Xbox Series X will have dedicated sound card

[kokakolia]

On 2/24/2020 at 7:35 PM, HumdrumPenguin said:

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.

THIS! But more realistically people like myself will have the console hooked up to a TV which outputs sound to a sound bar. So the audio features in the Xbox are bypassed. 

[mr moose]

Yay, wank tax incoming.

[RejZoR]

3 hours ago, kokakolia said:

THIS! But more realistically people like myself will have the console hooked up to a TV which outputs sound to a sound bar. So the audio features in the Xbox are bypassed. 

They wouldn't be if audio was path traced and then outputted via HRTF logic to give you perception of more accurate sound positioning.

[JZStudios]

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

unless PS5's and XBOX series X come with HRTF headphones

Not a thing that exists.

 

5 hours ago, an actual squirrel said:

I don't want to derail this xbox news with a long post about how I think headphone surround sound dsp is generally misunderstood and underutilized right now, but it is exciting to potentially see object based audio and headphone surround sound dsp becoming more common with the new consoles.

Well if it's done properly at the system level it won't need to be a headphone surround DSP. I suppose the Hesuvi and anything else that is wouldn't be so bad if it read the channel outputs and reverted to regular stereo for stereo content.

 

5 hours ago, kokakolia said:

THIS! But more realistically people like myself will have the console hooked up to a TV which outputs sound to a sound bar. So the audio features in the Xbox are bypassed. 

Not if the audio processing is done before the Xbox shoots it out. Y'know, like exactly how it already works.

 

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

They wouldn't be if audio was path traced and then outputted via HRTF logic to give you perception of more accurate sound positioning.

And in that situation it would also be rendered with that data and then sent out over bluetooth or whatever to the controller for headphones.

I mean really, the primary output for audio on the consoles is HDMI. Do these people think they're going to add in a new analog output or something?

[kokakolia]

@RejZoR@JZStudios Thanks for correcting me. I guess... the truth is in the pudding. For most people this added feature does not make any sense. So it really has to make a difference to be worthwhile. 

[an actual squirrel]

51 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

Well if it's done properly at the system level it won't need to be a headphone surround DSP. I suppose the Hesuvi and anything else that is wouldn't be so bad if it read the channel outputs and reverted to regular stereo for stereo content.

There always needs to be a headphone surround dsp at some level. Because otherwise headphones are stereo devices and can't really benefit from increasing surround sound quality.

 

For hesuvi, I mean, you can always use ASIO or exclusive mode rendering in windows to disable processing in applications where you don't want it on. But I also don't see the big deal in just leaving it on - although you don't get any more directional information with stereo sources, you still can get the pleasant out of head effect.

[RejZoR]

@JZStudios

You seem to be mixing up things. the audio render has NOTHING to do with the output. The question now is what is Microsoft actually planning on "enhancing". If they are just going to cram better DAC circuitry, then it's rather pointless since most people just use HDMI so the TV or soundbar/home theater is the DAC circuitry. All these "high definition gaming audio" bullcrap is snake oil. It doesn't make you hear enemies any better because of virgin golden capacitors and Japanese OPAMPS. However, if they plan on rolling out AMD's TrueAudio or something similar full scale since it's running Radeon chip, then I can stand by that and it will affect the quality of pinpointing sound emitters.

 

Coz the thing you're mixing up is the fact that if they will use a precise 3D audio engine, you can output that to anything you want and get great results, be it analog out, digital via coax/optical, HDMI, it doesn't matter. Only thing you're changing here is how convenient it is and who's actually converting digital audio into analog soundwaves that you can hear. Coz analog on anything than stereo will require more individual wires and that's not convenient anymore plus only PC's really have that many outputs in analog form to create true 5.1 or 7.1 surround.

[JoostinOnline]

My guess is that it's marketing BS, even if it made sense. Kind of like how they've been advertising 1080p capability since the 360 days, but only really achieved it consistently with the Xbox One X. Which they market as a 4k console.

[JZStudios]

7 hours ago, an actual squirrel said:

There always needs to be a headphone surround dsp at some level. Because otherwise headphones are stereo devices and can't really benefit from increasing surround sound quality.

 

For hesuvi, I mean, you can always use ASIO or exclusive mode rendering in windows to disable processing in applications where you don't want it on. But I also don't see the big deal in just leaving it on - although you don't get any more directional information with stereo sources, you still can get the pleasant out of head effect.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by your first statement. If it's correctly utilizing HRTF and binaural audio rendering it wouldn't be nor need VSS. It would just be stereo. A lot of games already have options to pick "home theater," stereo, and headphones. It would just be the headphone option and do it naturally. And then any stereo sound source would play as normal.

 

I don't find it pleasant and it drastically reduces a lot of clarity compared to regular stereo, whether played back through speakers or headphones.

3 hours ago, RejZoR said:

@JZStudios

You seem to be mixing up things. the audio render has NOTHING to do with the output. The question now is what is Microsoft actually planning on "enhancing". If they are just going to cram better DAC circuitry, then it's rather pointless since most people just use HDMI so the TV or soundbar/home theater is the DAC circuitry. All these "high definition gaming audio" bullcrap is snake oil. It doesn't make you hear enemies any better because of virgin golden capacitors and Japanese OPAMPS. However, if they plan on rolling out AMD's TrueAudio or something similar full scale since it's running Radeon chip, then I can stand by that and it will affect the quality of pinpointing sound emitters.

 

Coz the thing you're mixing up is the fact that if they will use a precise 3D audio engine, you can output that to anything you want and get great results, be it analog out, digital via coax/optical, HDMI, it doesn't matter. Only thing you're changing here is how convenient it is and who's actually converting digital audio into analog soundwaves that you can hear. Coz analog on anything than stereo will require more individual wires and that's not convenient anymore plus only PC's really have that many outputs in analog form to create true 5.1 or 7.1 surround.

What am I mixing up? Does it have an audio card to just not output audio? I mean, it's possible but it seems pretty stupid to process audio without sending it out.

DAC circuitry? Whether it's going out over optical or HDMI (which are likely the only 2 only options) it's a digital signal. Otherwise it's converting it for bluetooth and sending to the controller for headphones.

 

I will be absofuckinglutely amazed if the Xbox Series X adds in an analog audio output to just shit the bed with audio quality instead of having it be digital over HDMI.

I have no idea what you think you're saying.

[an actual squirrel]

2 hours ago, JZStudios said:

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by your first statement. If it's correctly utilizing HRTF and binaural audio rendering it wouldn't be nor need VSS. It would just be stereo. A lot of games already have options to pick "home theater," stereo, and headphones. It would just be the headphone option and do it naturally. And then any stereo sound source would play as normal.

 

In the context of gaming audio, the terms hrtf, binaural, and VSS all refer to the same phenomenon of cramming more directional information into a headphone mix, as opposed to traditional stereo, which is just left and right.

 

I'm only aware of two games that have a headphone setting, BF4 and RE2, and neither was a binaural audio setting. And that can be checked directly, but also deduced by the fact that bf5 added a binaural audio option, and RE2 has a separate binaural audio option. I believe what the headphone setting actually does is indicate the lack of front speakers and presence of side speakers.

 

[JZStudios]

53 minutes ago, an actual squirrel said:

In the context of gaming audio, the terms hrtf, binaural, and VSS all refer to the same phenomenon of cramming more directional information into a headphone mix, as opposed to traditional stereo, which is just left and right.

 

I'm only aware of two games that have a headphone setting, BF4 and RE2, and neither was a binaural audio setting. And that can be checked directly, but also deduced by the fact that bf5 added a binaural audio option, and RE2 has a separate binaural audio option. I believe what the headphone setting actually does is indicate the lack of front speakers and presence of side speakers.

 

Only if you use the terms loosely and not respective to what they actually are. VSS specifically tries to simulate a 5.1 or 7.1 setup by taking that actual audio output and then processing it through a HRTF filter to get stereo output. EAX didn't do that. The HRTF was directly in the game engine so you had actual height and more accurate distance and direction information than simulating surround sound. Yes, they both use HRTF. Yes, they both output binaural audio, but the implementation is different and one is vastly superior.

 

Well at least every Battlefield game since 4 has had the option. Off the top of my head I'm not sure about others, but I do know that the Naughty Dog games and Yakuza 0 on PS4 for at least surround sound allow you to set up your speaker azimuth. Which is neat. Can't imagine they didn't have a headphone option just placing the speakers directly left and right. Otherwise the audio was actually tuned for stereo in front of you. I think a lot of games just have the stereo option be the headphone option.

[mr moose]

You don't need discrete silicon to run HRTF functions.  Apart from the fact most modern CPUS can crunch that and run games without issue, nearly all generic DSP's can do that with ease.  Even the humble 887 from realtek that is found on almost every motherboard can run HRTF from fmod output.   It's not ideal but if the game only outputs 5.1or 7.1 from fmod then it's no different to a dedicated sound card.

[an actual squirrel]

25 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

Only if you use the terms loosely and not respective to what they actually are. VSS specifically tries to simulate a 5.1 or 7.1 setup by taking that actual audio output and then processing it through a HRTF filter to get stereo output. EAX didn't do that. The HRTF was directly in the game engine so you had actual height and more accurate distance and direction information than simulating surround sound. Yes, they both use HRTF. Yes, they both output binaural audio, but the implementation is different and one is vastly superior.

 

Well at least every Battlefield game since 4 has had the option. Off the top of my head I'm not sure about others, but I do know that the Naughty Dog games and Yakuza 0 on PS4 for at least surround sound allow you to set up your speaker azimuth. Which is neat. Can't imagine they didn't have a headphone option just placing the speakers directly left and right. Otherwise the audio was actually tuned for stereo in front of you. I think a lot of games just have the stereo option be the headphone option.

Let me be clear: they literally are synonyms in this context.  5.1 and 7.1 are just two types of surround sound, there also is atmos and object based surround sound. So that eliminates the distinctions you are trying to make. Technically, EAX is about environmental effects and has little to do with this topic, but I get that you mean the old hardware acceleration era. During this period, the sound card just had all the audio data because of hardware acceleration, but you still had to enable the hrtf in the sound card driver. It wasn't part of the game.

 

It is better to have full 3d audio if possible, but I don't know if I would call it vastly superior than 7.1. If you had two copies of the same game running side by side with the same dsp, except for that one had full 3d audio and the other was set to 7.1, it wouldn't be immediately obvious that there was any difference. But both would be a big step up from standard stereo.

 

I suspect a lot of games have panning problems on stereo for headphone users because it actually does assume front speakers. So I view that as just another reason not to game in stereo.

[RejZoR]

@JZStudios

You're mixing up things like thinking that having digital output just magically solves everything and makes sound amazing and also adds 3D positioning. It doesn't. 3D positioning is done on a game engine level, when it's handed over to audio output, be it analog or digital, you can't do much with it anymore. You can add some sort of post processing that smooths channel transitions and stuff, but that's about it. You need game to communicate directly with the actual output to create realistic 3D positioning audio. Game needs to tell output where certain channel stream needs to go for playback and it needs to do that in real-time because you're moving inside games and audio needs to adapt to ingame events. Which is done by an encoder like Dolby Digital Live! or Dolby Atmos for digital output. Then this stream of ones and zeros is decoded by speakers or receiver and sends ANALOG signal to correct individual speakers (the actual membranes) that emit the audio in place corresponding to ingame location relative to the player in real world. Outputting it in digital for terms of basic audio quality, you just shift the work from onboard DAC to external DAC found inside speakers. It does absolutely nothing to 3D positioning.

[JZStudios]

14 hours ago, an actual squirrel said:

Let me be clear: they literally are synonyms in this context.  5.1 and 7.1 are just two types of surround sound, there also is atmos and object based surround sound. So that eliminates the distinctions you are trying to make. Technically, EAX is about environmental effects and has little to do with this topic, but I get that you mean the old hardware acceleration era. During this period, the sound card just had all the audio data because of hardware acceleration, but you still had to enable the hrtf in the sound card driver. It wasn't part of the game.

No, they're similar. Using an actual surround setup extensively I know what the limitations are compared to proper ambisonics. The later version of EAX and Aureal took information directly from the game and had them implemented directly in-game with EAX support, and commonly various versions of EAX support.

 

11 hours ago, RejZoR said:

@JZStudios

You're mixing up things like thinking that having digital output just magically solves everything and makes sound amazing and also adds 3D positioning. It doesn't.

When the fuck did I say that? I swear you're just trying to big brain and come up with straw man arguments for no reason. I have no idea why you're arguing this other than for the sake of argument. The XBox and PlayStation both currently and in the future only have digital audio output. I don't know why people are talking about analog when it's completely irrelevant. They aren't doing analog output. No shit the speakers need a DAC, but it's not the Xbox, so why the hell are we talking about it?

[RejZoR]

Because I'm talking about 3D audio the entire time (which has absolutely NOTHING to do with digital output beyond just being outputted from the device at some point) and you keep on bringing up digital output for some reason and quoting me where I talk about more 3D audio. And now you're sperging at me. Dafaq dude.

[Bombastinator]

16 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Because I'm talking about 3D audio the entire time (which has absolutely NOTHING to do with digital output beyond just being outputted from the device at some point) and you keep on bringing up digital output for some reason and quoting me where I talk about more 3D audio. And now you're sperging at me. Dafaq dude.

The problem is no one can agree what the buzzwords fricken mean.  “3d audio” = buzzword.  

[Kisai]

20 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

The problem is no one can agree what the buzzwords fricken mean.  “3d audio” = buzzword.  

Indeed.

 

Buzzword soup tends to lead to a path of "But I have that feature" ... "No you don't, that's just the marketing name for something else"

 

Like AT&T lying about 4G support in devices that weren't LTE.

 

For the most part you have two factors in play:

1. Surround Sound (which requires an external box entirely for powering the speakers, as most of that space is just amplifier circuitry.) See for example https://h-m-entertainment.com/denon-avr-x2500h-review

2. 3D positional audio, which as the name says is "3D" space and is the broader term for all audio logic that should be handled by a DSP, but may be handled in software.

 

It is an outright lie that "all the 3D audio can be done in software" however, as there are no API's that do that without there being a hardware endpoint to send discrete channels, and you're not going to be doing that with any budget device. Here's the current API on windows: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/coreaudio/spatial-sound , scroll down to this part:

Quote

On Windows and Xbox, the number of available voices varies based on the format in use. Dolby Atmos formats support 32 total active objects (so if a 7.1.4 channel bed is in use, 20 additional dynamic sound objects can be active). Windows Sonic for Headphones supports 128 total active objects, with the Low Frequency Effects (LFE) channel not actually being counted as an object -- so when an 8.1.4.4 channel bed is in use, 112 dynamic sound objects can be active.

 

For Universal Windows Platform apps running on Xbox One game consoles, realtime encode (for Dolby Atmos for home theater, Dolby Atmos for Headphones, and Windows Sonic for Headphones) is performed in hardware at no CPU cost.

 

When PC's were coming with three stereo outputs (L/R, SR/SL, C/LFE) nobody made use of it this way because that still required an analog 6-channel input on a surround device.

 

https://www2.iis.fraunhofer.de/AAC/multichannel.html

 

Try playing this on your PC. That will tell you if your surround software even works.

[RejZoR]

2 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

The problem is no one can agree what the buzzwords fricken mean.  “3d audio” = buzzword.  

Buzzword? Were you born after 2006 maybe? Coz only that way you don't know what 3D audio is... Go and read some whitepapers from Aureal Semiconductor, an audio chip designer from late 90's. They literally had path traced audio. You know, the one where audio bounces through physical 3D in-game world to simulate accurate, wait for it, BUZZWORD 3D audio BUZZWORD. Like RTX, but for audio. That was back when most were still using planar 2D audio (2D as in not having any concept of above/below and behind). Since Aureal was bought by Creative, most of their tech lived on with EAX 3.0 and newer feature sets. All still working with Creative cards using ALchemy even on Windows 10, but only with games that had it implemented with the game engine. New ones don't even use it anymore.

 

Out of all the actual buzzwords like cloud, VR and Ai, you go and mock the only thing that's not a buzzword. LMAO No wonder everyone takes audio for granted today, so no one gives a shit how nerfed it is since Vista. The audio is just there and no one gives a shit about it. If everyone had what we had 2 decades ago and then have that taken away, you'd be talking different too. Then again bunch of people didn't care about it even back then as they were running cheap generic soundcards and we were rocking Aureal Vortex, Sound Blaster Live!, Audigy 2 and X-Fi cards...

 

@Kisai

No external DSP or surround external box can ever do any 3D audio. Game engine with connection of audio processor (or CPU) has to do it and NOTHING else. People really don't understand the concept of 3D audio. Like, at all. You're all literally saying "my LCD monitor is going to do ray tracing for me". No it won't. Ever. Just like no external DSP or receiver even for 500.000 € won't ever do it no matter how hard you think that it will or can. No external device can know where you are located in a game and where sounds are coming from in relation to your position and movement. That is game engine job and most of the time they use some sort of highly simplified methods even though audio middleware (like FMOD) brags how it can do all bunch of fancy features yet audio still sounds like shit and good 3D positioning is often pretty much non existent.

 

Oh and Windows Sonic for Headphones is terrible. Playing Killing Floor 2 with it on bluetooth headphones and stereo channel separation is so bad it's like sounds don't know soft transition between both channels (and from my understanding the feature is output agnostic, meaning it shouldn't matter if headphones are BT or analog wired. I can literally not only hear but feel how sound shift from left channel to right like you'd cut them. Where on Sound Blaster AE-9, despite not having hardware connection with the game engine directly like we had in the past, the transitions are accurate and soft. Sounds perfectly transition between both channels as things move around you as well as when you move around audio sources.

 

I'll have to test Sonic through AE-9 in Direct Mode which ignores the audio processor entirely and see if that horrible sharp cutting of audio between channels still exists...

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Buzzword? Were you born after 2006 maybe? Coz only that way you don't know what 3D audio is... Go and read some whitepapers from Aureal Semiconductor, an audio chip designer from late 90's. They literally had path traced audio. You know, the one where audio bounces through physical 3D in-game world to simulate accurate, wait for it, BUZZWORD 3D audio BUZZWORD. Like RTX, but for audio. That was back when most were still using planar 2D audio (2D as in not having any concept of above/below and behind). Since Aureal was bought by Creative, most of their tech lived on with EAX 3.0 and newer feature sets. All still working with Creative cards using ALchemy even on Windows 10, but only with games that had it implemented with the game engine. New ones don't even use it anymore.

 

Out of all the actual buzzwords like cloud, VR and Ai, you go and mock the only thing that's not a buzzword. LMAO No wonder everyone takes audio for granted today, so no one gives a shit how nerfed it is since Vista. The audio is just there and no one gives a shit about it. If everyone had what we had 2 decades ago and then have that taken away, you'd be talking different too. Then again bunch of people didn't care about it even back then as they were running cheap generic soundcards and we were rocking Aureal Vortex, Sound Blaster Live!, Audigy 2 and X-Fi cards...

"3d audio" is a generic term, just like  "RT" and "multi threading",  EAX is a specific implementation.   Aureal's 3d audio tech implementation was called A3D.  I suggest if you don't want to confuse people you use the specific names of the technology rather than a generic one. 

 

 

2 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

@Kisai

No external DSP or surround external box can ever do any 3D audio. Game engine with connection of audio processor (or CPU) has to do it and NOTHING else. People really don't understand the concept of 3D audio. Like, at all. You're all literally saying "my LCD monitor is going to do ray tracing for me". No it won't. Ever. Just like no external DSP or receiver even for 500.000 € won't ever do it no matter how hard you think that it will or can. No external device can know where you are located in a game and where sounds are coming from in relation to your position and movement. That is game engine job and most of the time they use some sort of highly simplified methods even though audio middleware (like FMOD) brags how it can do all bunch of fancy features yet audio still sounds like shit and good 3D positioning is often pretty much non existent.

Fmod outputs 5.1 from the game engine,  most sound-cards (including onboard) take that 5.1 and create HRTF for headphones form it.  Receivers will just take the 5.1 and send it to the relevant speakers.  In that regard adding a sound card to the xbox will make no discernible difference to the sound either in quality or in positional audio except for maybe some games in the future that don't use fmod (pretty sure fmod doesn't output raw positional data). That is all Kisai is saying

[an actual squirrel]

3 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

The problem is no one can agree what the buzzwords fricken mean.  “3d audio” = buzzword.  

I have no idea why this thread is getting so confusing with conflicting explanations. Simply put, 3d audio is surround sound that has 3 dimensions - left right, front back, up down. For reference, 7.1 is 2d - left right, front back, and stereo is 1d - left right. 3d audio for headphones is when you take that 3d audio and convert it into binaural audio for headphones.

 

Hardware acceleration means you can keep track of more sounds and do more effects.

 

Ray tracing is used so that objects in the game can block audio if they are in the way. You can also use it to do reverb in real time, but if the game level is unchanging, you can just prebake the reverb in each distinct area. That's what EAX did.

[RejZoR]

@mr moose

There is nothing confusing about it. 3D audio is 3D audio. Be it EAX or A3D, they essentially do the same. Do the 3D positioning of audio sources relative to the player and his position/direction. You can call it anything you want, but in the end it's still just that.

 

Also I wouldn't agree with the second part. It doesn't necessarily have to be a "sound card". Xbox, like PlayStation uses Radeon which has AMD's TrueAudio. Which is essentially hardware accelerated 3D audio engine that runs on Radeon GPU's. And if anything ever takes off anywhere, it's on consoles. Every single one of them is the same (at least within one generation) and that guarantees anyone with one could and will use the fancy effects. Something which couldn't be guaranteed even when Sound Blaster cards were in their prime time. Most people had PC's with generic no name soundcards and later with AC97 and basic Realtek. Hell, even when "high end onboard audio" became a thing, they were still pretty poor and frankly still are. Nichicon Gold capacitors and virgin traced audio paths don't make 3D audio any better. And if you have 100% support and that guarantees everyone with the new console will be able to experience it, developers will also take time to use it in their game. Something they won't even bother on PC because 90% of people wouldn't even use it because they don't have HW capabilities. That's just the reality of it.

 

I can only hope AMD TrueAudio will gain wider support through console games using it and since it now runs on OpenCL, it would also work on NVIDIA cards. Question now is if developers will bother with it for ports and if NVIDIA won't be doing any shenanigans like not allowing it to be there if it's game shilled by them.

[mr moose]

11 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

@mr moose

There is nothing confusing about it. 3D audio is 3D audio. Be it EAX or A3D, they essentially do the same. Do the 3D positioning of audio sources relative to the player and his position/direction. You can call it anything you want, but in the end it's still just that.

Not to you, you know what you mean when you use a generic term, but others do not, you say 3D audio thinking about A3D but that's not what people are reading. 

 

 

11 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Also I wouldn't agree with the second part. It doesn't necessarily have to be a "sound card". Xbox, like PlayStation uses Radeon which has AMD's TrueAudio. Which is essentially hardware accelerated 3D audio engine that runs on Radeon GPU's. And if anything ever takes off anywhere, it's on consoles. Every single one of them is the same (at least within one generation) and that guarantees anyone with one could and will use the fancy effects. Something which couldn't be guaranteed even when Sound Blaster cards were in their prime time. Most people had PC's with generic no name soundcards and later with AC97 and basic Realtek. Hell, even when "high end onboard audio" became a thing, they were still pretty poor and frankly still are. Nichicon Gold capacitors and virgin traced audio paths don't make 3D audio any better. And if you have 100% support and that guarantees everyone with the new console will be able to experience it, developers will also take time to use it in their game. Something they won't even bother on PC because 90% of people wouldn't even use it because they don't have HW capabilities. That's just the reality of it.

What does that mean?  no one said anything about component quality improving positional audio, least of all me.     I said nearly any soundcard (INCLUDING ONBOARD) can do HRTF from 5.1, which is what all the games output.  

 

 

11 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

I can only hope AMD TrueAudio will gain wider support through console games using it and since it now runs on OpenCL, it would also work on NVIDIA cards. Question now is if developers will bother with it for ports and if NVIDIA won't be doing any shenanigans like not allowing it to be there if it's game shilled by them.

Unless true audio can create a transfer function for headphones,  then it won't add anything either.

[JZStudios]

6 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Because I'm talking about 3D audio the entire time (which has absolutely NOTHING to do with digital output beyond just being outputted from the device at some point) and you keep on bringing up digital output for some reason and quoting me where I talk about more 3D audio. And now you're sperging at me. Dafaq dude.

Then you're not following the conversation. Someone said the audio processing would be bypassed because the audio is sent out to whatever decodes it, the TV, AVR, speakers, headphones, whatever. I was saying the processing happens before it gets sent out, and agreeing with you. The only DAC the Xbox would need really would be to send the audio over bluetooth to the controller. Otherwise it shouldn't have a DAC to send audio out over digital to whatever is decoding it.

 

3 hours ago, RejZoR said:

That was back when most were still using planar 2D audio (2D as in not having any concept of above/below and behind)

Umm... if you mean just left and right like a line that's technically 1D. Surround sound is 2D. I've mentioned this already.

 

3 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Then again bunch of people didn't care about it even back then as they were running cheap generic soundcards and we were rocking Aureal Vortex, Sound Blaster Live!, Audigy 2 and X-Fi cards...

Because if I'm not mistaken (wasn't big into hardcore PC stuff until like... after 2012) those soundcards were like $200 or more. Most people still use crappy TV speakers.

 

3 hours ago, an actual squirrel said:

Ray tracing is used so that objects in the game can block audio if they are in the way. You can also use it to do reverb in real time, but if the game level is unchanging, you can just prebake the reverb in each distinct area. That's what EAX did.

I think the later EAX implementations did it real time. Pre-baking isn't a terrible way to go about it, I think that's how Battlefield 3 did audio and just zoned inside structures to have more of a reverb filter. Not as accurate as real time, especially if the structure isn't square or it has other objects. A lot of these things also don't take sound absorption into account, which the video I linked actually does. Which no one seems to have bothered trying.

[Bombastinator]

4 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Buzzword? Were you born after 2006 maybe? Coz only that way you don't know what 3D audio is... Go and read some whitepapers from Aureal Semiconductor, an audio chip designer from late 90's. They literally had path traced audio. You know, the one where audio bounces through physical 3D in-game world to simulate accurate, wait for it, BUZZWORD 3D audio BUZZWORD. Like RTX, but for audio. That was back when most were still using planar 2D audio (2D as in not having any concept of above/below and behind). Since Aureal was bought by Creative, most of their tech lived on with EAX 3.0 and newer feature sets. All still working with Creative cards using ALchemy even on Windows 10, but only with games that had it implemented with the game engine. New ones don't even use it anymore.

 

Out of all the actual buzzwords like cloud, VR and Ai, you go and mock the only thing that's not a buzzword. LMAO No wonder everyone takes audio for granted today, so no one gives a shit how nerfed it is since Vista. The audio is just there and no one gives a shit about it. If everyone had what we had 2 decades ago and then have that taken away, you'd be talking different too. Then again bunch of people didn't care about it even back then as they were running cheap generic soundcards and we were rocking Aureal Vortex, Sound Blaster Live!, Audigy 2 and X-Fi cards...

 

@Kisai

No external DSP or surround external box can ever do any 3D audio. Game engine with connection of audio processor (or CPU) has to do it and NOTHING else. People really don't understand the concept of 3D audio. Like, at all. You're all literally saying "my LCD monitor is going to do ray tracing for me". No it won't. Ever. Just like no external DSP or receiver even for 500.000 € won't ever do it no matter how hard you think that it will or can. No external device can know where you are located in a game and where sounds are coming from in relation to your position and movement. That is game engine job and most of the time they use some sort of highly simplified methods even though audio middleware (like FMOD) brags how it can do all bunch of fancy features yet audio still sounds like shit and good 3D positioning is often pretty much non existent.

 

Oh and Windows Sonic for Headphones is terrible. Playing Killing Floor 2 with it on bluetooth headphones and stereo channel separation is so bad it's like sounds don't know soft transition between both channels (and from my understanding the feature is output agnostic, meaning it shouldn't matter if headphones are BT or analog wired. I can literally not only hear but feel how sound shift from left channel to right like you'd cut them. Where on Sound Blaster AE-9, despite not having hardware connection with the game engine directly like we had in the past, the transitions are accurate and soft. Sounds perfectly transition between both channels as things move around you as well as when you move around audio sources.

 

I'll have to test Sonic through AE-9 in Direct Mode which ignores the audio processor entirely and see if that horrible sharp cutting of audio between channels still exists...

I was born before Dolby.  I watched the birth of Dolby at the first run of Star Wars. (That’s what actually funded the movie btw.  The only reason the thing got done was to show off Dolby sound for theatres.  It was a technical production.  No one thought it would do well). They did it by instead of having two channels of optical audio on the film they fused a piece of 8 track magnetic tape (4 tracks on a side) to the film stock.  In might have Been 2 pieces of 4 track.  I forget.  Dolby 1 was baked in analog 7.1 in the 70’s.  That was surround.  It was not apparently 3d positional audio.