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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.
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.
Maybe for most people it's nice to have one component that just works as advertised, and doesn't necessarily need to be replaced with an expensive upgrade every 2 years. Not to cast aspersions on the geek's need to endlessly tinker, but don't we have our hands full already with graphic cards, processors, memory, etc.?
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?
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
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.
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
#
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.
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
Disclaimer: I never played Doom1, or Doom2 & I've not played Doom3.
So, I don't know how it compares, but the music on Diablo added an awful lot to the atmosphere. It's reasonably scary, and when it gets the sound of an angry charger put over it you end up almost jumping out of your seat.
Oh, Total Annihilation had a great score, but it didn't actually do much for the game, it just sounded great.
FGD 135
Sound is generally included with the motherboard now. Which means you have to choose based on all of the features of the motherboard (processor support, memory support, SATA etc.), and sound then becomes "part of the equation" instead of its own calculation.
Pretty much musicians and audiophiles choose their sound chipsets (or cards) carefully, most people buy the Fry's special or just make sure it says "sound included" on the motherboard box.
Not to mention people who buy prebuilt PCs, in which case the manufacturer chooses the cheapest (integrated) chipset.
Since relatively few people pick sound chipsets carefully, the "demand" is effectively "low," and that drives the supply down (and into specialization).
Castle Wolfenstein, first version, 2D ascii, on a Commodore 64...
They had a neat trick. To unlock safes, you had to push the volume up of your monitor to the max to hear the "click". But when an SS entered the room and screamed "Achtung" at the max volume the C64 could produce, you would jump 3 feet behind and rush to take back control of your keyboard to take whatever action necessary to get out of this mess.
The C64... ahhhhh... the good old days.
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
Um I'm sorry to have to totally disagree, but the very next iD game - Quake did something kind of evolutionary and paid a big name artist (Nine Inch Nails) to produce their music. It moved the bar far beyond anything MIDI.
:| ;)
Reading back perhaps you're being sarcastic
*DrugCheese rants*
It is quite ironic (yes, this is irony, not coincidence) that an article that purports to bemoan the neglect of sound in favor of picture proceeds to rate the audio gear based on how it impacts graphics performance.
The sad part is that most people just aren't as sensitive to sound quality. Witness the enormous numbers of people who honestly believe that MP3 (and Ogg, for that matter) sound as good as CD (and 16-bit 44.1 kHz still isn't great IMHO.) I'm a music teacher and audio engineer by profession. The other day, a student of mine was trying to convince me that his SB Audigy was a "pro" card. Seriously... Granted, my M-Audio (for the Linux box) and Digidesign (for the Mac) converters would be inappropriate for gaming, but you know audio is not a high priority for the average geek when they try to tell you that Creative makes professional-grade gear. (Disclaimer: I am an admitted audio snob, and I don't particularly care that much about graphics. My gaming takes place on an Athlon with an old S3 card [I removed the GeForce2 that was in it because it was introducing latency on the sound card], a Powerbook [yep] and a PS1).
Bah,
Not even close to the days before they even invented sound. Walking uphill barefoot in 4 feet of snow and you needed nothing to get your adrenaline going.
Damn lazy kids these days.
I would like to see more focus on delivering a higher-quality audio path from game developer to consumer, as opposed to gimmicky post-processing to make things sound "better". (e.g. we want to deliver N channels of 24-bit/96KHz audio with low CPU overhead, rather than a DSP that tries to "enhance" existing audio). Real-time Dolby Digital encoding is great, funky "spatialization" of 2-channel audio is not.
Not to name names, but I have switched away from a formerly reliable company's sound hardware because they got too "creative" (ahem) with their gimmicks and forgot about the basics.
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.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
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/
It doesn't matter how good your sound card is if the game is outputting a simple stereo single with a music loop and some canned effects. If the developer doesn't go the extra mile to create decent sound content and a good audio playback engine in the game, then it will never sound as good as it looks- but it is possible to do both at once with the right approach.
There's an interesting rant from one of Halo's programmers here about the state and future directions of game audio.
Gimme those tube amps. I really can't get excited over cold digital, give the warm glow of a tube and I'm happy.
Now how do I mount valve in the PCI form factor?
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.
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.
Totally agree.
For grins and giggles, go download "The Last Ninja" and throw it into your c64 emulator of choice (Vice). The soundtrack on that is absoluetly amazing, and it was made.. what, almost 16 years ago? One of the best gaming soundtracks ever.
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"
I can tell from page 2 that the authors are biased towards this AMD solution for some reason.
These guys actually try and claim that a $149 add-on card cannot provide 5.1 (6-channel) sound. Seriously, look at their comparison chart. It's so wacked you'd think it was Microsoft's work.
I mean, seriously, for less than $30 you can get a SB Live! 5.1 that will provide a lot of what's being listed on their page 2 chart. And certainly by the time you've reached their $149 price-point you're able to get yourself a nice SB Audigy2 that can do everything they want but hardware AC3 encoding.
And I have to be honest -- is the hardware AC3 encoding really going to be much of an issue for most people? I don't see audio enthusiasts being geared for onboard audio (no matter what it is capable of), and the value segment rarely goes for some fancy surround sound.
Basically, I'm saying this article is bullocks from the second page on. I know it's easier to critisize than to write a good article... but still, these guys seem to be entirely too biased towards this product to make their 'review' worth my time. Personally, I think it's worth a grain of salt.
Now go ahead and mod me down for being a crotchety old man.
/dev/random
Video is something that is easily noticeable by an end user. The graphics look better on a monitor. Audio is different, you have to have a good sound system and if you want surround sound you have to have a room suitable for the 6 speaker setup.
Most people don't have surround sound at their computers and never will, I would if I was able to physically have the speakers surrounding me. I can't. Alternatively the only other speakers I can get are 2 satellites plus a sub. No ones offers a 3.1 dolby pro logic setup for computers. We have to make baby steps to surround sound - let's get that centre channel speaker in there.
The only time surround sound will ever become as big of a focus as graphics for developers is when someone can buy a single canister speaker that does surround sound in the entire room.
THC !!! What have you been smoking ?
I bet if you heard a really good quality sound card, you'd agree that sound quality is important. If all you've ever heard is cheap audio gear, then you won't see the big deal.
Also, surround sound does also make a big difference. I never thought about it until I bought surround sound speakers.
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
The L.C.D .doesn't have this equipment. Computers are sold with two speakers, if any, and very few people use them as a "multi-media" unit, prefering their superior home stereos.
A couple problems I see:
The computer is usually not even in the same room as the sound/entertainment system. The computer is a web/email/work machine that doubles as a gaming machine once in a while.
The computer doesn't come bundled with a really nice sound system and if offered, I doubt anyone who cared that much about sound would pay the premium knowing full well their home stereo blows it away, doesnt need reboots, etc.
The same question can be asked of computer game controllers. The consoles do a much better job of delivering games for the L.C.D. that an old fashioned keyboard is just fine for gamers. No need for some killer controller. Of course some would argue the keyboard is superior and that flight simulators need special controllers, but those are niche items. Just because they are niche items doesn't mean they are "dying."
Lastly, there are tons of 5.1 equipment for PCs for people who want them. This assumption that because it doesn't ship with the cheapest dell thus its "dying" is really pushing it.
Don't forget about the simpler things that even Joe Average has to deal with. Does the keyboard 'feel' right? What about the mouse? Wireless or not wireless? What about the size of the monitor or just hook up to your TV? Oh and, what kind of sound system should you get to hook up into your sound card?
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.)
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.
It is one of the pet peeves of mine that the word COAXIAL is used to refer to so many different types of cables, that it can sometimes be confusing. This is what may have the parent AC confused.
While you CAN convert a normal 1.5mm (hereafter referred to as miniplug) female jack that 99% of people have on their sound cards to a what he refers to as coaxial cables (coaxial in this instance meaning the kind of cable that your cable television and internet use to come into the house, or that older televisions have as their only input), you gain nothing by doing this other than the ability to run the cables a long distance without any degradation. Though those coaxial cables may HAVE a theoretical bandwidth of 900mhz (or higher I'm not entirely sure) you'll never be using more than 22khz of that bandwidth.
What TFA is talking about is the coaxial cables used for digital sound, the format which is used by Sony and Phillips (hence the SPDIF, Sony-Phillips Digital Interface). This carries sound digitally at 44khz inbetween different consumer devices and also allows for different kinds of surround encoding such as DTS. The other format for carrying digital sound inbetween consumer devices is called optical, or more correctly TOSlink, and is supported by the rest of the manufacturers that didn't want to pay royalties to Sony/Phillips for using their patented standard. Optical also carries sound at 44khz and can support the same kinds of encoding as SPDIF can.
now the ON topic part of this post:
It is sad to see that the SoundStorm audio solution may not be carried on, as I thought it was the first real innovation in the computer sound industry in a long time. Even the DECENT onboard sound solutions had always used CPU cycles to encode the sound information provided by games to a theater standard surround setup such as DTS. The fact that Soundstorm can do this without any CPU time was a major boon to me as far as buying an Nforce2 chipset based board. Without the soundstorm, to get correctly positioned audio to my receiver I had to run both analog AND digital cables to my receiver and then switch between inputs on the receiver depending on whether I was gaming or watching a DVD.
That's so bullshit.
Having never really liked creative I didn't really feel like supporting them and purchasing an audigy 2 when I built my new computer to get correctly positional audio, so the Soundstorm enabled Nforce2 boards really fit the bill. I'll be sad to see it go, but I can understand how computer audio for most people is definitely a low priority.
It is my hope that the better class of mainboard makers (asus, abit, etc.) who make higher end boards for people who custom build will continue to provide the hardware required for the SoundStorm audio, and that Nvidia will keep the specification in the Nforce chipset. The best way to get this done is to continue to support manufacturers that realize there definitely IS a subset of people who would NOT like the cheapest quality components for the most important part of their system, and are willing to pay a premium for that.
*sigh* ranting done, when it all comes down to it, I guess it's always money that talks. It seems that the money (vote) of the consumer dollar is less and less powerful against the money (vote) of the corporate dollar. Why should it be any different overseas ?
I played Doom when it first came out through a SoundBlaster 16 and a Yamaha PSR-510. The 510's keyboard was crap, but the AWM GMIDI samples were pretty good -- and Doom sounded *GREAT*. Even better than SB16 + WaveBlaster.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
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.
Half-Life 1 back in '99 was doing echoes and reverb based on the size of the room, and even now in 2004, a game like Doom 3 still plays its sounds effects raw, like you're in a closet.
Half-Life's actually a lot simpler than that - in the single-player game, you control the DSP algorithm with the env_sound point entity. There are a bunch of presets, and park 'em either side of an entrance, for instance one with 'Cavern Large' and one with 'Tunnel Small', and as the player walks past their audio changes... There are only two channels processed (left and right) - if a sound plays, it gets shoved out through the DSP. You can't have some sound effects with one effect applied and others with another, it's an all-or-nothing trick.
Having said that, it can be incredibly effective, and since it's completely controlled by the mapper, you can choose effects to maximise the atmospheric effects. Who cares how big the room is, what's the most claustrophobic effect that can be applied for when the player's soemwhere they shouldn't be? And what's a much safer ambience for when they're away from danger?
Highly impressive, especially as it ran without problems in high-quality on my old P166MMX. Interestingly, the guy who wrote the DSP stuff, Kelly Bailey, also did all the music and sound effects for Half-Life. I've always felt that the audio systems in Id games were a bit of an afterthought, but Half-Life's is a major feature in the game, designed in part by the designer of what it would play...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
One thing that shits me with gaming audio is that in the games I've played, all the effects, monsters, etc ALL SOUND THE SAME.
Eg in doom, each type of sound is exactly the same, only slightly pitch shifted. The same goes for the quake series - every sound only differs with a little pitch. Whether the surrounding geography is a small room or a huge hall, it sounds the same.
what I want to see is true dynamic audio - each sound effect being created dynamically out of base sounds, so that each time you hear a particular effect, it's sound varies according to the immediate geography - big booming echoes in large halls, crisp, close and loud shrieks in small spaces.
THAT is what would make audio advance in gaming to the next level.
Sparks:Gadget:Beer Maker
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
Lets travel back, way back. There was the Adlib audio. Then Creative Labs introduced the 8bit, 11Khz Sound Blaster, then the Sound Blaster Pro which added stereo. Then there was the Sounds Blaster 16, Pro Audio Spectrum 16, and the Gravis Ultrasound (GUS) back in 1991.
The GUS was way ahead of the others. It could mix up to 32 channels in hardware. It always played the sound back at 44Khz via interpolation (unless you had too many channels active at once). It had up to 1meg of on board sound memory so it could be totally independent of your CPU. The Demo scene loved it. It had faked 3d sound via QSound..
It never caught on :( Creative's control was too powerful. Even the GUS PnP which was based on the AMD Interwave sound chip failed. Eventually Gravis was bought and the exited the sound business.
Years later Aureal, attempted to bring good audio to the PC and break Creative's control with its Vortex sound card. They ran into money issues. Creative sued them. They won, but the lawsuit drained their money and they went bankrupt. Creative then bought the remains (patents) of the company.
But rumours are nVidia hired many of the out of work engineers, which developed the Sound Storm for the Xbox. Which then nVidia fortunately brought to the nForce. Which unfortunately won't be in future versions because nobody is willing to pay for it. Even if it is "free". Gamers are more interested in a "free" hardware firewall.
Looking back at how Gravis, AMD, Aureal, and others have failed despite having superior products makes me wounder how a company could successfully introduce better audio to gamers. Maybe if it helped you win at FPS games... Seeing nVidia leave the audio market is sad, but I've been sad about this many times before. I'm kind of numb to the pain of seeing a great new technology with high hopes of making things better fail due to lack of interest.
I have a feeling we'll be stuck using Intel's "Azalea" for a long long time. It's certainly not bad, but it has the CPU do the work instead of a coprocessor. What do you expect from Intel when they made a nice new DX9 graphics core, but didn't use hardware T&L? Gotta try to create a market for those faster CPUs somehow... Sure, it can output some Dolby signals if they are precomputed (i.e. DVDs), but it can't encode them if they are dynamic (i.e. games). Unless you have a really powerful CPU. Oh well, at least Intel High Definition Audio as it is officially known now beats AC'97.
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.
From Dolby's press release:
From the SoundStorm-worshipping article:TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
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 =]
I used the Yamaha DB50XG hardware XG synth card. As an added bonus, it unloaded the CPU to make the game run smoothly. The hardware XG synth has some great sounds. If I remember correctly it used a 18 bit DA converter so it's resolution is more than a Compact Disk. Overall, nice sound and light CPU load. This was especialy important on older ISA hardware.
I've since made the synth an external stand alone sound module which I use with a MIDI keyboard.
The truth shall set you free!
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.