[illram]

Waves NX has been reborn into Steelseries GG, which is free to use, but if you want Advanced features, you have to buy one of their headphones. Still, it works well.

Windows Sonic is a lot better these days, and Dolby Access / DTS Sound Abound are still sold or bundled with hardware. (My laptop came with a Dolby Access license)

Asus' SS3 is a Nahimic solution.

Razer sells THX Surround, but I am not a fan of that solution.

I still prefer a solution that uses a virtual sound device, because I can keep that as default, and use it with gaming, and have my audio apps output direct to my DAC. This way I can keep my music from being processed while I game.

Nice summary. I have tried all of those except Nahimic, although I have not tested any recent Windows Sonic audio. Redscape still is the winner in both quality and ease of use, like you I appreciate how I can use it with any hardware I want. (And the fact that even after they shut down, Ryan immediately answered a support issue I had made me love it even more...) It'll be a very sad day if it ever stops working!

 

[MarkDraconian]

Waves NX has been reborn into Steelseries GG, which is free to use, but if you want Advanced features, you have to buy one of their headphones. Still, it works well.

Windows Sonic is a lot better these days, and Dolby Access / DTS Sound Abound are still sold or bundled with hardware. (My laptop came with a Dolby Access license)

Asus' SS3 is a Nahimic solution.

Razer sells THX Surround, but I am not a fan of that solution.

I still prefer a solution that uses a virtual sound device, because I can keep that as default, and use it with gaming, and have my audio apps output direct to my DAC. This way I can keep my music from being processed while I game.

Ooh so Waves is inside Steelseries now? Interesting!
All this time i was thinking that Steelseries had Nahimic under the hood.
I might try that, Waves NX always annoys me A LOT when i switch to another soundcard like my integrated one, and then the software either crases or Waves soundcard just vanishes and everything just works fine again if i reboot my pc... so annoying!!

 

[Chastity]

Ooh so Waves is inside Steelseries now? Interesting!
All this time i was thinking that Steelseries had Nahimic under the hood.
I might try that, Waves NX always annoys me A LOT when i switch to another soundcard like my integrated one, and then the software either crases or Waves soundcard just vanishes and everything just works fine again if i reboot my pc... so annoying!!

Yep, since SteelSeries bought the rights to Waves NX, their product uses it exclusively.

 

[Mad Lust Envy]

Yep, since SteelSeries bought the rights to Waves NX, their product uses it exclusively.

Ah I didn't know this. They've improved the virtual surround quite a bit from 6-7 years ago. It's absolutely insane now.

I gotta set that GG software back up so I can use it with all my headphones. I had an issue so I uninstalled, and went back to DTS Headphone X.

 

[JdeFalconr]

Ah I didn't know this. They've improved the virtual surround quite a bit from 6-7 years ago. It's absolutely insane now.

I gotta set that GG software back up so I can use it with all my headphones. I had an issue so I uninstalled, and went back to DTS Headphone X.

I'd really be interested in hearing your experience there.

I'm considering simplifying my setup, especially as I look to eventually move to a mini-ITX computer that won't have room for add-in cards. My setup is also quite complex at the moment as I have separate audio hardware for my speakers and headphones.

 

[JdeFalconr]

Actually, along those lines: how do I go about converting a multichannel output (5.1 or 7.1) to virtual surround (stereo)?

In looking at my setup I'm realizing that when I have a game configured to output multi-channel surround audio while it's going to work fine for my 5.1 speakers it's not going to work so well on my headphones which are set up for virtual surround. Right now, for instance, in BF2042 some audio just flat-out doesn't make it to my headphones, leading me to believe that some channels might be getting cut out altogether. My assumption is that solutions like Creative's CMSS (which I'm presently using) will not downmix that multi-channel audio appropriately.

 

[Nemmera]

This has probably been discussed to the death in the thread, but I recently got back into a bit of FPS gaming (CS2 and Tarkov) and really like using closed-back headphones for it. Since I have a family I need to keep some sort of tabs on, I dragged out my old GSX1000 just to get the side-tone functionality. Don't really use the VSS while gaming, but I really appreciate what the GSX does VSS-wise for other non-competitive content.

I usually run a JDS Element as my dac/amp all-in-one and a USB mic and not to be elitist but the GSX1000 is absolute trash for music compared to the Element.

Do you guys have any solid recommendations for a sound card with both good sound and latency-free microphone monitoring? Is my best bet to go get a Scarlett, EVO 4 or similar audio interface?

 

[Fegefeuer]

I think something like the MOTU M4 should tick your boxes.

 

[OneEyedHito]

Anyone have a current favorite for a DAC/AMP to pair with the PS5? Ideally for IEM’s so low noise floor and mic input.

 

[TheSpur22]

Anyone have a current favorite for a DAC/AMP to pair with the PS5? Ideally for IEM’s so low noise floor and mic input.

I'm really liking the Schiit Hel+ for my Kiwi Ears Quartet's, granted these are my only IEM's but this combo is very clean sounding to my ears. I also really like that the Hel+ has a mic gain, so I don't have to go into the Playstation menu to adjust whenever I change mics.

 

[Evshrug]

Not last time I checked, sadly.

Ryan still promptly answers support questions though, so anyone lucky enough to have a license is still good. But yeah I would love to try out a similarly great and available competitor (that didn't cost $4000 and didn't screw over presale customers *cough* Realiser *cough*).

I have a bunch of Creative hardware sitting around unused, since they never got over their weird fixation on locking down SBX audio outputs.

I’m pretty sure reverse-engineering efforts like HeSuVi and Out Of Your Head software have pretty much killed Spatial Audio, outside of the VR space. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Creative locked down SBX and Super X-Fi, Redscape shut down, Sennheiser ended their gaming joint venture, and EPOS laid off its entire Gaming division. It’s very damaging to business to have someone take your assets and release imitations for free, and frankly I’m skeptical of how accurate those apps are to the originals.

I was hoping VR and the AirPods Pro Spatial Audio would lead to a second renaissance, and I think Sony’s Tempest 3D from their PS5 is above average, but paradoxically it looks like we have more access to headphone surround/spatial audio than ever before but no company seeing it as having enough ROI to invest in it further.

I could just have a bleak sentiment about it though, would love to be proven wrong.

 

[halcyon]

I’m pretty sure reverse-engineering efforts like HeSuVi and Out Of Your Head software have pretty much killed Spatial Audio, outside of the VR space.

I doubt that more than 1% of the sound-card buying public even knows, not to mention installs and uses HeSuVi or OOYH.

The real reason is probably much more prosaic: too much competition (amongst brands, about consumer spending in general), almost everybody is already "happy enough" with the motherboard built-in audio, most top-end gaming engines have their own spatial audio engines built-in, and so on.


This is not helped by the fact that the spatial audio revolutions promised by Microsoft, Sony, AMD, nVidia and others didn't really give even the most hc enthusiasts any wow factor. I have owned all the best cards and sound engines and I don't think we've gone much further since SXFI, Waves NX, etc. None of them can still do properly vertical differentation (elevation) and most suck really bad in emulating rear sound sources (yes, even with personalized and measured HRTFs).

So, why invest development money into products when there's no sales, because the consumers are not enticed by the results and there's tons of other product categories where margins are higher and consumers are happier to buy them.

 

[illram]

I doubt that more than 1% of the sound-card buying public even knows, not to mention installs and uses HeSuVi or OOYH.

The real reason is probably much more prosaic: too much competition (amongst brands, about consumer spending in general), almost everybody is already "happy enough" with the motherboard built-in audio, most top-end gaming engines have their own spatial audio engines built-in, and so on.


This is not helped by the fact that the spatial audio revolutions promised by Microsoft, Sony, AMD, nVidia and others didn't really give even the most hc enthusiasts any wow factor. I have owned all the best cards and sound engines and I don't think we've gone much further since SXFI, Waves NX, etc. None of them can still do properly vertical differentation (elevation) and most suck really bad in emulating rear sound sources (yes, even with personalized and measured HRTFs).

So, why invest development money into products when there's no sales, because the consumers are not enticed by the results and there's tons of other product categories where margins are higher and consumers are happier to buy them.

Yeah I agree with this. It's a niche within a niche of the industry, and beyond competing with Dolby or Apple or other "brandname" solutions (that can be used by the big boys to sell updated media, drive consumer lock-in, or push new consumer hardware) I don't get the feeling that there is a ton of money out there to be had for the smaller players.

 

[JdeFalconr]

I think the barrier to sales and adoption for spatial audio is, as Halcyon alluded to, ease of use and ease of understanding to the average person. I think we've all seen just in the last few years how incredibly difficult it is for people to figure out something so basic as what output and input device they are using for a meeting. With the most foundational concepts of audio hardware heavily abstracted and so difficult for people to grasp no way are they going to go beyond that into things like spatial audio. They just want it to work and work well enough. I would suggest that's going to extend into rank-and-file gamers as well who actually care about their audio beyond whether they can hear it or not.

My guess is that if Microsoft and Apple can sufficiently "dumb-down" audio device management on computers (no disrespect to the average user, it really can be difficult for them) then maybe we can see increased interest in things like spatial audio.

 

[Evshrug]

Isn’t it on by default now with AirPod Pros? I don’t own a pair, but I wonder.

Also, 180° directly behind the listener is difficult in part because of our human anatomy… I believe with our ears angled forward a bit, we’re a bit better at the difficult task of some directional perception, but directly behind us is a bit of a blind spot of vagueness. That’s why there’s a center channel but no rear channel in 5.1 and 7.1 speaker setups.