[Diji1]

uh I think you have them confused. Creative Labs sound cards use SBX, not Dolby Headphone. Overwatch also has it's own Dolby Atmos for headphones though in which you can enable with or without a sound card. I wonder if you have it set up correctly?

 


My mistake, i meant Atmos rather than headphone.

 

[Fegefeuer]

latest Windows 10 Preview builds offer Atmos support for headphones which you can apply to the sound card or output of your choice. Many games with VR in mind (in addition) will offer binaural renderers/support (see Overwatch, RE7 etc.). 
 
Sooner or later all these fancy cards will disappear unless they get creative. 

 

[rudyae86]

  latest Windows 10 Preview builds offer Atmos support for headphones which you can apply to the sound card or output of your choice. Many games with VR in mind (in addition) will offer binaural renderers/support (see Overwatch, RE7 etc.). 
 
Sooner or later all these fancy cards will disappear unless they get creative. 

Wow didn't know that. I know they are working on briging some other stuff in (Game mode, which I am still a bit eh about it). But yes, if this becomes the norm with Atmos and Binaural audio in games, sound cards will become a bit of niche market, mainly for the ones that don't know much about audio or maybe to make volume control easier? (like control chat and stuff, which many already do anyways).
 
I look forward to these technologies in the coming months

 

[BlueNinja0]

  latest Windows 10 Preview builds offer Atmos support for headphones which you can apply to the sound card or output of your choice. Many games with VR in mind (in addition) will offer binaural renderers/support (see Overwatch, RE7 etc.). 
 
Sooner or later all these fancy cards will disappear unless they get creative. 

Oh my god... Do you have a source? That is the best news for virtual surround in years! You mean we will be able to apply the Dolby Atmos for headphones effect on the OS level and all games that output surround sound will support it in principle? That is amazing. Also, Dolby Atmos is one of the best HRTF I've heard.

 

[Diji1]

Oh my god... Do you have a source? That is the best news for virtual surround in years! You mean we will be able to apply the Dolby Atmos for headphones effect on the OS level and all games that output surround sound will support it in principle? That is amazing. Also, Dolby Atmos is one of the best HRTF I've heard.

 


It really is mindblowingly good in overwatch.

 

[Fegefeuer]

 
Oh my god... Do you have a source? That is the best news for virtual surround in years! You mean we will be able to apply the Dolby Atmos for headphones effect on the OS level and all games that output surround sound will support it in principle? That is amazing. Also, Dolby Atmos is one of the best HRTF I've heard.

 
it's basically everywhere since December.
 
an official quote for instance
 
"Mike Ybarra, Xbox’s Head of Platform Engineering, had this to say on our exciting partnership: “At Team Xbox, we are all gamers first, and bringing Dolby Atmos support to Xbox One and Windows 10 gaming next year will bring you even further inside the action and sound of your favorite titles. A big thank you to the team at Dolby for their partnership; we’re excited to share more with the Xbox community next year.”
Read more at http://news.xbox.com/2016/12/14/dolby-atmos-xbox-one-windows-10/#QtmzVlQJI9QpxSyc.99"

 

You’ll be able to experience Dolby Atmos in your home theater, assuming you have a Dolby Atmos enabled speaker system or soundbar. But you don’t need to have that kind of equipment – it will be possible to enable virtually any pair of headphones with the Dolby Atmos experience.

 

 

[BlueNinja0]

Originally Posted by Fegefeuer /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
You’ll be able to experience Dolby Atmos in your home theater, assuming you have a Dolby Atmos enabled speaker system or soundbar. But you don’t need to have that kind of equipment – it will be possible to enable virtually any pair of headphones with the Dolby Atmos experience.

 
Why would I need Dolby Atmos support on my A/V receiver if Windows supports it natively? Can't Windows just use Dolby Atmos to produce a 7.1 or 5.1 LPCM signal through HDMI to my receiver? The same way we decode, for example, Dolby Digital in the media player and send the 7.1 channels through LPCM to the receiver?

 

[Yethal]

   
Why would I need Dolby Atmos support on my A/V receiver if Windows supports it natively? Can't Windows just use Dolby Atmos to produce a 7.1 or 5.1 LPCM signal through HDMI to my receiver? The same way we decode, for example, Dolby Digital in the media player and send the 7.1 channels through LPCM to the receiver?

Dolby Atmos adds additional four "height channels" - speakers designed to produce sound upwards. Your A/V receiver would need to physically be able to output sound to those four additional speakers.

 

[BlueNinja0]

 
Dolby Atmos adds additional four "height channels" - speakers designed to produce sound upwards. Your A/V receiver would need to physically be able to output sound to those four additional speakers.

Yes, I'm aware it has additional channels to the standard 7.1, but what I mean is, when using Windows, I won't necessarily need my A/V receiver to support Atmos decoding since Windows will be able to decode it itself and spit it out in LPCM through HDMI. HDMI 2.0 supports 32 channels of audio, which is plenty for Atmos I guess.

 

[Yethal]

 
Yes, I'm aware it has additional channels to the standard 7.1, but what I mean is, when using Windows, I won't necessarily need my A/V receiver to support Atmos decoding since Windows will be able to decode it itself and spit it out in LPCM through HDMI. HDMI 2.0 supports 32 channels of audio, which is plenty for Atmos I guess.

Yes but if the AV receiver doesn't support th height channels all You're left with is a standard Dolby TrueHD track with a spatial substream added to it (home theater implementation of Atmos differs greatly from the commercial implementation).

 

[BlueNinja0]

 
Yes but if the AV receiver doesn't support th height channels all You're left with is a standard Dolby TrueHD track with a spatial substream added to it (home theater implementation of Atmos differs greatly from the commercial implementation).

Yes ofc, I understand I would need the height physical channels to take benefit of it. I was just trying to understand if the Atmos encoding will still work more or less like the previous encoding schemes.

 

[NIoSaT]

Hello,
I am quite new to High end PC audio.
So I read that guide looking for something amazing to replace my trusty Logitech G35.
 
Since there are 251 pages full of answers I did not manage to read them all so therefore my question.
 
As good as the initial post is... is seems utterly out of date to me (ok it was last modified 2013 so I guess that's only fair).
So all these "amazing" APIs like DirectSound 3D, Aureal and all the other names I never heard before, that give "perfect" positional audio seem to be non existent in modern games. He talks about still using them after vista ... but vista itself is now over 10 years old... 
 
So my question(s) is:
Is there still a way to use these old awesome APIs in modern games without to much fiddling, because I think to much fiddling in modern games will get you banned kinda fast.
 
Or is there a new thing that has replaced all of this and works super good with all the new games and all I need is a pair of good Headphones with a nice big sound-stage?
 
Or in other words I am a bit lost in all this (outdated?) information and could somebody give me some directions on what to look for?

 

[Yethal]

  Hello,
I am quite new to High end PC audio.
So I read that guide looking for something amazing to replace my trusty Logitech G35.
 
Since there are 251 pages full of answers I did not manage to read them all so therefore my question.
 
As good as the initial post is... is seems utterly out of date to me (ok it was last modified 2013 so I guess that's only fair).
So all these "amazing" APIs like DirectSound 3D, Aureal and all the other names I never heard before, that give "perfect" positional audio seem to be non existent in modern games. He talks about still using them after vista ... but vista itself is now over 10 years old... 
 
So my question(s) is:
Is there still a way to use these old awesome APIs in modern games without to much fiddling, because I think to much fiddling in modern games will get you banned kinda fast.
 
Or is there a new thing that has replaced all of this and works super good with all the new games and all I need is a pair of good Headphones with a nice big sound-stage?
 
Or in other words I am a bit lost in all this (outdated?) information and could somebody give me some directions on what to look for?

Either buy a soundcard that supports ALchemy or download an Insider Preview version of Windows 10 that has built-in support for Dolby Atmos.

 

[BlueNinja0]

Originally Posted by NIoSaT /img/forum/go_quote.gif
So all these "amazing" APIs like DirectSound 3D, Aureal and all the other names I never heard before, that give "perfect" positional audio seem to be non existent in modern games. He talks about still using them after vista ... but vista itself is now over 10 years old... 
 
So my question(s) is:
Is there still a way to use these old awesome APIs in modern games without to much fiddling, because I think to much fiddling in modern games will get you banned kinda fast.

 
Those APIs were used in the game engines. You can't get, say Battlefield 4 and use DirectSound3D on it. You can however, take advantage of DirectSound3D and EAX if you're playing older games that supported it, such as Source Engine games. He talks about Vista, but Windows 10 still uses the same audio subsystem as Vista, so you can use Creative Alchemy to emulate those effects in software.
 
If you're just talking about using virtual surround in whatever games, just wait for Windows to get the native Dolby Atmos support or download an Insider Preview as Yethal said.

 

[NIoSaT]

Wow that was fast!
 
So if understand this right ALchemy with a fitting sound card will "transform" all my games so they have "amazing" positional audio, so even the newest ones like Overwatch, For Honor, BF1 etc. ?
 
And Dolby Atmos will do the same without need for a certain sound-card?
 
---EDIT---
I must have missed BlueNinja0s post while posting.
 
OK so ALchemy only gives benefits to older games and Dolby Atmos will give me benefits to all games, Overwatch seems to specially support it but other games that don't specially support Atmos will still get decent 7.1 Surround out of it.
 
 
Well Thanks for the answers !
 
Since I am already in the Insider Programm I will have to find the option to turn Atmos on and buy a pair of decent headphones