Xbox Series X will have dedicated sound card

[spartaman64]

why dont they just put on better audio than adding a separate sound card?

[RejZoR]

3 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

why dont they just put on better audio than adding a separate sound card?

Because "better audio" isn't just higher bitrate or higher sampling rate. Which is why it's hilarious to observe all the vendors doing "GAMING SOUNDCARDS" and then basically just hype golden capacitors and virgin OP-AMPS and DAC's. Environmental effects and 3D positioning is something "audiophile" crowd will just NEVER understand and can't ever be done with whatever crap they stick into GAMING SOUNDCARDS. It can be done with high end audio processor and API that allows game to directly interact with soundcard. Only that way you can really create accurate 3D audio positioning and stick specific environmental effects to specific sounds and actually perform audio occlusion and reflection. Which is required to have accurate 3D audio positioning.

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Because "better audio" isn't just higher bitrate or higher sampling rate. Which is why it's hilarious to observe all the vendors doing "GAMING SOUNDCARDS" and then basically just hype golden capacitors and virgin OP-AMPS and DAC's. Environmental effects and 3D positioning is something "audiophile" crowd will just NEVER understand and can't ever be done with whatever crap they stick into GAMING SOUNDCARDS. It can be done with high end audio processor and API that allows game to directly interact with soundcard. Only that way you can really create accurate 3D audio positioning and stick specific environmental effects to specific sounds and actually perform audio occlusion and reflection. Which is required to have accurate 3D audio positioning.

It comes down to a belief I think.  The belief of the “audiophile” crowd is that 3d audio positioning was proven in their eyes to be crap many years ago, and the fact that humans have just two ears remains a thing.  
Personally I would like to see actual testing.  It’s real possible that 3D audio actually IS crap.  It might not be of course in which case it was the previous testing that was crap.

[Kisai]

2 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Because "better audio" isn't just higher bitrate or higher sampling rate. Which is why it's hilarious to observe all the vendors doing "GAMING SOUNDCARDS" and then basically just hype golden capacitors and virgin OP-AMPS and DAC's. Environmental effects and 3D positioning is something "audiophile" crowd will just NEVER understand and can't ever be done with whatever crap they stick into GAMING SOUNDCARDS. It can be done with high end audio processor and API that allows game to directly interact with soundcard. Only that way you can really create accurate 3D audio positioning and stick specific environmental effects to specific sounds and actually perform audio occlusion and reflection. Which is required to have accurate 3D audio positioning.

 

Well AMD did put a Sound DSP ASIC on their cards, but it's now some OpenCL thing. 

 

The thing is, Audio on the PC pretty much has been rolling backwards, 

 

Quote

The short answer is: We don't currently have any near term plans to significantly change the audio API.

The long answer/explanation is that for the most part we rely on the hardware to do the heavy lifting in our audio system and at the moment we have something like 7 different audio implementations for the different platforms. We definitely have some inconsistencies as it stands (which we are of course addressing) and adding/exposing new features in a way that is consistent across platforms is a challenge.

Our long term wish is to move to our own software mixer to get consistent behaviors across all platforms (or at least much closer) and new features require one implementation instead of 7+.

The trouble is that to do our own software mixer requires us to first thread audio handling and both of those tasks are big projects that it is a bit challenging to justify when wWise or fmod are both good options available to people who need the functionality.

I really do wish I had a better answer than this (as do our in house audio engineers) but unfortunately this is where things stand for the moment.

https://forums.unrealengine.com/unreal-engine/feedback-for-epic/8240-audio-roadmap-and-apis

 

I'm kinda surprised that with all the VR kit out there, none of them have tried to push for one unified 3d positional / HRTF audio API. And no OpenAL is not it.

 

I was watching Picard Episode 5 last night, on my iphone, and there is a distinct "sound from behind" that I heard in one scene, and I was listening to it with just headphones. Yet, I can not even think of a game that does anything like this.

 

[billcxsby]

digital audio is the best, no need to worry about analog. reason why i bought modmic usb instead of the analog one. usbforevah

[vetali]

Given how much a shit show audio is on my xbox one x, this almost seems necessary. Bitstream audio will lag 25-200ms without using ARC. More so on 4k video content and games. Other than that the audio quality is pretty good on the xbox. Seems like they want to remove as many loads as they can off the CPU. Putting a sound processor in will give a bit more CPU overhead to developers.

[RejZoR]

15 minutes ago, billcxsby said:

digital audio is the best, no need to worry about analog. reason why i bought modmic usb instead of the analog one. usbforevah

A typical misconception that doing digital audio solves all the problems. In reality is, it has ALL the same problems as analog audio, it's just that you're leaving manifestation or output of audio to a 3rd party DAC and not the one on soundcard. Speakers are always analog since they create a mechanical action of generating soundwaves so ultimately, nothing is really digital on the absolutely final output.

 

Digital, just like analog doesn't have good 3D audio positioning if there is nothing telling the audio chip where audio that was just played in the game is actually located in relation to the player. Without that information, you can't create accurate 3D audio. Games may create it and output it, but that information is essentially lost before it reaches soundcard because there is no HW API that would directly link games and soundcards.

[Bombastinator]

18 minutes ago, billcxsby said:

digital audio is the best, no need to worry about analog. reason why i bought modmic usb instead of the analog one. usbforevah

There is no such thing as digital audio.  There is digitally processed audio, but sound waves are analog. There must be a conversion to analog at some point.

[billcxsby]

10 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

A typical misconception that doing digital audio solves all the problems. In reality is, it has ALL the same problems as analog audio, it's just that you're leaving manifestation or output of audio to a 3rd party DAC and not the one on soundcard. Speakers are always analog since they create a mechanical action of generating soundwaves so ultimately, nothing is really digital on the absolutely final output.

 

Digital, just like analog doesn't have good 3D audio positioning if there is nothing telling the audio chip where audio that was just played in the game is actually located in relation to the player. Without that information, you can't create accurate 3D audio. Games may create it and output it, but that information is essentially lost before it reaches soundcard because there is no HW API that would directly link games and soundcards.

is that why i can barely tell where people are coming from in rainbow six siege?

[RejZoR]

3 minutes ago, billcxsby said:

is that why i can barely tell where people are coming from in rainbow six siege?

Pretty much. Good 3D audio needs to accurately portray where in 360° circle around you, the audio is located including clear distinction between in front of you and behind you, it has to tell you how far it is from you, its elevation (if it's above or below you) and all that combined represents accurate 3D audio basics. Beyond that it's also audio occlusion and reflection. Meaning, if something is in front of you, but behind an object, you'll hear it as coming from in front of you, but it won't sound as clear as if it was out in the open directly in front of you. That's audio occlusion. Audio reflection would be similar thing, but you can distinct that as sound coming from a corridor ahead and on the right.

 

A lot of this stuff wasn't directly apparent back in the day, but when you started actually listening, it was incredible. You didn't even need silly on-display hit directions as we have today that show you where you're getting hit from, you could tell where gunfire is coming from from sound alone. Which is why I'm grieving so much after Microsoft killed the proper audio stack and replaced it with this crap we have now.

 

There were some exceptions. FEAR Combat had EAX 4.0, yet its 3D audio was a total garbage. Elevation distinction was non existent, sounds were the same through walls and it was just entirely useless. But I can really only recall FEAR Combat cocking it up so badly with 3D audio in place.

[Curufinwe_wins]

Who the f even uses analog audio out direct from console/TV set anymore?

 

Either by ARC or toslink or usb or some other digital connection, basically any setup that is good enough to know the difference isnt going to take analog from a console then "fix it". It's either direct DACs in the audio solution (ala soundbar), or you have a dedicated reciever to do the proper conversion yourself before tossing off to proper speakers.

 

This is pointless. 

 

Also as mentioned before.... controller audio out for headphones because console makers are asshats.

 

Dedicated sound cards are demonstrably wastes of money for 99.9% of people and half the time aren't even better than modern isolated integrated systems (apparently some people get shocked at how actually quantifiably terrible many expensive sound cards are.) Don't even get me started on FXsound. Ffs.

[RejZoR]

1 minute ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Who the f even uses analog audio out direct from console/TV set anymore?

 

Either by ARC or toslink or some other digital connection, basically any setup that is good enough to know the difference isnt going to take analog from a console then "fix it". It's either direct DACs in the audio solution (ala soundbar), or you have a dedicated reciever to do the proper conversion yourself before tossing off to proper speakers.

 

This is pointless. 

 

Also as mentioned before.... audio out of headphones because console makers are asshats.

And you solve exactly nothing with that. You just move Digital2Analog conversion from console to a receiver or speaker. The audio itself is still the same crap without any positional information. We're not even talking audio quality like audiophiles do here. We're talking actual gaming audio. Boy the audio industry sure misinformed the masses well with their bullshit "gaming" sound systems that are nothing but "audiophile" devices with word "gaming" slapped on them and do literally nothing to make actual gaming audio quality better. Gaming audio quality is not (and should never be) measured in SNR or THD and other similar nonsense. It's measured in how accurately audio is projected to your ears and how that aids you in perceiving the virtual environment.

[Bombastinator]

8 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Pretty much. Good 3D audio needs to accurately portray where in 360° circle around you, the audio is located including clear distinction between in front of you and behind you, it has to tell you how far it is from you, its elevation (if it's above or below you) and all that combined represents accurate 3D audio basics. Beyond that it's also audio occlusion and reflection. Meaning, if something is in front of you, but behind an object, you'll hear it as coming from in front of you, but it won't sound as clear as if it was out in the open directly in front of you. That's audio occlusion. Audio reflection would be similar thing, but you can distinct that as sound coming from a corridor ahead and on the right.

 

A lot of this stuff wasn't directly apparent back in the day, but when you started actually listening, it was incredible. You didn't even need silly on-display hit directions as we have today that show you where you're getting hit from, you could tell where gunfire is coming from from sound alone. Which is why I'm grieving so much after Microsoft killed the proper audio stack and replaced it with this crap we have now.

 

There were some exceptions. FEAR Combat had EAX 4.0, yet its 3D audio was a total garbage. Elevation distinction was non existent, sounds were the same through walls and it was just entirely useless. But I can really only recall FEAR Combat cocking it up so badly with 3D audio in place.

So the implication is that actual 3d audio might be possible.  The implication is that there is post processing in the human brain that turns 2d audio into 3d by processing echoes and stuff.  A 3d audio would replicate these fractional and tightly timed echoes to replicate things so exactly that a human brain would process it as 3d. Might be true.  Seems unlikely to me, but it might be.  Humans get a lot less information from their eyes than they think they do.  The rest is post processing.  A lot of stage magic relies on this fact.  Fool the eye by working within the post processing areas.  It also implies that it would be very very hard to do accurately.  It would effectively be a reverse fooling.  It seems there have been implementations that claimed to do this but did not do this in the past, and anecdotal evidence that it has successfully been done.  The question is whether this Amos thing they are touting actually does it or not, which it seems is either unknown or very unlikely.

[Curufinwe_wins]

23 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

And you solve exactly nothing with that. You just move Digital2Analog conversion from console to a receiver or speaker. The audio itself is still the same crap without any positional information. We're not even talking audio quality like audiophiles do here. We're talking actual gaming audio. Boy the audio industry sure misinformed the masses well with their bullshit "gaming" sound systems that are nothing but "audiophile" devices with word "gaming" slapped on them and do literally nothing to make actual gaming audio quality better. Gaming audio quality is not (and should never be) measured in SNR or THD and other similar nonsense. It's measured in how accurately audio is projected to your ears and how that aids you in perceiving the virtual environment.

No shit it just moves the dac over. But its a hell of a lot easier to send the positional audio data in raw unadulterated digital form to whatever speaker setup you have and let the speaker setup deal with where it was setup than to assume the console properly knows where/how many speakers on each channel. That's exactly what Atmos attempts to do after all. Lets the reciever/speaker do the positional calculations.

 

And actually no, 100% no. Removing every single sound except for a ping for location of enemies is the "peak aid" for FPS games, but its a shit experience. SNR and all that "nonsense" is literally measuring how accurately audio is being transmitted to your ears (yes though the frequency response curves for standard signals on a standard output/head) are the much better metrics) It's measuring before the speaker/room (or speaker/ear) interaction because a million different room layouts and geometries make it impossible to make a quantitative assessment in absolute terms.

 

If you want "gaming audio" because you think positional information is the only thing that matters, consider playing other games with sound tracks and atmosphere. In an ideal world we get both dead right, but in everything short of FPS, I'd rather have the audio come out clear and properly balanced than use some virtual surround bullshit that sounds terrible. 

 

Again esports gaming where people turn graphics settings down to minimum for easiest clarity and differentiation. You are talking about the same crap for audio. Forgive me if I don't espouse a shittier general experience for the last .1% of difference in performance.

[RejZoR]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

So the implication is that actual 3d audio might be possible.  The implication is that there is post processing in the human brain that turns 2d audio into 3d by processing echoes and stuff.  A 3d audio would replicate these fractional and tightly timed echoes to replicate things so exactly that a human brain would process it as 3d. Might be true.  Seems unlikely to me, but it might be.  Humans get a lot less information from their eyes than they think they do.  The rest is post processing.  A lot of stage magic relies on this fact.  Fool the eye by working within the post processing areas.  It also implies that it would be very very hard to do accurately.  It would effectively be a reverse fooling.  It seems there have been implementations that claimed to do this but did not do this in the past, and anecdotal evidence that it has successfully been done.  The question is whether this Amos thing they are touting actually does it or not, which it seems is either unknown or very unlikely.

It's not a possibility. It's a reality. It's a whole science behind human hearing and it's called HRTF.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-related_transfer_function

 

It's literally a physical model of human audio perception. The way how 3D audio positioning works in real life and HRTF modeling is how soundcard projects the audio through headphones or speakers to give you same sensation as you would in real world. And it's a pretty sweet ability humans have, but not really use. I do. Probably because of games from then olden days and heavily rely on it actually every day. You can pinpoint real world noises with such accuracy using only your ears that you can know where they are coming from just by listening. Like hearing a car passing by. You could hear a car as general familiar noise and look where it's coming from. Or you just actually listen and you'll know the same information without looking at it.

 

You can do a little experiment by sitting on a bench going in parallel with some road with light traffic. Close your eyes and face forward towards the road at 90°. Then just listen how distinctly you'll be able to tell how car is closing in from the left side until you'll hear it in both ears for a brief moment when it's passing by right in front of you and then you'll hear it distancing away in your right ear while left ear will have less and less perception of it as it'll be going further away. You can try doing the same by placing yourself in direction of where road is going (perpendicular to the road) and close your eyes again. You'll see how it sounds different when things are coming from your left, from behind and remaining on the left but going in the front and away from you. Our hearing is pretty amazing and while everyone is saying how animals have amazing hearing, we do too. We just forgot how to use it almost in a world of visual queues over audible ones.

[Bombastinator]

7 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

And you solve exactly nothing with that. You just move Digital2Analog conversion from console to a receiver or speaker. The audio itself is still the same crap without any positional information. We're not even talking audio quality like audiophiles do here. We're talking actual gaming audio. Boy the audio industry sure misinformed the masses well with their bullshit "gaming" sound systems that are nothing but "audiophile" devices with word "gaming" slapped on them and do literally nothing to make actual gaming audio quality better. Gaming audio quality is not (and should never be) measured in SNR or THD and other similar nonsense. It's measured in how accurately audio is projected to your ears and how that aids you in perceiving the virtual environment.

I think the issue is “audiophile audio” and “gaming audio” are about totally different things. 
“audiophile audio” is about recording an analog sound wave and reproducing it.

 

”gaming audio” is about creating a sound wave from nothing at all.  There was never an original sound wave to be reproduced.  The conventional wisdom of “audiophile audio” is that true 3d positioning is a fiction.  It is not impossible that it is only a fiction because the original sound collection that “audiophile audio” attempts to reproduce was never capable of collecting that information in the first place.  That there are systems that claim to produce 3d audio and don’t supports the “audiophile” theory.  What matters I think in this case is whether this atmos thing is more BS or not.

[RejZoR]

Just now, Bombastinator said:

I think the issue is “audiophile audio” and “gaming audio” are about totally different things. 
“audiophile audio” is about recording an analog sound wave and reproducing it.

 

”gaming audio” is about creating a sound wave from nothing at all.  There was never an original sound wave to be reproduced.  The conventional wisdom of “audiophile audio” is that true 3d positioning is a fiction.  It is not impossible that it is only a fiction because the original sound collection that “audiophile audio” attempts to reproduce was never capable of collecting that information in the first place.  That there are systems that claim to produce 3d audio and don’t supports the “audiophile” theory.  What matters I think in this case is whether this atmos thing is more BS or not.

Not what I heard in every single video "debunking" gaming soundcards. Literally everyone was talking about stupid bits, bitrates, frequencies, SNR and THD etc. And I was cringing so hard listening to all that nonsense. Audiophiles should stay in their little world and leave "gaming audio" and "gaming soundcards" to actual gamers who know what's what.

 

Dolby Atmos is basically a form of HRTF. They try to add elevation information to the audio. But if you don't have direct connection with game engine, it's all fakery and approximation. One thing is Dolby Atmos in movies where they record things and specify on which channel it should be played. And it'll play there every single time without exception. With games, you have to do it in real time because nothing is pre-recorded. Game engine needs to tell Dolby Atmos capable speakers/decoder what audio has to fire from what speakers.

[Curufinwe_wins]

3 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

It's not a possibility. It's a reality. It's a whole science behind human hearing and it's called HRTF.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-related_transfer_function

 

It's literally a physical model of human audio perception. The way how 3D audio positioning works in real life and HRTF modeling is how soundcard projects the audio through headphones or speakers to give you same sensation as you would in real world. And it's a pretty sweet ability humans have, but not really use. I do. Probably because of games from then olden days and heavily rely on it actually every day. You can pinpoint real world noises with such accuracy using only your ears that you can know where they are coming from just by listening. Like hearing a car passing by. You could hear a car as general familiar noise and look where it's coming from. Or you just actually listen and you'll know the same information without looking at it.

 

You can do a little experiment by sitting on a bench going in parallel with some road with light traffic. Close your eyes and face forward towards the road at 90°. Then just listen how distinctly you'll be able to tell how car is closing in from the left side until you'll hear it in both ears for a brief moment when it's passing by right in front of you and then you'll hear it distancing away in your right ear while left ear will have less and less perception of it as it'll be going further away. You can try doing the same by placing yourself in direction of where road is going (perpendicular to the road) and close your eyes again. You'll see how it sounds different when things are coming from your left, from behind and remaining on the left but going in the front and away from you. Our hearing is pretty amazing and while everyone is saying how animals have amazing hearing, we do too. We just forgot how to use it almost in a world of visual queues over audible ones.

You say that like people are these foolproof locators of auditory stimulation. People haven't forgotten about sound queues, and the car example is one of the easiest possible due to doppler shifting that gives multiple layers of information for our brains to process along with a persistent generally continuous sound to track.

 

Or as if even the HRTF systems doesn't make massive assumptions about what constitutes "average human hearing response curves" among other things. Yes it's a reference model, I get that.

[Bombastinator]

4 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Not what I heard in every single video "debunking" gaming soundcards. Literally everyone was talking about stupid bits, bitrates, frequencies, SNR and THD etc. And I was cringing so hard listening to all that nonsense. Audiophiles should stay in their little world and leave "gaming audio" and "gaming soundcards" to actual gamers who know what's what.

 

Dolby Atmos is basically a form of HRTF. They try to add elevation information to the audio. But if you don't have direct connection with game engine, it's all fakery and approximation. One thing is Dolby Atmos in movies where they record things and specify on which channel it should be played. And it'll play there every single time without exception. With games, you have to do it in real time because nothing is pre-recorded. Game engine needs to tell Dolby Atmos capable speakers/decoder what audio has to fire from what speakers.

It’s possible I think that neither emperor has any clothes.  You’re talking about multiple speaker room audio.  There are still only two ears.  My suspicion is that if 3daudio is even possible it would have to be headphone only as    room shape and speaker placement is going to change.  Lots of people are going to talk a lot and there is going to be a lot of flying BS.  That BS would be emanating from the audiophile crowd is a given because so much has Emanated from that direction in the past.  There may be just as much emanating from the “gaming audio” crowd though.  We shall see what we shall see.

[billcxsby]

49 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Pretty much. Good 3D audio needs to accurately portray where in 360° circle around you, the audio is located including clear distinction between in front of you and behind you, it has to tell you how far it is from you, its elevation (if it's above or below you) and all that combined represents accurate 3D audio basics. Beyond that it's also audio occlusion and reflection. Meaning, if something is in front of you, but behind an object, you'll hear it as coming from in front of you, but it won't sound as clear as if it was out in the open directly in front of you. That's audio occlusion. Audio reflection would be similar thing, but you can distinct that as sound coming from a corridor ahead and on the right.

 

A lot of this stuff wasn't directly apparent back in the day, but when you started actually listening, it was incredible. You didn't even need silly on-display hit directions as we have today that show you where you're getting hit from, you could tell where gunfire is coming from from sound alone. Which is why I'm grieving so much after Microsoft killed the proper audio stack and replaced it with this crap we have now.

 

There were some exceptions. FEAR Combat had EAX 4.0, yet its 3D audio was a total garbage. Elevation distinction was non existent, sounds were the same through walls and it was just entirely useless. But I can really only recall FEAR Combat cocking it up so badly with 3D audio in place.

i mean i have a g933 that can connect with usb reciever, and a 3.5mm cable, if i use the 3.5 (onboard mobo soundcard asus z390 elite) will I have better location sound?

[Curufinwe_wins]

14 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Snip

Btw, I'm sorry for coming off so brashly. 

 

Just got angry at OPs demonstrated ignorance and then you come in from the more nuanced perspective (that I still disagree with) and I did a crap job keeping a level head.

 

Regardless. Most "gaming soundcards" or otherwise suck at actually doing positional audio anyways, and that's assuming they have the right impression of where and how many speakers there even are.

 

Its personal preference I suppose, but I would rather listen in stereo to gaming sound properly/accurately rendered than deal with positional data displayed with horrible distortion and frequency imbalance. Obviously in ideal world, both aspects are done properly.

 

My other position is more that someone who cares and has the sound setup to notice the difference is going to be using a digital interface anyways (I doubt the coprocesser will make much of a lick of difference in a random 2.1 setup in crappy locations in a room, or with a terrible sound bar), and that digital interface can both carry and process any positional data regardless, so it makes almost 0 difference at all, unless for some reason the audio calcs are actually computationally expensive and this coprocessor actually makes a difference in that respect.

[RejZoR]

Gaming soundcards today don't do as much to 3D audio as they used to. But there is still some science on top of it and Creative is still king at that. It's why I'm still sticking with them. Not only everything sounds way better as such (I hate the dull flat sound of anything Realtek for gaming) and even 3D positioning seems somewhat better.

[Guest]

Shouldn't we wait and see what the actual card and price is before judging?

[TechyBen]

22 hours ago, minibois said:

.... So?

My PC doesn't have a dedicated soundcard and everything sounds just fine. Is this video about the news XBOX having an audio processor or something?

Really, I don't see a big deal in this..

 

EDIT: just to be clear, most people use 3.5mm headsets connected to their controller (because that is what Sony/Microsoft forced upon console players), a simple speaker set or their TV speakers. Even those home theater users will have a receiver and will be using optical audio. The sound is already good from consoles, no need for a dedicated audio card. I would rather them upgrade all the other stuff.

"Xbox [the Xbox that has an even stranger name] has a breakout board with an audio jack on it... oh, while there fit the audio chip on too to save space/versioning..."

[Onlineclickbait]

"Xbox One has a Sound card!"

That's the so.

 

[HumdrumPenguin]

22 hours ago, BlackManINC said:

 Now this is truly some juicy news for the next generation. I agree with the video maker that sound is just as important to the overall experience as the graphics, if not more in some cases. The sky is the limit now to what they can achieve with a dedicated sound card, can't wait. I will definitely be buying me a good home theater surround sound set up when the time comes. 

 

 

You can simply buy yourself a dedicated dac and amplifier for your home theater system, and have a much better solution and control to whatever crap they can come with with to put it inside the box.