[jamng]

I guess so. Probably set it to 100%.

Thanks! I realized after installation I didn't have a way of testing it immediately to see what might work best without a game.

 

[ZzBOG]

Guys what's the current state of the art setup for virtual surround? I have Z7M2 which I like quite a bit and O2 amp + Sound Blaster Omni which has SBX. Is there anything better than Omni + SBX that would be a direct upgrade not a sidegrade? Software or hardware or software + hardware

 

[Monstieur]

Guys what's the current state of the art setup for virtual surround? I have Z7M2 which I like quite a bit and O2 amp + Sound Blaster Omni which has SBX. Is there anything better than Omni + SBX that would be a direct upgrade not a sidegrade? Software or hardware or software + hardware

Spatial Sound on Windows & Xbox, and PlayStation's proprietary engine. Everything else is obsolete. You just need plain stereo headphones.

 

[ZzBOG]

Thank you, which Spatial Sound? The built in one? Or something else

 

[Zenvota]

impulcifer

my sig

a realiser

the jvc xp-ext1 when it comes out

 

[Evshrug]

Thank you, which Spatial Sound? The built in one? Or something else

He’s saying the built-in one, I think it’s actually called Sonic Studio. I haven’t tried it myself. Sony’s proprietary 7.1 PlayStation HRTF is only available with their PlayStation headset, and I think they use something different for their (decent) 3D spacial audio for the PSVR... but since you use an Omni, I don’t think mention of console solutions helps you at all

Current plug and play options for PC include Creative’s SBX, Creative’s new customizable Super-XFi (you need a smartphone app to take a picture and analyze the shape of your ear and head, but then it works on PC), one of Asus’ aging soundcards with Dolby Headphone, Sennheiser’s Binaural Engine in the GSX1000 (now owned by a company that spun off from Sennheiser, called EPOS Audio), Redscape Audio’s software and headtracking hardware, and the Smyth Realiser...

These days, I’m just using the GSX1000 and my Smyth Realiser A16, but the Realiser is expensive and they’ve only made like 260 of the Kickstarter-funded units so far a year after release.

It’s funny... now that Sennheiser has left the gaming DSP/DAC/Amp sphere and has no product in that space, I can finally talk about the product category again. I would love to try out the S-XFI products from Creative Labs, based on how much the customization from my Realiser and NX Waves in my Audeze Mobius have greatly improved the surround effect for me... but I would rank the GSX1000’s surround above SBX for spacial imaging. It has sounded just like a pair of speakers in front of me and gave me creepily realistic rear cues. It’s a real contender for the price range, though if your headphone is harder to drive than a PC37X or HD 58X Jubilee, I would recommend connecting a dedicated amp to the GSX1000’s headphone output... a little USB Powered soundcard like the GSX1000 just can’t pump out the same power as a wall outlet mains powered amp for something like an HD 650 or HD 800S!

Headtracking has become very impressive to me though. I would rate “static” NX Waves without headtracking to be performing below SBX and the GSX1000, but headtracking kind of calibrates your brain to “where” things are, constantly. I would even say the ability to “place” sounds is actually better with the NX Waves + Headtracking than SBX or the GSX1000... but it still loses by smearing the sound a bit and being less clear than the GSX1000. I got to demo Redscape at two CanJams and talked very excitedly with Ryan Redetzke (get it? Redetzke and Redscape?), and was very impressed by the sound demo... though unfortunately I couldn’t play any games “live,” I could however still have some interaction and control due to the headtracking, and the effect was pretty much the next best thing after VR audio and the Realiser. Since the software runs on the computer, I don’t know how much of a performance hit you can expect, but I would happily trade a few of the “ultimate” graphics settings in a game for the supreme immersion that comes from spacial audio!

The only downside is that most games only support 7.1 surround... the Redscape Audio, Creative, and GSX1000’s offerings will make the most of 7.1, with the Redscape head tracking easily able to tilt the plane of the audio if you physically tilt your head up or down IRL, but a game like CoD: Warzone with just 7.1 sound is inherently only feeding a 2D ring of audio positions to the DSPs. If you can’t tell if a sound is on the same floor as your character, that’s not the fault of the DSP... it’s the fault of the game.

 

[Monstieur]

He’s saying the built-in one, I think it’s actually called Sonic Studio. I haven’t tried it myself. Sony’s proprietary 7.1 PlayStation HRTF is only available with their PlayStation headset, and I think they use something different for their (decent) 3D spacial audio for the PSVR... but since you use an Omni, I don’t think mention of console solutions helps you at all

Current plug and play options for PC include Creative’s SBX, Creative’s new customizable Super-XFi (you need a smartphone app to take a picture and analyze the shape of your ear and head, but then it works on PC), one of Asus’ aging soundcards with Dolby Headphone, Sennheiser’s Binaural Engine in the GSX1000 (now owned by a company that spun off from Sennheiser, called EPOS Audio), Redscape Audio’s software and headtracking hardware, and the Smyth Realiser...

These days, I’m just using the GSX1000 and my Smyth Realiser A16, but the Realiser is expensive and they’ve only made like 260 of the Kickstarter-funded units so far a year after release.

It’s funny... now that Sennheiser has left the gaming DSP/DAC/Amp sphere and has no product in that space, I can finally talk about the product category again. I would love to try out the S-XFI products from Creative Labs, based on how much the customization from my Realiser and NX Waves in my Audeze Mobius have greatly improved the surround effect for me... but I would rank the GSX1000’s surround above SBX for spacial imaging. It has sounded just like a pair of speakers in front of me and gave me creepily realistic rear cues. It’s a real contender for the price range, though if your headphone is harder to drive than a PC37X or HD 58X Jubilee, I would recommend connecting a dedicated amp to the GSX1000’s headphone output... a little USB Powered soundcard like the GSX1000 just can’t pump out the same power as a wall outlet mains powered amp for something like an HD 650 or HD 800S!

Headtracking has become very impressive to me though. I would rate “static” NX Waves without headtracking to be performing below SBX and the GSX1000, but headtracking kind of calibrates your brain to “where” things are, constantly. I would even say the ability to “place” sounds is actually better with the NX Waves + Headtracking than SBX or the GSX1000... but it still loses by smearing the sound a bit and being less clear than the GSX1000. I got to demo Redscape at two CanJams and talked very excitedly with Ryan Redetzke (get it? Redetzke and Redscape?), and was very impressed by the sound demo... though unfortunately I couldn’t play any games “live,” I could however still have some interaction and control due to the headtracking, and the effect was pretty much the next best thing after VR audio and the Realiser. Since the software runs on the computer, I don’t know how much of a performance hit you can expect, but I would happily trade a few of the “ultimate” graphics settings in a game for the supreme immersion that comes from spacial audio!

The only downside is that most games only support 7.1 surround... the Redscape Audio, Creative, and GSX1000’s offerings will make the most of 7.1, with the Redscape head tracking easily able to tilt the plane of the audio if you physically tilt your head up or down IRL, but a game like CoD: Warzone with just 7.1 sound is inherently only feeding a 2D ring of audio positions to the DSPs. If you can’t tell if a sound is on the same floor as your character, that’s not the fault of the DSP... it’s the fault of the game.

All of these 3rd party solutions are obsolete as they don't support object-based spatial sound from the game engine. I don't know why companies continue to release HRTFs that are not Windows Spatial Sound providers like Dolby Atmos for Headphones and DTS Headphone:X.

Another issue with 3rd party HRTFs is they can't detect when a stereo source is already mastered with HRTF, like many albums and games. These sound terrible unless you manually switch off the HRTF. Windows Spatial Sound works around this by activating only during multi-channel streams on a per-application basis. The Dolby Dimension headphone is unique in that it can detect when a stereo input already has HRTF applied, and disables upmixing.

 

[Evshrug]

All of these 3rd party solutions are obsolete as they don't support object-based spatial sound from the game engine. I don't know why companies continue to release HRTFs that are not Windows Spatial Sound providers like Dolby Atmos for Headphones and DTS Headphone:X.

Another issue with 3rd party HRTFs is they can't detect when a stereo source is already mastered with HRTF, like many albums and games. These sound terrible unless you manually switch off the HRTF. Windows Spatial Sound works around this by activating only during multi-channel streams on a per-application basis. The Dolby Dimension headphone is unique in that it can detect when a stereo input already has HRTF applied, and disables upmixing.

Hate to break it to you, but most games don’t utilize object based audio straight from the game engine either. There’s a few showcase games that support the Atmos and Windows spacial sound, and I certainly hope many more games support it going forward (I am definitely a proponent of full object-oriented audio as better than emulating a few speaker channels), but until there is backwards compatibility that basically hacks game engine code, these “3rd party solutions” (which also have more sophisticated HRTF algorithms) are going to have wider compatibility. Full object oriented spacial audio support does seem to be on its way though, going forward, and it can’t come soon enough though, IMO. It’s like the return of OpenAL... licensed and closed, but geeze it took long enough!

I don’t know how Dolby Dimension could detect a binaural music album, the pre-mix doesn’t exactly have digital markers or metadata saying as such, at least with torso-mic recorded albums made up until now. If Dolby can, cool that’s very impressive. Turning off a DSP is usually a convenient enough process (tap or click of a button?) that I would consider that a non-issue, but if that one step can be skipped... cool?

 

[Monstieur]

Hate to break it to you, but most games don’t utilize object based audio straight from the game engine either. There’s a few showcase games that support the Atmos and Windows spacial sound, and I certainly hope many more games support it going forward (I am definitely a proponent of full object-oriented audio as better than emulating a few speaker channels), but until there is backwards compatibility that basically hacks game engine code, these “3rd party solutions” (which also have more sophisticated HRTF algorithms) are going to have wider compatibility. Full object oriented spacial audio support does seem to be on its way though, going forward, and it can’t come soon enough though, IMO.

I don’t know how Dolby Dimension could detect a binaural music album, the pre-mix doesn’t exactly have digital markers or metadata saying as such, at least with torso-mic recorded albums made up until now. If Dolby can, cool that’s very impressive. Turning off a DSP is usually a convenient enough process (tap or click of a button?) that I would consider that a non-issue, but if that one step can be skipped... cool?

The in-game headphone mode is preferable to external HRTFs, as it typically uses XYZ coordinates per object. There are poorly written games which collapse to 7.1 before HRTF with the in-game headphone mode. Even with Spatial Sound, multiple objects may be collapsed into one due to limitations on the number of channels which varies by platform (Windows vs Xbox) and spatial sound provider (Dolby Atmos for Headphones vs DTS Headphone:X vs Windows Sonic for Headphones). In the games I've played, I prefer per-object accuracy over a generically better 7.1 HRTF algorithm from an external solution.

For the 7.1 HRTFs, you just need the impulse responses and you can try any of them in Equalizer APO. This is a superior solution than installing a virtual sound card etc. which has its own issues.

 

[ZzBOG]

@Monstieur I tried the DTS:X with onboard audio (Realtek) and it destroys Soundblaster's Omin SBX and Scout mode experience-wise. Of course the content is DTS:X compatible but still. Wow. Thanks for the recommendation.

 

[Monstieur]

@Monstieur I tried the DTS:X with onboard audio (Realtek) and it destroys Soundblaster's Omin SBX and Scout mode experience-wise. Of course the content is DTS:X compatible but still. Wow. Thanks for the recommendation.

It works with most 7.1 channel games, and with media players that use the correct APIs like MPC-BE and mpv. DTS Headphone:X however has a steep sub-bass roll-off. Dolby Atmos for Headphones retains the sub-bass level.

 

[ZzBOG]

@Monstieur I wouldn't need a DAC Amos, right?
Also I understand correctly that it makes no sense to do any kind of AutoEQ on the headphones when I use Atmos? It will be overridden pretty much, I guess?

 

[Monstieur]

@Monstieur I wouldn't need a DAC Amos, right?
Also I understand correctly that it makes no sense to do any kind of AutoEQ on the headphones when I use Atmos? It will be overridden pretty much, I guess?

Spatial Sound providers work fine alongside Equalizer APO.

 

[Prpnnightmare]

Does anyone have a recommendation for a DAC I can use from my PC with Dolby Atmos?

 

[Monstieur]

Does anyone have a recommendation for a DAC I can use from my PC with Dolby Atmos?

There's no need of a DAC unless your motherboard is defective.