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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."
All you need is an FM-synth card and the midi that was used in the original DOOM to get your adrenaline going while gaming!
No game since has ever matched DOOM/DOOM2's music effect upon the player, in my opinion.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
If you think about it what has Creative done to anyone who has made a decent card in the past few years? they either sued them to the brink of death (Aureal), or acquired all the technologies that other developers used (sensaura) (sp?)
the only other real alternative was Nvidia which basically is suffering from cheap mainboard manufactures who wont spend the extra 50 cents on a decent DAC. the vast majority of boards with it are nowhere near soundstorm certified, thus its removal from A64 boards. I expect Intel to go the same way with their new chipset coming out too.
While I was at Quakecon (with it's roughly 10 vendors) I saw new games with amazing sounds and at least two vendors who were hyping their audio technology. They had 5.1 headphones and some incredible THX speakers from Creative. When playing Doom3 with a good audio system, I had an audio experience unlike that of any other game i've ever played.
Admittedly, there were not many vendors, but saying that audio is a forgotten component just doesn't reflect the reality of Quakecon. Or are you just trying to get readers?
Perhaps you've just noticed that reflex and knowing the maps better than your opponent are more important that hearing your bullets hit him?
Right now I currently work as a sound tech in college, and I can attest that the "problem" is not just in the computer realm. Very rarely do people care about excellent sound quality, though video quality is almost always something people are picky about. There's probably several reasons for this, but I think a lot of it has to do with people being tone deaf and putting their sight above their hearing in importance.
Audio has a far lower point of diminishing returns than does, say, graphics.
There's only so much fidelity you need for "Argghhhh" and "Kaboom" and "Zap."
Let's take Doom3 as an example.
Which would you rather have-- Doom3 on a Hammerfall pro audio card with a Voodoo2 or Doom3 on an Nvidia 6800 with a $20 Soundblaster Live?
For me, there's no contest. I do happen to have an Audiophile pro card, but it's because I make music, not because of gaming. For music applications there are SCADS of high-end cards. I just don't think the typical user needs them, unless he's some bling-fanatic who defines himself by how many of the latest, blue-LEDest IPOD-things he has.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
For many years there were advancements in sound back in the DOS days. You could make audio sound better with 16 bits, or 44.1khz. You could do wavetable systhesis so MIDI sounded realistic (at least compared to the beeps and boops of FM systhesis). There was advancement.
Then CDs came. As games moved to CDs and hard drives got bigger, suddenly it was possible to play real music, and it didn't matter how good your MIDI was because the game producers could use real music. Now we see it in MP3s and Ogg files used to store the music.
So for a long time, the sound world has been stagnate. Years ago we saw "3D" sound, but it never took off. Creative had EAX, which simulated it somehow, and Aureal had A3D which did wave-tracing or something like that. What I can tell you was that A3D was QUITE superior. But many games didn't use it, and it did have a CPU impact. People were more interested in better 3D graphics, sound didn't seem that important. Aureal eventually died and was bought by Creative Labs. As far as I know they haven't used any of the technology that they aquired.
So without competition things stagnated. With Aureal dead, no one really cared about 3D sound. So all we've gotten is "standard" sound cards that do 2D. Sure you can get 5.1 and 7.1 and stuff, but nothing amazing. And worst of all, there are no drivers for my favorite soundcard for newer versions of Windows or for Linux (at least not without paying).
So here we are. Aureal is dead, and people are starting to care again. Now all we have is Creative. There is no real competition. But now that Doom 3 supports it (HL2 probably will too) and it's claimed that you really need it for the best expiriance you can get, things will hopefully advance again. Now that graphics are very near "good enough", perhaps sound (which in many ways hasn't changed since the SB16 as far as today's games are concerned) will catch up.
So long... Aureal.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Humans have focused on pretty much just two senses; sight and touch, especially with respect to our hands. If we want to identify something we almost always look at it or pick it up and feel it.
Our sense of smell/taste is notoriously crappy compared to many other animals and unless something is particularly smelly we usually don't pay much attention to that aspect. Our hearing is adequate and is very usefull for communicating language and for tertiary analysis but it isn't usually what we focus on.
We have very exact words for defining shape and size and color. We can say a secreen is X by Y pixels and if we have a general idea of the pixel size that gives many people a pretty good sense of the size and quality of the image. We can say it can display Z colors and although that's a little more inexact it still gives us a reasonably good idea.
On the other hand our words for describing audio in common usage are generally less specific and hace less conotation. If you say that a sound system has seven channels then i and a lot of other non-audiophiles will have very little idea what exactly that means or how it differes from more or less channels. I expect two monitors with the same stats to look pretty similar, but for audio equipment you need to go listen to it to find out which is good and which is bad.
All of which means that when making games or any other mixed media product you will get more bang for your buck if you invest more in video over sound. People will notice it more and be able to describe it better when talking to their friends or writing reviews. Good audio can certainly make a game a lot better, but how many people buy a game just because it has good audio vs. just because it has good graphics? There are certainly a few, i myself happen to know a single hardcore audiophile who builds his own speakers and such, but they're not that common.
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3d positional audio with a 5.1 dolby THC certified system can really kick ass!
Not just by scaring the daylights out of you but in Doom3 and half-life its nice to hear things behind you as well as in front.
With advanced sound algorithms you can hear how far a battle is in Unreal tournament and how fast the rocket is heading to you.
A split second by your reaction time is all it takes for you to get fragged and your opponent to claim another frag.
I dont game as much but sound is essential as well as high frame rates.
http://saveie6.com/
well, considering that no game save vice city has collected songs from such popular bands before onto a game soundtrack, I can see why you like it.
Of course Bobby Prince didn't realize he was doing MIDI covers of metal bands for Doom, but if you've heard much Alice in Chains, Pantera, Slayer, etc. it's pretty damn obvious. To try to pass that stuff off as his own work was just shameless.
Of course, it's hilariously appropriate that the Doom3 title track is a ripoff of a Tool song.
We all like to lament the loss of Soundstorm, with it's hardware audio mixing and on the fly dolby digital encoding, but it died for two reasons, one major, one minor.
The big one was marketing. Nvidia failed, on every level, to market and push the Soundstorm APU. It wasn't advertised, it's features and abilities were no explained, and info about it was buried deep within the then current nvidia web page. Nobody knew what it was, and while everyone understood 5.1 sound on a motherboard, no one understood why nvidias was better. And by no one, I include motherboard reviewers, who would talk about the dual channel features and onboard firewire of the nforce chipset, but completely overlook the sound, failing to even mention it in most cases. This feedback lead motherboard manufacturers to question the premium nvidia charged for the solution, and often opt for the cheaper AC'97 chipsets they had in stock instead. Nvidia never published benchmark and review guidelines for the soundstorm, so nobody ever cared about it. They needed to push it's excellence as a gaming and home theater chipset, and it's ability to blend digitally with home audio setups, and never did.
The second reason is, in fact, Creative Labs. To understand, some technical details of the soundstorm are needed. The Soundstorm APU is a semi-custom DSP, not a dedicated audio solution. It runs a customized version of the Sensaura 3D engine, doing all the work on APU that is normally left to Sensaura versions that run within the drivers of other soundcard makers. Additionally, the final mix stage of this engine has had the Dolby Digital Live encoder added, allowing the 5.1 output to be packed into an AC-3 stream. In other words, Nvidia was dependent on Sensaura technology. Now, guess who just bought Sensaura? That's right! Creative Labs. Do you think they'll be licensing their new acquisition to the one company that actually competes with them? Now, they'll keep licensing it to other AC'97 makers, because who wouldn't want a cut of every motherboard ever made, and the opportunity to make more when they buy a creative soundcard to replace it?
So, it's dead. Replacing the Sensaura engine with an in house solution isn't possible, as there is to much contamination of IP, nvidia would have to hire all new dev's and engineers to clean room it. Licensing from Creative will be prohibitively expensive, and motherboard makers aren't interested in it anyway.
Why not make a PCI version? Well, the PCI bus can't handle 64 16bit/48Khz audio streams, that's more bandwitdth than PCI has. It worked fine on soundstorm, thanks to the fast north-southbridge link. You could produce a PCIe 1x card version, but nvidia would have to re-engineer a good deal of the chip to do so, and then we are back to licensing anyway.
Nvidia never made Soundstorm enough of a brand to be worth noticeing, and then killed it when the costs got to high and the support got to difficult. Strangely, drivers for the soundstorm have finally matured, with the most recent 4.31 audio producing decent sound and having wide compatibility. Ah well, looks like our next hope is the highly DRM protected Intel HDA standard. At elast it offers realtime dolby digital. Sort of.