Do REAL 7.1/5.1 Surround sound work with FPS Games (speakers not headphones)

[AnalogCanavity]

I currently am setting up a surround sound system for movies on my PC, and I was wondering if I could even utilize it for gaming. I mainly play CSGO, PUBG, Apex, R6S etc. on my arctis 7, and I know CSGO has HRTF (what other games use this technology or something similar?). Back to surround sound. Do games even support real surround sound? and if they don’t, could I just disable my other speakers and use a 2.1 setup that uses HRTF (or something similar) while gaming? If not I can just continue using my Arctis 7 for gaming.

 

Thanks

[circeseye]

um yes...if the game supports it it will. mostly 5.1 but there are a few games that support 7.1...not sure if any support atmos yet
actually now that i think about it i cant even think of a game that doesnt support surround now a days

[caldrin]

9 hours ago, circeseye said:

um yes...if the game supports it it will. mostly 5.1 but there are a few games that support 7.1...not sure if any support atmos yet
actually now that i think about it i cant even think of a game that doesnt support surround now a days

I think that last Tomb Raider game supported Atmos and a few others as well.. Battlefield games as well.. 

[jasonvp]

10 hours ago, circeseye said:

now that i think about it i cant even think of a game that doesnt support surround now a days

Rainbow Six: Siege is an example that doesn't support true surround.  Ubi's awful audio engineers have decided to do their own internal binaural "surround".  There's no option to enable real 5.1/7.1 in the game.

 

Same with the new CoD MW game that just launched.

[Derkoli]

20 hours ago, Zic05 said:

I currently am setting up a surround sound system for movies on my PC, and I was wondering if I could even utilize it for gaming. I mainly play CSGO, PUBG, Apex, R6S etc. on my arctis 7, and I know CSGO has HRTF (what other games use this technology or something similar?). Back to surround sound. Do games even support real surround sound? and if they don’t, could I just disable my other speakers and use a 2.1 setup that uses HRTF (or something similar) while gaming? If not I can just continue using my Arctis 7 for gaming.

 

Thanks

I know battlefield, GTA V, Tomb Raider and a couple other's support "true" surround. Really hoping some newer game's support an object based codec, such as auro 3D or dolby atmos.

 

If I remember correctly GTA V support's up to 7.1, it's alot less channel's then what I used to run (15.2.5) but it felt oh-so immersive.

 

Also, just satisfying my curiosity, but what system you going for?

 

 

[AnalogCanavity]

On 10/25/2019 at 4:00 PM, Derkoli said:

I know battlefield, GTA V, Tomb Raider and a couple other's support "true" surround. Really hoping some newer game's support an object based codec, such as auro 3D or dolby atmos.

 

If I remember correctly GTA V support's up to 7.1, it's alot less channel's then what I used to run (15.2.5) but it felt oh-so immersive.

 

Also, just satisfying my curiosity, but what system you going for?

 

 

Copy pasted from my reddit post

" Here's the story: I've been looking to buy some nicer speakers with a sub and amp. I told my mom about it, and I was just waiting for the Micca Origain to come back in stock. Well, my mom told me to come over because she had some unused "audio stuff". Well it ended up being an Onkyo TX-NR609 and a RTD 3133 (without the 'H' in the title), The RTD didn't have the amp/receiver in the box, but in the other box there was a Onkyo TX-NR609, so that should be work for this setup." 

I am also going to add a Micca RB42 for my front 2 speakers, I'm deciding on Dayton Audio Sub 800 or a Monoprice 12in subwoofer, and a Micca RB42C. So now I am going to have a 7.1 surround sound system. Any recommendations?

TLDR: So basically. I start to get into high-end audio. Find a bunch of nice stuff. Now I have 7.1 Surround Sound System

[an actual squirrel]

Most games will output surround sound if they see that the windows default format is surround sound. Call of Duty Modern Warfare, Borderlands 3, Gears of War 5, Shadow of the Tomb Raider - these games can go beyond traditional surround sound and can do full object based audio with the dolby and dts apps in the windows store.

 

HRTF is typically for headphone users, and not meant for speaker users. CSGO , PUBG (hrtf), Overwatch (dolby atmos for headphone) are some examples of games with hrtf. In those games, the setting is optional, so that speaker users can keep them off, and the onus is on headphone users to turn them on.

 

 

On 10/25/2019 at 11:01 AM, jasonvp said:

Rainbow Six: Siege is an example that doesn't support true surround.  Ubi's awful audio engineers have decided to do their own internal binaural "surround".  There's no option to enable real 5.1/7.1 in the game.

iirc, it's the opposite situation. rainbow six siege doesn't support binaural audio, so for headphone users to get the most information from the game, they have to get the game to output surround sound and then convert that to binaural themselves.

 

 

[JZStudios]

On 10/24/2019 at 9:05 PM, circeseye said:

um yes...if the game supports it it will. mostly 5.1 but there are a few games that support 7.1...not sure if any support atmos yet
actually now that i think about it i cant even think of a game that doesnt support surround now a days

Subnautica. Asshats fired the audio guy because he made a joke on twitter about identifying as an attack chopper. His funnier one was a suggestion of a "diversity slider" and the further to one side it goes your character becomes a black lesbian.

 

On 10/25/2019 at 7:05 AM, caldrin said:

I think that last Tomb Raider game supported Atmos and a few others as well.. Battlefield games as well.. 

Battlefield on proper surround sound actually sucks, at least BF4 did. I don't remember BF1 as I refunded it pretty quickly. I thought the Atmos support was Atmos headphones, which is not the same.

BTW, Battlefield only supports 5.1, with the center channel being exclusively utilized for callouts like flags being taken, otherwise it's entirely quad. In the case of BF4, it applies a shitty filter so sounds behind you so things get real muffled. It sucks.

1 hour ago, an actual squirrel said:

HRTF is typically for headphone users, and not meant for speaker users. CSGO , PUBG (hrtf), Overwatch (dolby atmos for headphone) are some examples of games with hrtf. In those games, the setting is optional, so that speaker users can keep them off, and the onus is on headphone users to turn them on.

HRTF is explicitly for headphones, and sounds fuck awful on actual surround systems. If you have stereo set up correctly it can be pretty equivalent to headphones.

[jasonvp]

14 hours ago, an actual squirrel said:

iirc, it's the opposite situation. rainbow six siege doesn't support binaural audio, so for headphone users to get the most information from the game, they have to get the game to output surround sound and then convert that to binaural themselves.

There's absolutely no way to get the game to "output surround".  Ubi does their own.

[an actual squirrel]

5 hours ago, jasonvp said:

There's absolutely no way to get the game to "output surround".  Ubi does their own.

There's this video from a headfi member with audio captured from the game, specifically to address this topic. It's 5.1.

 

[jasonvp]

10 hours ago, an actual squirrel said:

There's this video from a headfi member with audio captured from the game, specifically to address this topic. It's 5.1.

 

So it is; thank you for the correction.  I was under the mistaken impression that since there's no way to configure it in the game's settings, it just used Ubi's awful binaural.  I'd attempted to throw Razer's commercial Synapse virtual surround at it in the past, to disastrous effects.  But I think that's because I'd had the Razer software set up to work on as a 7.1 vs 5.1 output.  This evening, I disabled the (virtual) side speakers and went back into the game.  Sure enough things started sounded a whole lot better in my stereo headphones.  Some more work is required, but this is a good place to start.