Who Uses Windows Spatial Sound? (Windows Sonic)

[jiyeon]

So I was messing about with the sound settings and I randomly found this 'Spatial sound' feature when I right-clicked my volume bar in my taskbar. Looking further into it, I see Windows Sonic for Headphones and also Dolby Atmos. Immediately I thought to try it out since I was bored and had the itching for better audio, so I enabled it.

Prior to switching Windows Sonic on, I Google'd it real quick and found out that instead of using 2 channels for audio (left and right), Windows Sonic artifically seperates channels to rear left, front right etc, so I find that pretty cool at least on paper.

 

I tried playing CSGO just now - a sound-cue heavy FPS shooter ripe for this type of situation. After about ten minutes, I feel like this is all a placebo effect, because I don't hear that much change...  

 

Has anyone else used Windows Sonic and can clarify exactly what it does and how much impact it actually has?

 

[EsaT]

CS:GO is one of those "one in a million" games, which can produce binaural signal for headphones.

Assuming you have correct settings in its sound settings.

For Windows Sonic for Headphones it should be set to output surround sound (5.1/7.1) just like for Dolby Headphone and others.

 

Though have found couple Windows Sonic clips in Youtube and they certainly aren't very immersive compared to other algorithms.

I guess we shouldn't expect anything else. I mean its made by Microsoft...

[an actual squirrel]

There is two distinct things - windows sonic, and windows sonic for headphones. They parallel dolby atmos, and dolby atmos for headphones.

 

Windows sonic and Dolby atmos are surround sound formats, where the directions of sounds are described explicitly rather than by channel. This means that one track can scale to any channel layout, from 2.0 to 7.1.4, and beyond. The track will have all the information, and then a processor downstream will convert it to the channel layout.

 

Windows sonic for headphone and dolby atmos for headphone are surround sound to binaural conversion, aka virtual surround sound aka hrtf. The tricky thing with these is that applications are often not compatible with it. The application either has to have sonic/atmos output respectively - which is very rare. Or if you check the virtual 7.1 checkbox in the windows spatial options, it will work on surround sound pcm. However, due to a quirk with how games automatically determine what audio format to output, this also rarely works.

 

With cs go, there are manual audio format controls. So you can get windows sonic for headphones to work if you make sure the virtual 7.1 option is ticked in the windows spatial panel, and also configure csgo for 7.1 output in the audio options. You might find the effect a little disorienting at first, but over time, that will go away, and you will have superior imaging with it on.

[ldlanagan]

I have not noticed a HUGE difference in movies and YouTube, but I still play Fallout 3 a lot, and that's where it shines. You hear enemies walking up behind you, and bullets going over your head.