explain that you want to go from your 1.5mm to coax. All you need is some adapters and then you can run that coax for a hell of a long way and still get a nice clean 900mhz line-out signal. I have some extra adapters sitting upstairs, but I'm not going to give them to you.
I use a lot of these around the house. I use coax 8-way splitters to take the signal around the room and into a few different rooms so I can use small amps. Sounds so damn good. It all comes from a sound card or a little teenie MP3 player if the PC is down and goes into a plain old coax splitter like you use for cable TV. Then at the ends it gets more adapters and turns back into 1.5. to plug into the amps.
The hardest part actually seems to be finding a place that actually has them. It's easy to find morons who say there's no such thing. But they're out there. Just insist that you've bought them before. They're real.
Ahem. Set aside 15 minutes and digest this whitepaper. Computer audio is vastly more complicated than simply increasing sample rate and bits per sample, and decreasing SNR and THD. If Aureal had still been around, Creative would have certainly been encouraged to work harder on their drivers and hardware acceleration of this stuff.
If you need slightly better performance and advanced feature support like EAX then the creative cards are the way to go, but if musical fidelity is your priority there are far better options. The Chaintech AV710 is 25$ retail and outperforms the audigy 2 zs with its superior Wolfson DAC. If two channel gaming is fine for you (headphones give great spacial relation anyway) then you will love this card. The next step (quality and feature wise) are the E-MU line. This Creative owned company produces the 0404, a $100 card that most audiophiles agree will output sound like a 500$+ cd player. The $200 1212 option is said to perform as well as any sub $1000 cd player/DAC.
MIDI has nothing to do with sound quality whatsoever. MIDI is note information. It can be used with FM synthesis, wavetables, samples, whatever.
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.
Garin Hiebert (Creative engineer):
Manuel Jander: Garin Hiebert: There you have it, the reason we don't today have hardware accelerated 3D audio for Aureal cards. Pretty lame in my opinion, but that's the way it is when you have monopolies in charge of the standards.This stuff was posted on 8 Jan 2004 if you want to go back and read the thread.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
Since Creative owns a vast patent portfolio it has acquired from Aureal and Sensaura it can effectively dictate the (near) future of 3D PC audio.
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 the SB32, the SB64 was a SB32 with a software synth for the extra 32 voices and a proprietary memory expansion slot instead of standard SIMM slots (I recall 2MB upgrade costing $55).
Any comments on the new Audigy cards?
I had enough with the SB PCI series (SB512 anyone?) and switched to Terratec's cards (no SCMS on digital outputs/inputs!) and haven't looked back since.
Good 7.1 sound and the money I saved went towards a GF6800 GT.
Capitalization is the difference between "Helping your uncle jack off a horse" and "Helping your uncle Jack off a horse"
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.
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. 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, CAHRISMA at our lab, Something on the VR aspects of the project
Heh, yeah the instruments in those old sound cards were crap. Then there was the time I fired up Doom on the old Pentium 100 i had hooked up to my midi equipment. Doom music played through a modern midi synth with sampled sounds is awesome.
/usr/games/fortune
There are two varieties of "5.1" headphones-- one incorporates multiple drivers, so that each ear is subjected to an anterior speaker, a main speaker, and a posterior speaker. The other variety uses head related transfer functions to approximate surround sound on ordinary headphones.
See this paper for more details, including circuit board layouts and a bit of math.
For grins and giggles, go download "The Last Ninja" and throw it into your c64 emulator of choice (Vice).
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. (But please don't torture the little server to much.)
This is not as funny as it seems.
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.
Sunny
Be my Friend
Creative's patent issue was regarding a shadow algorithm. There is no EAX in Doom 3. The reason only 5.1 systems get surround sound is because of the very basic sound system.
Carmack handled the sound engine. Apparently, he cut the thing in half and was proud at how less complex it had become.
Of course the review has "AMD bias" the key novel product in the review is AMD only. It's a little hard to test a Soundstorm board with an Intel CPU because you have to press really freakin' hard to mash P4 into a socket A.
Soundstorm really is one of those novel and useful products that provides a new option for many people. You may still play games at a desk with a monitor and PC speakers, but I prefer to do so on my couch in my living room where I have a large screen and a real sound system.
This is a superior gaming experience. Those who disagree are a tiny minorty. The future of PC gaming is in the living room. Soundstorm simplifies the transition.
Unfortunately, NVidia would never have developed this without the XBox contract and Microsoft's assistance. This is why the availability is limited to specific chipsets and is not being attempted by other manufacturers.
If Microsoft had not been willing/able to literally purchase a portion of the console market, a Soundstorm type product for the PC would still be a few years away.
From a Sound Designer's perspective a much larger issue and limitation to "What's up with computer audio?" is that most of the market is driven by game sound and the status of what is regarded as 'State-Of-The-Art' in game sound render is laughable to be generous.
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
Finally, somebody who points out the big elephant standing amidst the audio chip havyweights.
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.
Very rarely do people care about excellent sound quality, though video quality is almost always something people are picky about.
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 *look* of the movie because the sound is what brings it all together.
Case in point: Band of Brother (and Saving Private Ryan for that matter). Both had realistic sound for rifle fire. Bullets literally wizzed past your head, an effect only noticible with 5.1 (or better). If there isn't DTS or Dolby Digital, I don't care.
That is really what got me hooked on DVD movies in the first place. The first time I saw a Star Trek movie in the local electronics store, I knew that hearing laser fire go past my face was the coolest.
The desktop I'm sitting at now is a *ducks* eMachines (T3025). Now I've had these 4(.1) speakers for years (about 3) but no grip to get a 4 channel sound card. But since the mainboard (nForce) has 5.1 support I finally get to watch movies on my PC with a 5.1 experience. Nvidia has released their own sound mixer (NVMixer) which allows for downmixing, which gives me 5.1 through their speaker wizard. Simply tell it you've got x amount of speakers and it does the math (literally).
With FPS games sound is important because if someone is shooting at you 5.1 will let you know where it's coming from. Sure, it's simulated on my machine but it works well through sofware emulation. Nforce boards are cheap, and many people knock them... but they do put out great sound.
Get your Unix fortune now!
So I have an Audigy 2 NX on order now. Hopefully this solves my sound woes. Getting decent digital sound into my computer shouldn't have been this difficult or this expensive.
Last Ninja 2, for me is the definitive C64 audio experience - I recorded the whole soundtrack to CD =]
For all sorts of SID goodness check out the High-Voltage SID Collection, though you probably already know about it if you can name SID composers =]
Nah. They paid Trent Reznor, but he bailed after a while. The title song was done by Tweaker, an ex-NIN guy.
And yes, the title track is a blatent rip-off of Lateralus era Tool.