The effects of using an AV receiver vs. Gaming Headsets

[AthlonX2]

This isnt MSN or skype so triple posting isnt necessary

[iCadaveR]

Originally Posted by AthlonX2

This isnt MSN or skype so triple posting isnt necessary

yeh yeh yeh... i only clicked it once lol

[EarthDog]

Originally Posted by iCadaveR

right... but think of it this way... one cpu cycle game, the next audio, the next game, the next audio... so on so forth.. you are cutting their potential speeds in half.

Thats not the way it works anymore.. think about it... YOU HAVE 4 PHYSICAL CORES and 4 MORE HT CORES! So there is no waiting, it takes a free cycle.

But you never answered my question, what IS doing the processing then?

Originally Posted by iCadaveR

cutting out all possibilities saying that todays processors are completely overkill for anything you through at them is quite biased

"jftr" Im cutting out all things not possible, like the trunk button from the factory effecting how fast a car goes (or that whats on the end of a plug effects whats coming out of the plug in this case).... and your CPU information I corrected above.

If you think its the problem, then go get a soundcard where the audio processing is done on the card, like SoundBlaster Xtremegamer.

[iCadaveR]

see one would think the audio is being processed by the soundcard. but what it seems like it is doing is... taking a raw audio file, converting it to a compressed format then being reprocessed to add effects when it gets to the soundcard

doesnt seem like it in the case of using the receiver. because the receiver can have its own built in equalizer so it may turn the soundcard's off

[iCadaveR]

Originally Posted by AthlonX2

I run a Pioneer Elite reciever for my pc sound and have never noticed anything being different than my logitech G330 headset.

when using the pioneer receiver what audio format were you using?

with the receiver... get this... if i persay, encode the audio signal to DDL or DTS i notice the latency, when i leave the encoder off and just set the receiver to DTS Neo:6 the hit reg is flawless

with it on DTS Neo:6 it also lights up the pcm light

[EarthDog]

Onboard audio uses CPU cycles. There is no doubt about that. The more you put on the audio processing like surround effects, eq, etc, the more it uses. Yes. But again, its nothing...negligible. Its not waiting in line to be processed, its not affecting hit registry. It doesnt make sense at all as they are two different things doing two completely different functions that are not dependent on one another.

Buy a separate sound card that handles the processing onboard. It *may* solve the issue, but it wont tell you what the true source of the problem was.

HOly shit dude. PLEASE stop with the multi posting and edit. My god man. You dont listen at all do you?!!

EDIT: Man, you are ALL OVER THE PLACE with these edits.

the signal the receiver is getting has already been 'equalized', the equalizing your receiver would do is ON TOP OF what is already in the signal.

[iCadaveR]

see i have the onboard audio disabled and i am using the x-fi titanium champion which has its own ramdac


This better then?

[EarthDog]

It should be as it has its own audio processing/ram which use much less/no CPU resources. If that doesnt fix your 'issue', it has nothing to do with the audio.

[Vinska]

Originally Posted by iCadaveR

im telling you you should give it a shot. try out a receiver hooked up by toslink and test some hit reg

I am using such a setup for years now, and the only differences I noticed:
no noise gets introduced while (so no more "cell-phone-inducted-beeping" yay!), easier to troubleshoot, surround is much easier to set up, less trouble when connecting (jacks get troublesome), and much more care required when disconnecting.

EDIT:
P.S. and yeah, Your problem is prolly somewhere else. For example, drivers.
EDIT#2:
don't forget: "Correlation does not imply causation"

[KingPing]

About the CPU cycles: Audio hit is minimal, with your logic of consuming CPU cycles, then the other several programs running in background should make the game unplayable since they consume more CPU resources than audio. I run a lot of programs, sometimes even another game or folding, and i never notice any performance variation what so ever.

About the soundcard: sound is being processed in the soundcard, that´s the whole point. But it was several years ago when a soundcard helped boost performance, today the only difference is sound quality. About the ram in your soundcard, it was a Creative gimmick, benchmarks between with SB Titaniums (one with the ram and the other without, don´t remember the exact models though) showed that in a PC with Core 2 Duo or Quads the performance difference was of 1fps well within the error margin.

With all due respect, i still think there is something messed up in your PC, maybe drivers, who knows. As i said, games running faster is one thing, but looking better, i just don´t see how audio have anything to do with that.

[Vinska]

One more thing: if You still think that the audio is slowing Your games down, there is only one way to make sure:

Testing. And by testing, I mean: Taking a HDD with a clean window$ installation, having no unnecessary hardware attached, having only the drivers/essentials (dx, etc.) and that one game installed. Then testing how it acts under different audio modes. If it still works the same way You described earlier, then You can say there probably is an audio related problem somewhere - either in the driver, hardware, or the game code itself. And then, testing with different audio driver versions, if it changes the behavior, You could say that problem is most likely in the audio drivers.

Note, I wrote it as "probably"/"most likely" and all. That is because even with such testing You would still know pretty much nothing what and why is actually happening.

So, please stop mistaking correlation with causation - those are two different things.

[Ra97oR]

I don't even know how to respond to this even... Either there is something really messed up with your computer or just flat out placebo effects which is very likely from your posts.

Also, if you are using USB headsets, your onboard soundcard will have no effect on it what so ever. USB headsets have their own (crappy) DAC and ADC for the sound and mic, likely to have a some sort of sound processor for the virtual surround sounds.

Originally Posted by iCadaveR

see i dont believe the audio is being processed by the soundcard when using 3.5mm headsets. nor when using a toslink headset. looks like the audiodg.exe service is doing it all. ive seen people making the attempt to turn off all soundblaster special effects and what not in the windows audio panels. I would always see windows 7 utilizing 3% cpu to nothing but audio? i know thats hardly measurable but look at it this way. it has to buffer. thats more information between calculations.

Is it not about if you believe or not, but it is the fact. Soundcard need to do their DAC function at the very least to have you hearing anything at all.

[james888]

I would like to inform you of the edit button.

This reminds me of the thread about the guy who claimed a different dns gave him a better ping and gaming experience. This is different though. Have you considered a pseudo effect? I'd give it a few more months and see if your getting the same performance boost.