The Nameless Guide To PC Gaming Audio (with binaural headphone surround sound) - Page 10

I connected my DAC to my motherboard's coax port and to my soundcard's toslink port, I made the soundcard the default device and set foobar to output to hd audio device coax. Then I just switch inputs for music listening with a push of a button on my DAC. 

That's the easy part. Theannoying part is having to lie to games about my speaker set up because of how all over the place PC game audio has become. On some games the best I can do is have them output 7.1 and then have my card virtualize that, most OpenAL games just look at my sound card configuration (this is hardware acceleration, so the card is making the audio here), BUT a lot of games look at my windows sound configuration, and some games include Rapture 3D which is a software solution but works really good. 

Just thought ide tell ya, there is no degradation in the audio chain. WASAPI/ASIO mutes all other sources from effecting the output.

In short when using the audigy speaker output I hear the audible different that game mode is on(foobar testing) while outputting wasapi through my juli@ everything is still clean.

In short the net change between the before and after is quite simple really.  Same as watching a youtube video while listening to music through WASAPI.

asio is more glitchy than WASAPI in most drivers which is why I prefer WASAPI.  On the xfi I never had issues with asio and other streams but I do on the Juli@ which is awkward but true.

In that picture I have a youtube video running, and using my Julias spdif output on foobar.

Quote:

Originally Posted by atmospheric 

but is it really worth the effect? and do you think it would make any noticeable degradation in the signal chain? ... actually I might be able to use the soundcard for gaming, and switch inputs to USB on my DAC for music if windows 7 supports multiple digital sound outputs at a single time.  I imagine it does.  which card do you recommend for relatively cheap?

My vote would be spend $25-30 on the Audigy SE which is a plain old PCI card and see for yourself if the DSP is worth it. I'd start by disabling all effects on the Creative card except for CMSS in all three audio modes. Use the Creative mode switching software that comes with the card to only flip on game mode when you actually play a game/watch a Blu-Ray. CMSS-3D is impossible to enable when you're not in game mode, so that will ensure it doesn't switch on accidentally and butcher your music. The quality loss in BF3 (which I've done the most testing with) is noticeable but completely worth it for the vastly improved positioning IMO, at least enough to recommend a $30 investment and trying it out for a week or two. In the end most of the setting changes would be one-time (my earlier guide) or automatic (the audio mode switcher), the only thing you'd have to change often would be primary audio device from the DSP card ported to the DAC to just the DAC which is only a 5 second job. Essentially it creates a completely separate virtual leg that's added on as a whole before the normal audio chain, so after the preprocessing and DSP goes on to use the second set of Windows output settings on the DAC and doesn't alter them at all. You don't even need to uncheck listening for the audio capture, once you change back to the DAC you won't have anything to listen in on anymore. Bonus points to anyone who can figure out how to make launching certain applications switch the default audio playback device, then it'd be completely automatic.

As to audio creation mode and ASIO, I don't think it's going to do a thing if you port that via the listening mode as it's not altering the sound at all without other "features" like the Crystalizer which I already recommended you disable earlier if you want it to do only DSP and not alter your audio chain outside of games. The key features of "creation mode" are output sample rate adjustment which the "What U Hear" and DAC will ignore and keep capturing and replaying the ported audio at 96khz regardless of whether the Creative is sampling at 44.1khz or 192khz, and latency reduction which is made moot when you're just porting to a USB DAC anyway. If anything you'd be slightly increasing lag over just running straight to the DAC itself. So unless you're using the usually crappy plugins like Crystalizer/Bass Boost/EQ with porting there's really no point in adding the Creative card in before your usual audio chain for anything but gaming if you already have a better DAC you're using for music. The whole point of this hack is really using the best of both worlds - the best music DAC quality with the best of gaming soundcard DSP effects. The real benefit of a cheap card is solely distilling out the DSP and porting to a better DAC, for 90% of the people on Head-Fi a $30 card would be a step back but they still might want the DSP. If it really is an upgrade because you were using onboard sound before you got a Creative card, you should get your head checked as to why you'd want to port DSP to a crappy onboard soundcard :P

EDIT: On second look it sounds like you're using optical in on your DAC for music. In that case, sorry for my misunderstanding. Audio creation mode should actually help, but I'll leave my explanation up for those of us using USB DACs with the DSP porting.

The Audigy SE is a very old card and it does NOT have a DSP.

If budget is a concern you can go with an entry level Xonar DG.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ROBSCIX 

The Audigy SE is a very old card and it does NOT have a DSP.

 

If budget is a concern you can go with an entry level Xonar DG.

According to the details page I saw for the card it does both CMSS-3D and "What U Hear" capture, the two features that are required for my virtual 3D surround port-to-DAC hack. As far as I could tell it has no optical out and doesn't do DD, but would work just fine for getting CMSS ported to any USB DAC under the rainbow. I'm not advising anyone to get it for the craptastic soundcard, just the great virtual surround software.

Yeah... on second thought... probably a better idea to go with the PCI-E X-Fi Xtreme Audio for $45 which is actually fully supported in Win7 and has an actual DSP on it. It also has optical ports and DD support which is probably worth the extra $15 even for the most frugal among us. This setup is convoluted enough without a second software hack on the front end of the audio chain, especially since it'd be Creative's kind of software hack and not mine :P

Edit - Turns out the Xtreme Audio isn't supported for "What U Hear" either. The budget side of this hack is getting worse and worse. Screw you Creative for your horrible driver support/concessions to the RIAA/forcing your customers to buy more expensive models. Here's the well hidden list of cards that officially support "What U Hear" in Windows 7: http://support.creative.com/kb/showarticle.aspx?sid=87127

You can use many cards to pass headphone surround imaging to an external DAC/head amp, it is not a hack or new idea.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SniperCzar 

 

According to the details page I saw for the card it does both CMSS-3D and "What U Hear" capture, the two features that are required for my virtual 3D surround port-to-DAC hack. As far as I could tell it has no optical out and doesn't do DD, but would work just fine for getting CMSS ported to any USB DAC under the rainbow. I'm not advising anyone to get it for the craptastic soundcard, just the great virtual surround software.

The idea behind this set up amuses me, you're basically buying a software application with a hardware key that also has some extraneous functions.  

Also if Creative is to be believed they improved CMSS-3D with the X-fi line so I'd think the Audigy SE has an older version, and I can't help but wonder how long Creative is going to keep supporting a card that old, unless it uses the same drivers as the X-fi Xtreme audio, which is the same card with a new name and maybe different drivers.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by ROBSCIX 

You can use many cards to pass headphone surround imaging to an external DAC/head amp, it is not a hack or new idea.

Bear in mind I'm a complete noob here. Though I did look for a few hours to see if I was passing along ancient knowledge before writing up a guide, and found nothing in this thread, the MLE thread, and a few others. If it's an old idea, it's at least not a very well known or discussed one. At some point I actually want to make a flowchart of how it works and take a few samples of what different options do to the SQ.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phos 

The idea behind this set up amuses me, you're basically buying a software application with a hardware key that also has some extraneous functions.  

 

Also if Creative is to be believed they improved CMSS-3D with the X-fi line so I'd think the Audigy SE has an older version, and I can't help but wonder how long Creative is going to keep supporting a card that old, unless it uses the same drivers as the X-fi Xtreme audio, which is the same card with a new name and maybe different drivers.

Never said it was anything but exactly that. For those of us with Creative cards that have since been stuffed in closets, it's a pretty neat feature. As for buying a card just to get CMSS, the more I research the more I realize just how much rebranding, crippling, and upgrade incentive Creative has inflicted on their low end cards. The pricetag for a minimal-hacking setup just keeps getting higher and higher. The basic premise of combining superior directionality with superior sound hardware still really appeals to me though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SniperCzar 

 

Bear in mind I'm a complete noob here. Though I did look for a few hours to see if I was passing along ancient knowledge before writing up a guide, and found nothing in this thread, the MLE thread, and a few others. If it's an old idea, it's at least not a very well known or discussed one. At some point I actually want to make a flowchart of how it works and take a few samples of what different options do to the SQ.

 

That's fine if you are new, just relaying the info to you that using a card as a processor for S/Pdif prior to a DAC is not a new idea and if you look many people use such systems for gaming or to allow other processing for music..movies..etc

Almost any card from CL, ASUS or Auzen will allow any effect processing done on the card to be sent out over the S/Pdif to an external DAC.  It is a feature that is there to be used in this manner and the idea has been mentioned countless times in this forum and others.

It is a simple idea as a simple DAC will give you high grade stereo sound but not much else, so using a card for DSP prior to the DAC is logical if you want those features.

Sticking with the idea behind the info though, awhile back I helped develop some software that would link two cards internally.

This was prior to the Prelude and other higher end gaming cards.  We used the software with cards such as the Audigy2/original X-Fi and higher end output cards like the original X-Meridian 7.1. to get all the features of the gaming cards but the higher output of the secondary card.

Prior tp this you could link cards using S/Pdif but this lnk up was full surround sound.

If you follow what I mean, we had one card for DSP game processing and one card for high end output connected internally through low latency routings.

It was fast enough to play games..etc 

You can get some pretty cool system if you think about routing and combining multiple devices.  The software is called VelBac and is still out there if you want to mess around with it.

Have fun :)

Unlikely - X-RAM never provided a performance "gain" - it merely reduced the "hit" from enabling very complex EAX settings (EAX 5 benefited most). As far as PCIe somehow being the savior - also unlikely; the original PCIe era of soundcards simply use a translation chip and sit on their own PCI island, and I'm skeptical that new cards are somehow "fully native" - they're very likely just creating their own PCI island on-chip (it's cheaper than re-designing the entire ASIC) - I may be mistaken here. Regardless, 133MB/s is more than enough for any consumer audio application. There is no "bottleneck" here. 

And (and yes Phos, I know this isn't you): can we please stop suggesting the Audigy SE? I think I hit that a few pages back, as to why it's a waste - I'd have to agree with ROB's points as well. Seriously, if you want a h/w accelerated board, you have to pay to play. 
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phos 

 

It'd be kinda tricky to actually benchmark the difference, though, considering that every PCIe X-fi has at least 16 MB so it'd be tough to isolate.  The benefit to frame rate is likely thanks to the system not having to wait for audio data to be transferred to the card for processing, so having more bandwidth should eliminate the bottleneck.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by ROBSCIX 

That's fine if you are new, just relaying the info to you that using a card as a processor for S/Pdif prior to a DAC is not a new idea and if you look many people use such systems for gaming or to allow other processing for music..movies..etc

 

Almost any card from CL, ASUS or Auzen will allow any effect processing done on the card to be sent out over the S/Pdif to an external DAC.  It is a feature that is there to be used in this manner and the idea has been mentioned countless times in this forum and others.

Another noob question, had anyone done it in Windows 7 with a USB output eg. FiiO devices before? The DSP over S/PDIF I'd seen mentioned as that's just a single checkbox setting change, but as far as I could tell I hadn't seen anyone rerouting over USB. Anyways, I'm just glad I wasn't the first one to see the benefits of separating DSP from DAC :)

USB is not the same as S/PDIF - they're unrelated. You can't "output" from a soundcard into a USB device - that USB device is itself a soundcard. Now, using something like Virtual PatchBay may allow this to take place, but it seems a bit silly. There's not really that many tangible (read: measurable) "benefits" to "separating" things. 
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by SniperCzar 

 

 

Another noob question, had anyone done it in Windows 7 with a USB output eg. FiiO devices before? The DSP over S/PDIF I'd seen mentioned as that's just a single checkbox setting change, but as far as I could tell I hadn't seen anyone rerouting over USB. Anyways, I'm just glad I wasn't the first one to see the benefits of separating DSP from DAC :)

@sniperczar, I'm using USB for my DAC as of right now.  No TosLink on my motherboard.  From what I understand, if I'm simply using the sound-card for DSP effects and then using optical out to feed digital music filter to my DacMagic I should take no performance hit. And even if I do notice some performance hit, I can simply counteract that by switching between USB out and Optical out.  This might even be a more efficient way of switching settings because of the ergonomics of hitting a single button on the DacMagic to switch... which leads me to my question:  what card would you recommend for a DSP under $100?

This is also makes me wonder if in the future it would be possible to skip buying something like the Smith Audio realizer and get a PC card which just applies a stock speaker like processing, similar to the SVS.  It wouldn't be as customized as the SVS, but it would be a very interesting product and could possibly be relatively inexpensive I think.