I just meant very retro as in nobody really cares about supporting VSS for old DPLII material these days
Are there NES games with DPL?! I know SNES has a few games that supported it.
Oh, that's interesting about the DSS2, so it would spatialize DPL material correctly/similarly to DSS1? I'll have to break it out to test. Thank you for that information! I'm good for 5.1/7.1 Dolby Digital just looking for the best headphone VSS for DPL and DPLII gaming for things like SNES, N64, Gamecube, etc; Currently, I have the JVC SU-DH1, DSS1, DSS2, and those similar Pioneer units (SE-DIR800C, II, 2000C) but there's some slight noise or other quirks with them. I think I read Mad Lust Envy mention mentioning one of the Mixamp models being less noisy out of the Earforce DSS and JVC so thought I'd pick one up to test just need to know which one as the Astro naming is rather confusing.
I did see some talk of the Schiit Syn, good to know it can spatialize stereo but does it also do DPLII encoded stereo? I'm not too technically inclined so apologies if I sound confused but after reading the DPL wiki I understand that the DPL effect can be applied to regular stereo but there's also decoding of "Dolby Surround encoded" stereo so just wanted to be clear that I'm after latter. It might be the case that it's incorrect to make such a distinction but thought I'd bring it up so I can be corrected. Thanks for your help!
I… honestly don’t know about Dolby pro logic for NES games, I was a baby in the 80’s
Among the Astro Mixamps, the 2011 Mixamp was the one Mad Lust Envy said sounded the least hissy to him… I’m inclined to believe him, though it’s also possible that the design didn’t change and the Mixamp Pro continues the same design, and the level of hiss is down to sample variation. I honestly feel the two DSS sounded cleaner unless you needed Astro’s signal routing for connecting a microphone (I simply connected a mic to my Xbox 360 controller, and a USB mic to my PS4 and 5). I too have a Mixamp 5.8, the one with the wireless receiver and transmitter… it’s both the most hissy Astro but weirdly the most powerful amp too.
Honestly, I think the Creative G6, X3, and X4 blow any of the Astro gear out of the water for lower noise and more powerful amps that work well with less sensitive headphones. Many of them include a line out (for connecting to another amp) and optical output (for connecting to another DAC/amp).
If you read the Schiit Syn product description, it talks about how they developed a proprietary method for splitting 5.1 channels based off the same ancient matrixing techniques that Dolby Pro Logic II uses. This is for speakers though — with headphones, the Syn’s processing is more like a crossfeed with tweakable width. It may seem to push the sound out in front of you a bit, which can be nice, but I don’t think it would have holographic placement of sounds.
So im looking at finally picking up some stuff for some 3d audio gaming goodness. I see the creative labs x7 is discontinued, whats the next best thing? or better around the same price point, could maybe go a bit higher. Also what about headphones? I think the hd800 s is out of my price range, would probably want to spend at max 1k on cans
Well, the HD 8xx is discontinued, so under $1k I’d point you to an AKG or HD 560S for good soundstage and a tuning that works well with spatial processing.
Spatial Audio processors tend to take two steps forward and one step back: they make a little more progress than 3D TVs (I think that was all the rage twice in my lifetime, probably VR will make people largely forget about 3D TV’s and active shutter glasses), but flagship stand-alone products tend to be short lived because companies tend to integrate them into something else (like headphones or a game console). So I don’t really think there is something better than the X7 but costing less than the rather pricey Smyth Realiser A16. I would still look to Creative Labs: either the X3 or X4 are like the X7 without a speaker Power amp (and are equipped with both SBX and Super X-Fi, so that might actually be a step up from the X7, and they have optical and line outputs). Mad tested the GC7, which is more oriented towards streamers who want to have buttons to cue macros (like, start broadcast and post to Twitter, play a sound byte).
Damnit, I missed the Redscape boat?
Yeah, Ryan had Redscape going for a few years, but just February he announced that he got a job working at a game dev company again (that’s what he did before) and he was going to concentrate on that. Another option is Darin Fong’s “Out Of Your Head” software, which is based off his head measurement from a Realiser A8 and then bundled into a software suite (Smyth has somewhat set up an Exchange site where people can sell their head and speaker room measurements).
In general, I like external/PCI hardware to do the DSP. I’m echoing the long-lost
@NamelessPFG when I say this, but offloading the audio DSP task to a discrete processor can do the task more efficiently than borrowing one of your CPU’s threads to do the processing in it’s sequential way. It’s kind of like how discrete GPU’s are better at doing graphics than software rendering on the CPU (this will be familiar to retro/emulation enthusiasts). Did you know, the PlayStation 3’s cell architecture was more capable with audio, and could do more simultaneous “voices” and than the PS4? I believe I learned this while watching a Mark Cerny presentation about the PS5… which also has good dedicated audio hardware (and apparently it’s able to simulate over 100 speaker positions for VR… take that, 16 speaker Atmos theaters
).
I also like solutions that offer some personalization for our different ears. Dolby Headphone offered three levels of reverb (Mixamp and DSS used Dolby Headphone 2 only), creative THX/SBX had a % slider, Sennheiser Binaural Engine also had three levels of reverb and you could switch between front/rear/centered audio focus, Sony’s PS5 has 5 spatial audio presets and you pick the one that doesn’t seem to sound like it’s coming from above or below you(but it can do height in-game), NX Waves and Redscape allowed you to enter the distance between your ears, creative’s Super X-Fi uses a phone app, your camera, and machine learning to try tailoring the sound, Apple also uses your smartphone to calibrate AirPods Pro for Spatial Audio, and the Realiser includes in-ear microphones and lets you take an audiogram of how your ears hear speakers and headphones before EQ’ing the headphones to match the speakers. Oh, and it seems Harmon is on brand with a one-size-fits-all HRTF, but I only saw doctor Olive mention it in a tweet because apparently it’s not publicly available.
I think, right now, Creative’s offerings are the most capable, versatile, and affordable. Sometimes their coding is a little buggy, but most of the time things work reliably and IMO it’s worth it. I do think it will be cool to see more options on the market; VR may give spatial audio the push it needs to become a selling point and something companies continue to develop.
The age of hardware acceleration for audio has long been dead.
