3D or Hardware Sound in games dead??

[Mussels]

dolby digitial is a compression and encoding method to get 6 channels of audio over a digital data stream designed for 2 channels, it has nothing to do with upmixing stereo over 5 channels.

you're confusing dolby digital and DD DTS, with their SEPERATE upmixing features, called dolby pro logic.

 

[Dent1]

dolby digitial is a compression and encoding method to get 6 channels of audio over a digital data stream designed for 2 channels, it has nothing to do with upmixing stereo over 5 channels.

you're confusing dolby digital and DD DTS, with their SEPERATE upmixing features, called dolby pro logic.

+1

Agreed. By definition Dolby Digital is passed through a digital cable. Which basically nullifies 90% of TAViX posts.

PS. Prologic always sounds weak to me, even DTS: NEO sounds weak.

 

[Mussels]

You cannot compare the same sensation of sound positioning and effects of DD or DD2 or DDEX with EAX 5.0 or simmilar. Period.

you're the only one trying to.



your argument is analogous to me saying:


apples cannot be compared to cars, cars are awesome.
no shit. they're completely different things, and we all know that.


You keep bringing in all these unrelated technologies (like dolby digital) as if they have anything to do with surround sound... they dont. never have, never did.

if a game supports dolby digital (which has nothing to do with the upmixing features you keep talking about) it just means you can play it straight to an amplifier/decoder with no need for encoding software on your soundcard - its guaranteed 5.1 positional audio, just like how consoles do it.

 

[Mussels]

So why you can use use both at the same time then, hmm?? (DD + EAX for example) Ever thought of that??:shadedshu

... still, you havent actually made a point. they have nothing to do with each other.


Dolby digital is a compression method to get above stereo sound on optical.
EAX is a sound engine for games.



seriously, what point at you trying to make? you dont seem to have a clue what half of this tech even does.

i can run analogue, digital SPDIF, or HDMI for my audio, in stereo, 4.0, 5.1, 6.1, 7.1 with or without dolby encoding... and still run EAX. what the hell is your point?

edit: oh sorry, i forgot USB there as well. i have a mono USB voip headset i can also use with EAX, upto 2.0 if i wanted to (thanks to alchemy)

 

[Dent1]

You cannot compare the same sensation of sound positioning and effects of DD or DD2 or DDEX with EAX 5.0 or simmilar. Period.

Like others have explained earlier you are lumping unrelated technologies together. I'm not 100% sure that you know the difference between DD and EAX and how they are very different.

Answer this question:

Have you ever played a game that has 5 audio streams like Battlefield Bad Company or Assassins Creed etc with a soundcard that can encode DTS or Dolby Digital using DDL or DTSC whilst using a digital cable to your hardware receiver/decoder? Yes or no.

If the answer is no, then maybe you should try it before you bash Dolby's legacy.
If the answer is yes, then I respect your opinion (even if you are confused about the technologies)

 

[caleb]

So why you can use use both at the same time then, hmm?? (DD + EAX for example) Ever thought of that??:shadedshu

Its exactly as Dent and mussels try to explain to you.

I used to play Raven Shield with EAX via Dolby Digital. I even used a hardware encoder on my nforce2 (think it was 1st in industry hardware encoder back then) for a while connected to my hifi. Even if it goes out analogue with 6 channels its still Dolby digital its just decoded on the computer not in the HIFI.
I believe BC2 uses its own sound rendering engine and just outputs it in DolbyDigital...

EDIT:PERIOD ^^

 

[TAViX]

Instead of keep flaming and insult me, why don't you actually post some good links regarding this matter like I did?



Forget about it, I'm done here.

 

[Maelstrom]

The others appear to be right, from the little research I've done, EAX and dolby digital are two separate things.
Here are quotes from wikipedia!

EAX:

The aim of EAX has nothing to do with 3D audio positioning. This is usually done by a sound library like Microsoft's DirectSound3D or OpenAL. Rather, EAX can be seen as a library of hardware-accelerated sound effects

.
Dolby digital:

Dolby Digital is the name for audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Digital
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_audio_extensions

 

[Dent1]

The others appear to be right, from the little research I've done, EAX and dolby digital are two separate things.
Here are quotes from wikipedia!

EAX:

The aim of EAX has nothing to do with 3D audio positioning. This is usually done by a sound library like Microsoft's DirectSound3D or OpenAL. Rather, EAX can be seen as a library of hardware-accelerated sound effects

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Digital
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_audio_extensions

+1

The funny thing is TAViX keeps harping on about EAX's 3D positioning but according to that Wiki it actually says that EAX has nothing to do with "3D positioning".

 

[Robert-The-Rambler]

Let Me Be Sarah Shahi Here

Dolby Digital is the digital compressed method of hearing your digital audio most often in 5.1 originally over coax or optical/toslink cables. It can either be pre encoded such as in movies or it can be encoded on the fly for real-time surround sound in video games with supported hardware. It does not create the surround sound it is just a means for 3D audio technologies such as EAX or other audio engines to use positional sound. In a gaming sense Dolby Digital is just a means to have a convenient 1 cable option to have 5.1 channel surround sound. Your audio device such as your sound card encodes the incoming audio streams into a format that your Dolby Digital decoder can recognize and decode such as with a home audio receiver. All the 3D aspects are controlled by the audio engine used in the game.

 

[erixx]

Correct Robert.

Also, the thread title is ambiguos...

EAX stands for Environmental Audio... not positional, neither Dolby does.

It's coded in the game and if it is not well done you are f*cked, regardless of your killer equipment.

Sad.

 

[Dent1]

I LOLed!!!

What so funny? EAX isn't positional sound as such.

On a serious note, lets all put the arrogance behind us. The thread does raise a good point. The sound quality in general in games is being neglected.

About a decade back, when I used to own the Creative Sound Blaster cards and their 4.1 speaker systems I used to be a Creative fan boy. I must admit that the "effects" (not positional sound) was better back then in general when using a Creative based card. The only issue was that if you wanted to upgrade to a better soundcard that's non-creative for movies or music playback you'll always feel gimped because you were knocked back to EAX 2.0 in the latest games. Creative had a nasty monopoly on the market which meant that you was literally forced to use their products. Creative was lucky not to get sued for constant lying to customers about features which were advertised on the box but the card couldn’t deliver. Creative was known for having the Dolby Digital and DTS logo on the box on soundcard's that didn’t even have S/PDIF and they'll make claims that DD and DTS could be achieved without encoding first or a dedicated decoder.

In the Vista Era when EAX was dropped, it was the best thing for the sound card market. Now we have a choice of many brands at competitive prices which are frankly better than Creative's offering. The days of paying £200+ for a mediocre SoundBlaster have gone. Thank goodness!

 

[Wile E]

I LOLed!!!

I don't know why you loled. You are wrong. Maelstrom already posted links for you. I suggest you read them. Here's the EAX link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_audio_extensions

And here's another link direct from creaive. Notice how creative thenmselves make no mention of positioning. http://www.creative.com/soundblaster/technology/eax/welcome.aspx

EAX has nothing to do with positioning. It is nothing but sound effects like reverb and chorus. In games like FEAR, it can add a huge amount of atmosphere, but that's about it. FEAR's audio is fully positional, even with EAX disabled.

 

[Deleted member 67555]

I hate the way FEAR sounds...Yes Ive even tried a sound card...
I first got it on Xbox 360 and was like WTF is wrong with this GAME!!?
So recently I purchased the FEAR Collection for PC and I"m still like WTF is wrong with the sound?
It's horrible...The whole game sounds like it's on a CB..

 

[Wile E]

I hate the way FEAR sounds...Yes Ive even tried a sound card...
I first got it on Xbox 360 and was like WTF is wrong with this GAME!!?
So recently I purchased the FEAR Collection for PC and I"m still like WTF is wrong with the sound?
It's horrible...The whole game sounds like it's on a CB..

No it doesn't. Either your ears are broken, or your setup sucks. Fear has some of the best game audio out there.

 

[Deleted member 67555]

The effects are good yes....The actual voices and whatnot are horribly bad

 

[Mussels]

I LOLed!!!

i'm only seeing two possibilities here.


1. You have some kind of mental block, disability (language barrier?) or other problem that makes you seriously believe you're making a clear cut case.

2. You're just trolling. you've made no sense and no arguments/points/cases for pages now - in fact, all you've done is state that you can use EAX and dolby at the same time. we all knew that already. theres no point to it.




personally i'm leaning towards you actually not knowing a single thing about any of this sound related technology - you dont know what dolby digital, pro logic, THX, EAX, positional audio or virtual surround technology actually do. You've made guesses and assumptions, and they're almost all wrong and you're too stubborn or proud to admit it.

without knowing what this technology is and does, its pretty much impossible for you to make a case about positional audio or sound quality in games.. your test setup would be utterly random, and no one can trust your advice since even you dont know what you've actually got or how its set up.

 

[TheMailMan78]

I recently went from an on-board to a dedicated sound card (Creative Ti) and it was day and night in all my games. Things that were not positional before now are. I know jack shit about sound setups but I do know what I hear. Dedicated sound card is needed for the hardcore gamer.

 

[Mussels]

I recently went from an on-board to a dedicated sound card (Creative Ti) and it was day and night in all my games. Things that were not positional before now are. I know jack shit about sound setups but I do know what I hear. Dedicated sound card is needed for the hardcore gamer.

what were your setups on both 'systems' beforehand? software and hardware.

 

[m4gicfour]

I'm guessing the difference in MM's case is mainly things like EAX 5.0 games (crippled without a EAX 5.0 capable creative soundcard) and creative's other proprietary FX (crystalizer, CMSS, etc etc ad infinitum).

I own an original PCI XFi Fatality champion (or whatever the heck that POS was called - PCI bus issues and driver hell out the wazoo. Good riddance). The hardware acceleration was awesome. Games like BF2 sounded great, with the EAX effects overlaid on top of the positional audio, and coming at a low performance hit due to the sound card offloading the effects processing from the cpu.

Now I've gone digital (Radeon, therefore Realtek 7.1 -> Onkyo TX-SR876 -> Polk Audio speakers in 7.1) I've noticed just how "plain" things sound. Once you get used to it, you realise the difference is the same as turning the "Rock EQ" or "Enhanced Bass" off on your mini-stereo. All the XFi was doing was overlaying some (very nice, I might add) environmental modeling to the sound in games. Gunfire sounded truer because it sounded like it was happening in a desert, or a brick house, or a cement building, rather than just "gunfire sample 6a". And in games that required EAX, it was allowing positional audio (not because EAX has anything to do with it, but creative intentionally nerfed EAX without creative hardware. So if you no havey Creative soundcard, but game developer still wanty to use EAX, BAM! 2.0 audio, regardless of what hardware you have) The other thing would be, for analog use, the Xfi would have better DACs than integrated, and Auzen Xfi is better yet.

With the digital, sound QUALITY is about equal or a little better than when I was using Xfi into the Onkyo's analog Multichannel inputs, with the features turned off. (depending on source quality). The Onkyo essentially nerfs the DAC advantage the Xfi had, since with digital, it's the Onkyo converting to analog to drive the speakers, not the sound card. Turn Xfi crystalliser on, everything sounds "better". Perhaps a more accurate word is "richer". It's just an EQ, and some effects. It sounds great, but it's not magic.

Now if only I could trick BF2 into thinking my Radeon was an XFI, and some creative MB software (IE, XFI effects run on the CPU), so it would ALLOW me to select hardware Xfi quality audio, I'm convinced that the digital HDMI from the radeon would sound just as good.

 

[Mussels]

I'm guessing the difference in MM's case is mainly things like EAX 5.0 games (crippled without a soundcard) and creative's other proprietary FX (crystalizer, CMSS, etc etc ad infinitum).

i only wanted to correct you on this one point - you should have said crippled without a latest gen creative soundcard. the best high end soundcards on the market today, are not creative. Its strange to assume that creative and soundcard are synonymous.

i have many soundcards here, some creative, and because they dont support EAX 5.0 i suffer that crippling you mentioned.


the rest of your post i completely agree with. just because people are used to the EQ'd EAX sounds, doesnt mean they're what its meant to sound like.

 

[m4gicfour]

DAMNIT! I thought I changed that when I added the last bit in the edit. Must have missed it. That was my intent, but I missed writing CREATIVE in there. I didn't actually mean creative = soundcard or anything silly like that. I just forgot the word lol

EDIT

Side note - BFBC2's War tapes setting sounds terrible on my system unless I have the receiver set at "Direct" or "Pure Audio" settings (no effects from the Onkyo are applied). This is quality audio done in software, and there's a big performance hit. If I set the receiver to not apply any EQ whatsoever, War tapes sounds great. Makes sense, doesn't it? Two sets of effects on top of one another sounds terrible. Wonder what Creative's effects would sound like with war tapes. I hate to admit it, but they were definitely good at what they did (produce quality audio DSPs and audio processing algorithms), even if they did write horrible drivers and near singlehandedly drive the audio market into the ground.

 

[Mussels]

@Mussels

Listen budy,

You think being a "moderator" gives you the right to insult and offend people, hmm?? Think again...
Or are you that uneducated?



And please, stop putting words in my mouth. You understood nothing from what I was trying to say...






p.s.

this message will self destruct in a a couple of hours

being a moderator has nothing to do with what i'm saying. others have agreed with me - you're not making any sense. every time you're asked to clarify, you refuse.

as for calling you names, i assume you're referring to me calling you a troll. please see hte post i quoted and am replying to - first you insult my position as a moderator, then you say i'm abusing that power, and then the smart ass comment about this post self destructing.

Why not report the posts if you think i've insulted you? why single me out, of the others who have been ignored by you just as much?

on that note, why are you still refusing to answer the many questions asked of you? you have a set pattern:

*State something as fact, when it is not
*refuse to reply to people who correct you or ask for clarification, except for odd smart ass comments (usually thinly veiled insults, such as replies consisting of ""
*go back to step 1

 

[TAViX]

+1

The funny thing is TAViX keeps harping on about EAX's 3D positioning but according to that Wiki it actually says that EAX has nothing to do with "3D positioning".

Yeah, EAX has nothing to do with 3D sound..... :shadedshu

Btw, taking serious some of the "wiki" articles, it's just like trusting my 86 years old grandma...They are only half right and also full of ambiguity.

Here is a better description from Creative themselves:

http://www.creative.com/soundblaster/technology/welcome_flash.asp?j1=eax

...interactive 3D audio to PC gaming.

Another article from respectful TechReport:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/11171

EAX, otherwise known as Environmental Audio eXtensions, is a positional 3D audio standard with roots in Creative's SoundBlaster Live. The standard tags in-game sounds with information about their position in the world, allowing for more realistic interactions with the player. Through EAX, positional audio is mapped to the appropriate speakers in a multi-channel setup, giving the player a sense of direction associated with each sound. EAX can also modify in-game sounds to take into account obstructions like walls and pillars, and the occlusion effect of different materials, such as wood and glass, between the player and a given sound.

The tests they made are also interesting.

 

[Maelstrom]

Yeah, EAX has nothing to do with 3D sound..... :shadedshu

Btw, taking serious some of the "wiki" articles, it's just like trusting my 86 years old grandma...They are only half right and also full of ambiguity.

Here is a better description from Creative themselves:

http://www.creative.com/soundblaster/technology/welcome_flash.asp?j1=eax



Another article from respectful TechReport:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/11171


The tests they made are also interesting.

Interesting. I'm a bit confused though. If EAX is truly about 3d audio, why is openal needed, which, according to creative's website, says that it is a 3d audio application.
Look. Description of EAX

EAX® is a collection of powerful, innovative audio technologies designed by Creative's world-class audio scientists to bring true interactive 3D audio to PC gaming. The sophisticated environment effects of EAX provide a greater sense of realism to the gaming experience, and enhance the overall enjoyment of the player

OpenAL:

OpenAL is a cross-platform, open standard 3D Audio Application Programming Interface (API) that is supported on PC, Mac, Linux and game consoles. EAX effects are fully supported in OpenAL and hardware accelerated on Sound Blaster Audigy and X-Fi sound cards, so you can enjoy amazing sound and even better performance

.
If I'm understanding the descriptions creative supplied, EAX uses OpenAL to create 3d audio. If that is true, then EAX is about the sound effects, while OpenAL makes them 3d. I could be wrong though, I just wish creative went into more detail on how it actually works.