Dolby Atmos (Digital Surrounded Sound) for Gaming on Audiophile Headphones?

[TTesla]

I have decent headphones (579s) plugged into decent dac/amp (SDAC + O2), but feel like positional audio in game sucks. I followed the advice to just get good audio for gaming audio (as reiterated in the recent LTT vid), but can't make out where sound in games is coming like I thought I would.

 

Speaking of the recent LTT video, they showed that Dolby Atmos Digital processing worked best. What is Dolby Atmos? How do I apply that? How does it work? Does it work with all games? Will it mess with my music? Is it expensive? Anything else about using it I should know?

[an actual squirrel]

The point of the LTT video was that you can apply virtual surround sound processing to any headphones, thus you don't need specific gaming headphones.

 

Dolby atmos is a surround sound format. "Dolby Atmos for Headphones" is the virtual surround sound processing, that takes a surround sound input, and converts it to headphone output with HRTFs. The HRTFs are what allows you to represent additional directional information on stereo headphones.

 

This post on head-fi shows a user who has it working in many games, but more importantly, he shows how to check when the processing is on. 

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/mad-lust-envys-headphone-gaming-guide-10-25-2018-creative-aurvana-trio-added.534479/page-2792#post-14737677 

[TTesla]

10 hours ago, an actual squirrel said:

The point of the LTT video was that you can apply virtual surround sound processing to any headphones, thus you don't need specific gaming headphones.

 

Dolby atmos is a surround sound format. "Dolby Atmos for Headphones" is the virtual surround sound processing, that takes a surround sound input, and converts it to headphone output with HRTFs. The HRTFs are what allows you to represent additional directional information on stereo headphones.

 

This post on head-fi shows a user who has it working in many games, but more importantly, he shows how to check when the processing is on. 

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/mad-lust-envys-headphone-gaming-guide-10-25-2018-creative-aurvana-trio-added.534479/page-2792#post-14737677 

So do I want "Dolby Atmos for Headphones"?

You mentioned it takes a surround sound input, would that work if I have my headphones plugged into my DAC/Amp combo that's plugged in to my PC via USB?

Also I see that overwatch is built for it, but does it work with all games or just those with built in support?

 

Also appreciate the help, you always come to rescue my dead audio questions haha

[an actual squirrel]

So, yea, dolby atmos for headphones is pretty good. Idk, I personally prefer some of the alternatives.

So the dolby app would take in the surround sound input. We are talking about a pathway that looks like this: game> dolby app> usb, so it would be taking surround sound from the game.

Overwatch is a special case since it comes with dolby atmos for headphones directly, so you don't need the dolby app. More commonly, a game will have the option to output atmos, the surround sound format. And much more commonly than that, a game will support the 7.1 surround sound format. In those cases, I believe you would be covered with the app, but it is best to check with the trial and look for the indication that it's working (mentioned in the headfi post).

[TTesla]

12 minutes ago, an actual squirrel said:

So, yea, dolby atmos for headphones is pretty good. Idk, I personally prefer some of the alternatives.

So the dolby app would take in the surround sound input. We are talking about a pathway that looks like this: game> dolby app> usb, so it would be taking surround sound from the game.

Overwatch is a special case since it comes with dolby atmos for headphones directly, so you don't need the dolby app. More commonly, a game will have the option to output atmos, the surround sound format. And much more commonly than that, a game will support the 7.1 surround sound format. In those cases, I believe you would be covered with the app, but it is best to check with the trial and look for the indication that it's working (mentioned in the headfi post).

So I got the app  and trial, and it's not recognizing my headphones since they are connected through my USB DAC. I am pretty sure it's because windows thinks my DAC is speakers and not headphones.

[TTesla]

16 minutes ago, an actual squirrel said:

So, yea, dolby atmos for headphones is pretty good. Idk, I personally prefer some of the alternatives.

So the dolby app would take in the surround sound input. We are talking about a pathway that looks like this: game> dolby app> usb, so it would be taking surround sound from the game.

Overwatch is a special case since it comes with dolby atmos for headphones directly, so you don't need the dolby app. More commonly, a game will have the option to output atmos, the surround sound format. And much more commonly than that, a game will support the 7.1 surround sound format. In those cases, I believe you would be covered with the app, but it is best to check with the trial and look for the indication that it's working (mentioned in the headfi post).

 

9 minutes ago, TeenTesla said:

So I got the app  and trial, and it's not recognizing my headphones since they are connected through my USB DAC. I am pretty sure it's because windows thinks my DAC is speakers and not headphones.

LMFAO I fixed it by renaming my DAC from "Speakers" to "Headphones" 

[jasonvp]

8 hours ago, TeenTesla said:

 

LMFAO I fixed it by renaming my DAC from "Speakers" to "Headphones" 

That's not what fixed it.  The Access plugin is very touchy and has a lot of trouble staying latched on to sound devices.  I'd wager that if you reboot your PC, you might see that the Access plugin is no longer attached to your USB headphones and you can't re-attach it.  The trick is to make some change to your sound system.  Either by renaming something, or enabling/disabling one of your sound devices.  Any change to the sound device subsystem will unwedge the Access plugin and let you (re)attach it.

 

So check again after you reboot.  It's way bugged and Dolby won't acknowledge this little problem and fix it (yet).

[TTesla]

12 hours ago, jasonvp said:

That's not what fixed it.  The Access plugin is very touchy and has a lot of trouble staying latched on to sound devices.  I'd wager that if you reboot your PC, you might see that the Access plugin is no longer attached to your USB headphones and you can't re-attach it.  The trick is to make some change to your sound system.  Either by renaming something, or enabling/disabling one of your sound devices.  Any change to the sound device subsystem will unwedge the Access plugin and let you (re)attach it.

 

So check again after you reboot.  It's way bugged and Dolby won't acknowledge this little problem and fix it (yet).

rebooted many times, no issues

[jasonvp]

19 minutes ago, TeenTesla said:

rebooted many times, no issues

OK, good.  Just keep it in mind.  It may "magically" disappear from your sound device.

[TTesla]

On 2/23/2019 at 11:24 AM, an actual squirrel said:

The point of the LTT video was that you can apply virtual surround sound processing to any headphones, thus you don't need specific gaming headphones.

 

Dolby atmos is a surround sound format. "Dolby Atmos for Headphones" is the virtual surround sound processing, that takes a surround sound input, and converts it to headphone output with HRTFs. The HRTFs are what allows you to represent additional directional information on stereo headphones.

 

This post on head-fi shows a user who has it working in many games, but more importantly, he shows how to check when the processing is on. 

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/mad-lust-envys-headphone-gaming-guide-10-25-2018-creative-aurvana-trio-added.534479/page-2792#post-14737677 

So when I use it, that little phrase doesn't show up for me. I double checked, the sound settings, and app both say I am good. 

[an actual squirrel]

I don't have enough knowledge about the app to know why this is. Idk, windows updates might help?

[TTesla]

On 2/24/2019 at 7:11 PM, jasonvp said:

OK, good.  Just keep it in mind.  It may "magically" disappear from your sound device.

So it has done that now (twice or three times), what happens is that the windows surround sound settings get turned off. So I have to go back in and turn them on, but the app itself hasn't had more issues attaching to my headphones. No clue why this happens, and it only happens sometimes, not every reboot or anything...

[rice guru]

I found it never properly works for me but I never had issues hearing where people are on my dt990's and 58x

[an actual squirrel]

14 minutes ago, rice guru said:

I found it never properly works for me but I never had issues hearing where people are on my dt990's and 58x

You need to use windows 10 version 1809, which you should be able to manually get now through windows update, and the game has to use a somewhat recent version of xaudio, so the game can't be too old.

 

Without an hrtf system, you are losing directional information. Don't settle for plain stereo.

[rice guru]

I have that update I also play mainly siege, overwatch and league. League doesn't really matter in this.

[jasonvp]

36 minutes ago, rice guru said:

I have that update I also play mainly siege, overwatch and league. League doesn't really matter in this.

Siege has its own binaural surround built into the game, with no way to change/edit/etc it.  The Dolby Atmos plugin will be completely ignored in this case.  You can have it enabled, but it won't make a lick of difference to the game; it'll sound the same.  Play a game that allows you to set "Surround" like Battlefield V, and it's a different story.

[an actual squirrel]

6 hours ago, jasonvp said:

Siege has its own binaural surround built into the game, with no way to change/edit/etc it.  The Dolby Atmos plugin will be completely ignored in this case.  You can have it enabled, but it won't make a lick of difference to the game; it'll sound the same.  Play a game that allows you to set "Surround" like Battlefield V, and it's a different story.

siege doesn't have binaural audio. There is no setting for it in the audio options, and if you go to the twitch page for it and watch any stream, you can hear that the audio is just regular stereo. If the atmos plugin doesn't work, it is because the version of the xaudio2 api used in the game is too old.

 

[rice guru]

6 hours ago, jasonvp said:

Siege has its own binaural surround built into the game, with no way to change/edit/etc it.  The Dolby Atmos plugin will be completely ignored in this case.  You can have it enabled, but it won't make a lick of difference to the game; it'll sound the same.  Play a game that allows you to set "Surround" like Battlefield V, and it's a different story.

I'll try that I dont have BF 5 but I have tried it with overwatch and it sounds great but it soiunds comparable with my experience with siege where sound is a sore crucial part of the game.