The Nameless Guide To PC Gaming Audio (with binaural headphone surround sound) - Page 16

i think someone else said this earlier, but if you just don't think about the lag you'll never notice - it's only if you're looking for it that you'll notice, since it's most likely a very minute amount.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by SniperCzar 

That makes a much more compelling argument. You're preaching to the choir a bit here, I agree wholeheartedly that just because something is USB or more expensive doesn't mean it's automatically better. As a fairly poor college student I spend many hours researching and considering value of the computer and audio components I buy before spending any money. However, I personally appreciate the flexibility that freeing the DSP from the internal card gives me. That alone is half the value in something like the realizer, which costs 10x more than a nice X-Fi. In my case, I have the choice of an E17 or an amp + E11. Since I already have a nice desktop card that I know I can use in combination with a USB device, I'm purchasing the nicer of the two FiiOs as I will be using it more with my laptop and iPod then my gaming desktop. I get the benefit of a headphone amp and the lower output impedance of the FiiO without having to pay extra for a desktop amp or lose the CMSS effects from the X-Fi. Maybe not the simplest approach and it does introduce some lag, but it's worth it to hold me over until I can buy a desktop amp and I don't need to pay $50 for a nice stopgap amp in the interim.

some of the senns head sets are not surround so if you want them to have surround sound you will need the dss2 which will give any headphones 7.1 surround sound or you could just get the logitech ones which are 7.1 anyway if your a student and want to save yourself a few quid(this is to your question a few pages back)..i am doing a corsair build and waiting for the ivy bridge and amd 7990 graphics card to come out and now the phoebus has been announced so i will be getting one of them aswell and i will be getting the beyerdynamic headzone game which will make the battlefield sound out of this world but i am still getting the phoebus 24bit soundcard to make sure!

Quote:

Originally Posted by NamelessPFG 

 

Thank you. I realized I needed to make a guide thread like this after quite a while. The more people informed about the quirks and intricacies of PC gaming audio so that they know exactly why things do or don't work, the better. As it stands, I see enough comments floating around on the Internet to the tune of "hardware audio is dead after Vista" or "money better spent on a graphics card" like they frankly don't care, or just don't know any better. (Not that Creative or anyone else cares to make it all any less confusing...)

 

While I wish I could help with the software EAX modification, I have no programming skills. The most I could do is test it on a few devices, like a few Realtek and IDT codecs, the Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit External SB0490, and any other PC audio devices I can get my hands on. However, I do know that it's very much possible to run game EAX effects in software; the X-Fi MB software package bundled with some computers is proof enough. Just check the OpenAL flags. (The problem is getting X-Fi MB to run on everything and not specific Realtek or IDT codecs...)

About the whole "hardware audio is dead after Vista", that's ridiculous, but it sure requires unnecessary workarounds, workarounds those that wouldn't exist in the first place if Creative played along nicely with Microsoft. Yet it's the Creative hardware that does fully support every single hardware feature related to gaming audio, that's emulated in software by all other vendors.

I understand what you're saying about X-Fi MB and the other similar software packages that install on top of previously installed audio drivers, but what I'm talking about is a direct tool to force enable EAX 1-4 on devices such as higher quality DACs and all onboard audio chips (not just the limited OEM versions allowed on X-Fi MB), a tool that doesn't require activations like X-Fi MB does, but I'm currently facing some incompatibilities with some games when running them with EAX enabled on both my onboard audio chip and my external USB DAC.

Programming isn't my area at all, but I'm going to research a bit further, and when I have things on a more stable condition, I'm going to either post here or PM you so you can run a few tests.

I'd be careful on posting up a guide that explains how to crack EAX - given that Creative sabre rattled with Asus, and has sued individual people in the past for far less; you might want to find out if it's really worth putting up (because it does technically violate the EULA for EAX). I think it would be very interesting into see, and I don't get why Creative hasn't moved that direction in some form - modern CPUs are powerful enough to run it, we don't need these expensive co-processors anymore.

Quote:

Originally Posted by NamelessPFG 

 

Agreed on the workarounds-all it does is confuse people. While the pre-Vista sound stack was pretty horrid, I saw absolutely no reason for Microsoft to kill off DirectSound3D (and replace it with something inferior like XAudio2 + X3DAudio on top of that). While OpenAL remains unaffected, the simple fact is that many more games used DirectSound3D, especially back then in the pre-Vista days while it was still implemented, and there may still be isolated incidents of ALchemy not working quite right, just like how a typical 3dfx Glide wrapper might run into a game or two that has some visual artifacts that wouldn't be there on the real hardware.

 

So you're planning on making/tweaking a dedicated utility for EAX support on non-Creative hardware that doesn't require hacking up X-Fi MB? Now I'm intrigued, especially when it comes to gaming laptops (where you naturally can't just cram a desktop X-Fi card into). Is this just going to be for OpenAL titles at first (if for no other reason than to make sure that the software EAX implementation works right without any DirectSound3D wrappers involved)?

I have yet to fully understand why exactly XAudio did come to life, as I don't really believe it was immensely complicated to program and compose game audio for DirectSound3D.

The software works for nearly all DirectSound3D games, including Battlefield series (except the highest EAX 5 settings, only supports up to EAX 4), but won't touch OpenAL unfortunately. The reason why tweaking OpenAL as well would be good is that the features unlocked in DirectSound3D would be available in OpenAL, while OpenAL will read the hardware flags and fail to find any gaming features, therefore limiting both surround features and overall output quality. I know audio renderers can be switched on some games, but I haven't found a hacked OpenAL renderer yet that allows all gaming audio features and at the same time offloads them to the CPU.

But obobskivich makes a good point, I'm going to have to read the EULA indeed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phos 

OpenAL is the limitation there? Try Rapture3D, it's a software OpenAL proccessor that runs in software.

While Rapture3D is a good OpenAL renderer, above average actually, it's still limited to the features available by default in the audio hardware, while I'm talking about telling the audio renderer that the device does have virtually all audio features, despite the hardware not having them, through routing the requests back at a CPU host. But that's way too complicated :/ Although if I could manage to unlock those features through software and send them to Rapture3D to process them with the aid of the CPU, that would be the ideal OpenAL platform.

Guys, those of you in the market for a soundcard might want to check out this sale... Refurb Titanium for $36. http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/69644/newegg-refurbished-creative-7.1-channels-24bit-sound-blaster-xfi-titanium-sound-card-70sb0880000048?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SlickdealsnetFP+%28SlickDeals.net+Frontpage%29

Not a bad deal, would be good for S/Pdif source for those that want to game with a DAC/amp.

No need to invest a large amount of money, to try it out.  Of course you can always just use the card too!

Quote:

Originally Posted by NamelessPFG 

A true X-Fi card that's still in production, for just $36, and with no need for weird Flexijack adapters for connection to S/PDIF DACs? That's an excellent deal!

 

No X-RAM (only 16 MB rather than 64 MB), but I don't think any game really uses it anyway. The important thing is that the EMU20k2's there, along with hardware EAX 5 and CMSS-3D Headphone.

IIRC, OpenAL will use X-RAM by default, it is part of the coding for OpenAL.

It is hard to beat for $36 for the 20K2 and other features.  Even if you don't want to use it as a straight source, it can make a great S/Pdif source

giving you all the gaming features and higher quality of the external DAC/Amp.

OpenAL checks for X-RAM presence but only uses it if the app requires it. What's unfortunate though is that 2-16MB aren't considered enough to be classified as X-RAM, therefore not being used in the conventional X-RAM sense.

The information I read stated that OpenAL uses X-Ram by DEFAULT for buffering, caching samples and other tasks. 

For instance, a game that is coded for the DS API would need specific coding for such tasks where as if the game is using the OpenAL API it does not.

Although not really a point on cards unless they actually have enough X-Ram to use the features.  Not sure where I read that info, I think it was part of the OpenAL coders mailing list.

Here is similar info to the above:

"OpenAL SDK and X-RAM SDK for developers appeared not long ago, for NDA. In case of available X-RAM, drivers always use the on-board memory by default, unless settings force a program to do otherwise. Forcing a program not to use X-RAM may be useful for buffers with rapidly changing data or for very large buffers. Thus, samples are cached in X-RAM by default."

It was mainly implemented for decompressing lossy audio routines prior to their usage.

Hope that helps.