Shadowex3
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2008
- Posts
- 27
- Likes
- 0
Ages ago I remember reading the debate over the right settings to get good positional audio in source games, with the result being to set windows and source at 5.1 surround and the x-fi to headphones with CMSS enabled.
After trying that for a while I figured it'd be worth going to 7.1 speakers ingame and in windows, and I also found a console command called snd_digital_surround that completely alters the way the game sounds and was apparently a recent addition to the game. Of course that also means I need to guess whether home theatre or wide configuration speaders is better in windows, and randomly reset it to home theatre after it sets itself to wide configuration for some reason.
I'm at a loss at this point, the documentation is pathetic and google yields nothing but other people guessing at what the command does and what the best x-fi/windows/game settings for source engine games are, the most conclusive information I've found other than the original cross-forum argument over the 5.1+headphones trick is thomase's post at [H].
[edit]
Alright My best guess on all of this is that snd_digital_surround 1 gives you cleaner sound since it's been processed less (sounds closer to running the x-fi in 2speaker/bitmatched to me) but snd_digital_surround 0 might give you more accurate positional audio. The rest, including why 5.1-5.1-headphones sometimes has sounds from behind or in front of you sounding wierd is completely beyond me.
After trying that for a while I figured it'd be worth going to 7.1 speakers ingame and in windows, and I also found a console command called snd_digital_surround that completely alters the way the game sounds and was apparently a recent addition to the game. Of course that also means I need to guess whether home theatre or wide configuration speaders is better in windows, and randomly reset it to home theatre after it sets itself to wide configuration for some reason.
I'm at a loss at this point, the documentation is pathetic and google yields nothing but other people guessing at what the command does and what the best x-fi/windows/game settings for source engine games are, the most conclusive information I've found other than the original cross-forum argument over the 5.1+headphones trick is thomase's post at [H].
[edit]
Alright My best guess on all of this is that snd_digital_surround 1 gives you cleaner sound since it's been processed less (sounds closer to running the x-fi in 2speaker/bitmatched to me) but snd_digital_surround 0 might give you more accurate positional audio. The rest, including why 5.1-5.1-headphones sometimes has sounds from behind or in front of you sounding wierd is completely beyond me.
