[Fastjack]

I was wondering whether anybody here has ever tried the Pioneer for gaming with the PC. The idea woould be to get the multichannel 3D-sound to the Pioneer via optical (preferably) and thus process it to Dolby Headphone.

Would it actually work the way despribed above? And if so, how good are the positional cues?

 

[Bonkura]

The problem is that in order to play games with the pioneer, the sound from the game needs to be Dolby Digital or DTS (or dolby pro logic) and then you have to get it to the pioneer processor.

I dont play so many games myself, and the ones I have havent had dd. If it was to work without the game being DD, the soundcard would have to be able to take the 3d sound and convert it to DD, and send it to the pioneer processor which would convert that again to Doby Headphone...

 

[Music Fanatic]

Well, this would probablywork well with XBOX or systems with an NVIDIA nForce card. See this, for example.

 

[Fastjack]

Quote:

Originally posted by Bonkura The problem is that in order to play games with the pioneer, the sound from the game needs to be Dolby Digital or DTS (or dolby pro logic) and then you have to get it to the pioneer processor.

Are you sure about that? I'm wondering 'cause the product details at audiocubes (http://www.audiocubes.com/product_in...roducts_id=226) mention PCM (=uncompressed like in WAV-files?!) as a reproducible format besides DD and DTS. But how many channels of PCM, and all that over optical? Unfortunately I don't know nothing about that optical interconnect-stuff.

If it understands optical I suppose it SHOULD work with games.

 

[Bonkura]

I'll rephrase. yes, you can use them for gaming, plug them into the digital out of your soundcard and you will get sound and I have done this myself. But, it wont be surround sound, it will only be 2d sound that you can process with dolby pro logic altho there's no extra pro logic channels in the signal so just stereo basically.

If you want surround sound, you need surround data coming from your soundcard, such as DD and DTS

 

[Bonkura]

Quote:

Originally posted by Music Fanatic Well, this would probablywork well with XBOX or systems with an NVIDIA nForce card. See this, for example.

Yes it works with the xbox, hence the xbox edition of the pioneers.
From the same site you linked to, there is a faq about dolby digital and pc games that can be read:
http://www.dolby.com/games/pc.faq.html

now, reading that myself, I see that nforce supports DD encoding like music fanatic mentions, thus that would enable the pioneers to work (Im starting to want an nforce board myself). The reason why, for instance, the audigy wont work, is that it doesnt have a DD encoder, it can only pass thru DD data that comes from a DVD for instance. Whereas the nforce is able to take create DD sound that can be passed on to the pioneer processor.

Id love to try this myself, but I wonder how many games actually support this...

 

[Fastjack]

So PCM over optical has only the two stereo-channels?! Now that's real bad. Then the Pioneer doesn't make sense in my situation. For movies I can use PowerDVDs DH-encoder buit not for games.

Unfortunately I don't have an nforce-board so the on-the-fly DD encoding also won't happen. And it would be a bit dumb, too, as it would mean to compress the sound and then decompress it again. Can't be good for the quality.

 

[Bonkura]

Quote:

Originally posted by Fastjack And it would be a bit dumb, too, as it would mean to compress the sound and then decompress it again. Can't be good for the quality.

I dont see it that way, think of it as creating the sound of the game in DD, live. So the sound wouldn't be compressed into DD, it would be DD in the first place.

 

[Fastjack]

Quote:

Originally posted by Bonkura I dont see it that way, think of it as creating the sound of the game in DD, live. So the sound wouldn't be compressed into DD, it would be DD in the first place.

Hmmm, I thought DD is AC3 encoded like the audio on DVDs. And AFAIK AC3 is a lossy compression much like mp3.

 

[Bonkura]

Quote:

Originally posted by Fastjack Hmmm, I thought DD is AC3 encoded like the audio on DVDs. And AFAIK AC3 is a lossy compression much like mp3.

Most of the game music is already compressed anyhow.......

And DD, altho compressed, has great sound, just compare the sound of DVDs to the sound of your average game... Id just love it if games actually sound as good as DVDs