[Byrnie]

Something about it does make things sound a bit...off...but the sheer positional advantage is why I use it anyway.

It's like having an aural wallhack, as I always say, and the sound samples in most games aren't the best to begin with. Thus far, the only things I've found to even compete with CMSS-3D Headphone's positioning are Rapture3D's headphone mixing modes and Aureal A3D on a Vortex-chipset card set to headphone mode. (Remember when all those competitive Counter-Strike players insisted on AU8830 Vortex2-based cards for A3D support back in the WON days?)

But I'll be the first to admit, even with all my outspokenness on the subject, that it may not work as well for everyone. That applies to every headphone surround tech that uses a generic HRTF based on the human average, when every listener has a unique HRTF.

I never had a problem figuring out where someone was, by sound alone, with CMSS disabled. CMSS didn't have great effects on it and no professional CS players that I knew (including myself) used it but of course it's possible that some did.

 

[NamelessPFG]

I never had a problem figuring out where someone was, by sound alone, with CMSS disabled. CMSS didn't have great effects on it and no professional CS players that I knew (including myself) used it but of course it's possible that some did.

 
That was quite a delayed response given the age of this thread...and while they may not have used CMSS-3D, did they use A3D? That was the context of the CS comparison.
 
Of course, if you're still talking CS 1.6, it's a moot point now that Valve utterly emasculated 3D sound support from all GoldSRC-based games in the name of Linux support, without bothering to replace it with OpenAL.
 
Maybe some people can discern positional sounds in competitive FPSs without the use of headphone virtual surround, but for people like myself and Mad Lust Envy, among many others, there's just no comparison. Headphone stereo's always treated as this one-dimensional left/right hard panning thing with no depth to it, and I recall reading one person's CS story of discerning someone's position over headphones by having to rotate in place and analyzing the sound's volume between the two instead of just immediately hearing what direction it came from.

 

[Byrnie]

   
That was quite a delayed response given the age of this thread...and while they may not have used CMSS-3D, did they use A3D? That was the context of the CS comparison.
 
Of course, if you're still talking CS 1.6, it's a moot point now that Valve utterly emasculated 3D sound support from all GoldSRC-based games in the name of Linux support, without bothering to replace it with OpenAL.
 
Maybe some people can discern positional sounds in competitive FPSs without the use of headphone virtual surround, but for people like myself and Mad Lust Envy, among many others, there's just no comparison. Headphone stereo's always treated as this one-dimensional left/right hard panning thing with no depth to it, and I recall reading one person's CS story of discerning someone's position over headphones by having to rotate in place and analyzing the sound's volume between the two instead of just immediately hearing what direction it came from.

Yea sure was a long time lol!  I had a kid so that took me away.  I have no idea about A3D, I didn't start CS 1.6 seriously until 2000 but the technology was later acquired by Creative somewhere around that time.  To be clear though I've only been able to tell where people are by sound with CS 1.6.  Now that might be due to how much I played the game or maybe A3D was implementing around that time into the Creative card I used, I don't know either way .  Btw I really enjoyed your PC gaming Audio guide and I hope all is well.

 

[NamelessPFG]

Yea sure was a long time lol!  I had a kid so that took me away.  I have no idea about A3D, I didn't start CS 1.6 seriously until 2000 but the technology was later acquired by Creative somewhere around that time.  To be clear though I've only been able to tell where people are by sound with CS 1.6.  Now that might be due to how much I played the game or maybe A3D was implementing around that time into the Creative card I used, I don't know either way .  Btw I really enjoyed your PC gaming Audio guide and I hope all is well.

 
Ah, you're a parent now? Congrats!
 
By the time CS 1.6 rolled around, which was probably around 2003 or so when Valve first brought out Steam (and we all hated it, not expecting it to become the face of PC gaming years later), Aureal was already dead for a few years, bought up by Creative.
 
Creative never really adopted A3D directly, instead just burying it in favor of their own EAX (jerks), but it would not surprise me if they borrowed some Aureal tech along with Sensaura tech in the development of CMSS-3D Headphone and possibly EAX 4/5.

 

[Byrnie]

Ah, you're a parent now? Congrats!

By the time CS 1.6 rolled around, which was probably around 2003 or so when Valve first brought out Steam (and we all hated it, not expecting it to become the face of PC gaming years later), Aureal was already dead for a few years, bought up by Creative.

Creative never really adopted A3D directly, instead just burying it in favor of their own EAX (jerks), but it would not surprise me if they borrowed some Aureal tech along with Sensaura tech in the development of CMSS-3D Headphone and possibly EAX 4/5.

I remember they took down the friends list for at least a whole year lol.

**Forgot a word**