SoundStorm 2: SoundStorm Strikes Back?

An anonymous reader writes "Phoronix, a popular Linux-based hardware review site, has posted their beliefs on what they feel is the returning of NVIDIA's SoundStorm Technology. Even though sites have said SoundStorm is dead, Phoronix continues to believe otherwise about this long-discussed situation. They contend NVIDIA is currently working on a new generation of APUs for its upcoming Chipsets and they feel one of the audio technologies may be SoundStorm! The article can be read here, but it looks like only time will reveal if new audio features are being brought fourth in the new Chipsets."

Comments

"Dead"? Did you read the link?

[Anonymous Coward]

"While we have chosen to not include the SoundStorm APU in our current nForce4 MCP, we look forward to including our audio technology in future NVIDIA products."

That's hardly dead, especially when that article if from nearly a year ago. A year is a huge timespan in computing.

Eh. Audio innovation is dead, baby

[Anonymous Coward]

The last truly inovative audio chipset was the Aureal au88x0 series, and what happened to them? Creative sucked them up and did nothing with their technology; even their "top end" Audigy 2 doesn't do positional 3D audio.

As far as the consumer is concerned, audio technology is at a plateu and it's good enough for what they're using it for. The only thing that changes in the audio hardware world are the damn hardware programatic interfaces; there are more audio chipsets than modern video cards and NIC's combined.

Re:Eh. Audio innovation is dead, baby

[ImaLamer]

Soundstorm is freaking sweet though. I've used it under Mandrake and watched many movies with the nForce 2 under Windows and Linux with great results. Creative may have their heads up their asses, but Nvidia does good work on hardware and the software they release just plain works.

Surround sound is easy to setup in Windows and Linux. It's more a matter of plugging the right speakers in the right places. I love the idea that you can use an extra mic input as a center channel or something.

I wouldn't trade it in.

oh come on.....

[xao gypsie]

I just bought a new board with an nvidia chipset!!! Buying hardware is worse than trading stocks...

SoundStorm isn't a technology!

[MarcoPon]

SoundStorm isn't a technology, or a piece of hardware.

It's a "certification", a label that attest that the hardware follow certain specs and offer certain features (number and type of I/O connections, for example).

Bose replacement

[N8F8]

I see plenty of decent audio chip solutions on the market, what I don't see is a decent inexpensive speaker set. Logitech and the ilk that I have tried have been horrible. I just want a decent, inexpensive 5 speaker plus woofer setup that doesn't take much space and produces good sound throught the sound spectrum. Too much to ask? I'm sick of cheapo speakers in fancy plastic boxes.

Re:Bose replacement

[BlueHands]

The question should be why can't he get a good 5:1 speaker system for less then the cost of 400 gig hard drive? You have just told him to spend as much on the audio as on the rest of his entire system.

And this makes sense to you.

And others, because you got modded up for the comment. That scares me most-est.

Re:Bose replacement

[Solder Fumes]

I'll provide you with a better forum to search and ask for your goal: http://www.diyaudio.com/ Lots of good stuff there, everything from putting together a decent system for minimal money, to modifying stock equipment with better components.

I can also give you the ultimate crapspeakers. Cheap 5.1 surround that mostly works OK. You know those 5.1 systems at Wal-Mart? Yeah, the ones selling for like $35, which aren't really surround but instead mix out from a stereo signal. I managed to bypass that mixing circuit and directly input the six channels to the volume control IC. It does work on my computer quite well, though it's better if you have Sound Blaster bass redirection, because the satellites are pitifully tinny. I didn't take any pictures when I modded it, but I did buy another one and plan to mod it pretty soon. Really the ultimate in ghetto surround.

Re:Bose replacement

[Beta]

The question should be why can't he get a good 5:1 speaker system for less then the cost of 400 gig hard drive? You have just told him to spend as much on the audio as on the rest of his entire system.

Because audio reproduction is still governed by the same laws of physics as it was 30 years ago. Bass response is dictated by the size of the transducer and the cabinet, and while you can do minor tuning with active EQ, you simply cannot compensate for 50 times too small enclosure. The enclosure must also be rigid and without obvious resonances, hence you need either thick walls (of MDF or similar material) or fancy and expensive manufacturing (as in Genelec's new 8000 series monitors).

Fuck Soundstorm

[slaker]

X Mystique, Dolby Digital Live-encoding PCI sound card.
I have three of them. They rock. Best hardware I've purchased in years, since they let me junk shitty Asus boards (AFAIK Asus is the only company that ever fully implemented soundstorm to begin with) for Gigabyte and Soltek hardware that I'm much more comfortable with.

Here's a good summary of my experiences with the first card I got.

Re:Eh. Audio innovation is dead, baby

[backslashdot]

I love the idea that you can use an extra mic input as a center channel or something.

Does this mean u can place a mic where you sit and it can figure out if you've placed the speakers optimally and/or dynamically adjust the sound outputs from each speaker to make the listening location hear the optimal audio experience (presumably near the mic in most cases)?

One presumes the speakers can emit sounds and the microphone/computer can then figure out what to adjust based on the received sound pattern/interference.

I been looking for a cheap system that does this, and/or a system with a 3D? gui that can show me the optimal speaker placement for my room/apartment (at minimum based on my inputting the apt. size, layout, and obstacles).

BLATANT slashvertisement

[Gothmolly]

in true Roland Piquipaille style. Note the wordy submission, the fact that Hemos accepted it, and the 'click here for more information' link at the end. And Phoronix is a popular Linux site? I've never heard of it.... well, maybe they're trying to be popular by astroturfing.

Re:Will this be applied to the new Shuttles?

[slaker]

That wasn't a soundstorm-capable chip. Soundstorm mixes everything into 5.1 Dolby Digital when given a digital path to a 5.1 Dolby decoder. AFAIK Asus is the only company that included it on their boards (or more precisely, the only company that included it and actually added the digital out needed for it to work). Everyone else just shipped CMedia or Realtek AC97 crap.

If you're happy with AC97, good for you, but Soundstorm was a whole different experience, since it actually creates LFE and rear surround (well, in games anyway; for music I think it just echos the front speakers) from PCM sources. Anyone who has had a home theater setup connected to their computer has probably tried the "Dolby Pro Logic II" setting (also available on some Intel Motherboards, I think), which does sort-of create surround, but surround that's limited to primarily the center channel and front speakers. DPLII barely touches the surrounds and never fires your sub, making it rather less impressive.

Re:Eh. Audio innovation is dead, baby

[slaker]

There ARE good audio chips available. Sometimes they even make it on to motherboards. Albatron ships a few boards with the sounds-better-than-Creative Via Envy chipset. They even throw in a daughterboard with both types of digital input and output.

Via Envy is the same sound chip on most $50ish sound cards that aren't made by Creative.

If you want computer sound to get better, vote with your wallet and buy something better. Turtle Beach will happily sell you an Envy-based card, or you can get a PCI X-Mystique, which does exactly what Soundstorm used to do.

Better Prices - $87 w/free shipping

[N8F8]

Sicne he linked to Newegg (a great company BTW) I did a quick Froogle and found it cheaper. Notably, Buy.com has it for ~$87 with free shipping.

Re:bid deal

[mikael]

There have been a few sound musicians who have been looking at using GPU's for processing audio.

BionicFX Harnesses Power of Graphics Cards for Audio Processing
Programming uses GPU as Audio Effect Processor

BionicFX announced a technology for music production that turns NVIDIA video cards into audio effects processors. Audio Video Exchange (AVEX) converts digital audio into graphics data, and then performs effect calculations using the 3D architecture of the GPU. The latest video cards from NVIDIA are capable of more than 40 gigaflops of processing power compared to less than 6 gigaflops on Intel and AMD CPUs.

BionicReverb, the first effect to use AVEX, will debut at Winter NAMM Conference in January 2005. BionicReverb is an impulse response reverberation effect that runs as a plug-in inside VST compatible multi-track recording software. The audio effect is generated by combining an impulse response file with digital audio. Impulse response files are created by firing a starter pistol inside a location, such as Carnegie Hall, and recording the echoing sound waves. Combining the two files through mathematical convolution is a CPU intensive process that is reduced by moving expensive calculations onto the GPU.

AVEX works by transforming audio streams into the structure and colors of graphics data. The graphics data is processed on the video card by pixel or fragment shaders that run audio effect algorithms, which read and write to textures in video memory. The final calculations are retrieved from off-screen buffers and decoded into audio.


While Nvidia may be happy that these guys are using their hardware, they may be worried that these companies start mangling their own software in order for it to run on a GPU and end up doing things that will only break as graphics technology changes.

Therefore it is much safer for Nvidia to design hardware that processes audio directly.

And besides, why shouldn't audio be treated in the same way as textures? There would be many benefits if an API such as OpenAL could be implemented in hardware. All the sound files in a game could be preloaded into audio memory, along with repeat/random/play once flags, and have the programmer simply set the location of sound sources and of the listener. And this would fit neatly into a scene-graph representation.

Re:Eh. Audio innovation is dead, baby

[EzInKy]

  The last truly inovative audio chipset was the Aureal au88x0 series, and what happened to them? Creative sucked them up and did nothing with their technology; even their "top end" Audigy 2 doesn't do positional 3D audio.

As far as the consumer is concerned, audio technology is at a plateu and it's good enough for what they're using it for. The only thing that changes in the audio hardware world are the damn hardware programatic interfaces; there are more audio chipsets than modern video cards and NIC's combined.

The real problem is the disparity between those who call themselves "audiophiles" and normal users. Seriously, if 99% of users can't tell the difference between a $10 card and a $10,000 then the $10 card will always win. If the "audiophile" can tell the difference then let him pay $10,000 for a difference that doesn't mean a thing to me.

Re:Eh. Audio innovation is dead, baby

[Taladar]

I believe what he meant was that the card manufacturer was cheap and used one physical input for both mic and one of the speaker channels.

Re:Will this be applied to the new Shuttles?

[Trashman]

The Abit NF-7S v2.0 is NForce2 based and has the soundstorm Chipset (with the Digital out too.)

I own one.

Soundstorm2

[Dimble ThriceFoon]

My previous PC was based on the Abit NF7-s precisely because it was Soundstorm certified. I loved it, and recommended it to several other people who also ended up getting systems with the same board. I skipped the nForce3 generation because of the poor sound (AC97) and the lack of good cheap audio products, but eventually bit the bullet and got a Shuttle SN25P with nForce4 Ultra and onboard Via Envy 24PT soundchip, not ideal but it does the job. If nVidia released the nForce5 series (presumably for socket M2 and DDR2) with Soundstorm2 I WOULD buy one, and inevitably end up recommending it to others. I love nVidia for the unified drivers under winblows and Linux and can imagine few PC's more sweet than a Silverstone SG01 with a mATX nForce5 board with SS, and a nVidia graphics card with Shader Model 4 (unified shaders). oh, and a PCI-E AGIEA PPU as well for good measure. ;) i like the idea of the daughter-board as you get less electrical interference from motherboard components. Dimble

Re:Eh. Audio innovation is dead, baby

[Quarters]

The Audigy 2 hasn't been Creative's "top end" card for a while now. The Audigy 4 was introduced quite some time ago.

The Audigy 4 has recently been surpased by the X-Fi. It's an entirely new architecture, both hardware and software.

Creative's EAX has been doing positional 3D audio with occlusion and reverberation for quite a while now. The Aureal was nice, sure, but Creative has had, and has, tech that accomplishes the same thing.

Not holding my breath

[Deathlizard]

They've been saying that for over a year now. I swear they say it just to hope that the soundstorm fan base will quiet down and die off.

I've heard the Nforce3-Nforce5 will have it. I heard it's going to be an add in card. Hell, I've heard it's going to be integrated in the next video card. So far I've seen nothing tangible and I'll be surprised if I do.

It's pretty much a given if you want to compete in the PC audio market you're dealing with Creative whether you like it or not. They were allowed to buyout all of the competition as well as most of the patents. In fact, the company that nV was geting the soundstorm tech from got bought out by Creative. The only reason Nvidia isn't owned by Creative is that they couldn't possibly buy them out, so they'll sue nV until they say "screw the audio market", which apparently nV did.

I still am holding out for a Nvidia soundstorm for athlon64, (my SN41G2 isn't going anywhere soon) but I doubt it will ever take place. At this point, once Nforce5 hits, I'm probably going to be switching to that regardless of what audio is on board.