[iHasCake]

as a pc gamer 90% of the time (i have to play fighting games on consoles), i've been waiting for this thread

 

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

Yea finally some PC gaming love, I don't like consoles and haven't owned any since the days of Sega Mega drive and earlier a NES me and my bro got as xmas present when I was a small kid.
 
I'd like to bring up the discussion of speaker config setup. Do you use stereo or like me 5.1 with headphones? For me 5.1 works a whole lot better positioning wise and provides very good position in lots of games to me without using any extra fancy stuff like Dolby Headphone or CMSS-3D or whatever.
 
Noteworthy examples would be most Unreal Engine 3 based games, in Unreal Tournament 3 and BulletStorm for example it works wonderfully as well as Bethesda games, well Skyrim doesn't even sound properly in stereo mode for starters haha. I can easily tell directions, behind and in front and the positioning is also very smooth so it follows you more like on a 360 degree scale and doesn't suddenly jump from "center" to front right to rear right etc when turning around, it's a very smooth panning of the sound direction.

 

[thefranklin]

Great guide, thanks.

Yea finally some PC gaming love, I don't like consoles and haven't owned any since the days of Sega Mega drive and earlier a NES me and my bro got as xmas present when I was a small kid.

I'd like to bring up the discussion of speaker config setup. Do you use stereo or like me 5.1 with headphones? For me 5.1 works a whole lot better positioning wise and provides very good position in lots of games to me without using any extra fancy stuff like Dolby Headphone or CMSS-3D or whatever.

Noteworthy examples would be most Unreal Engine 3 based games, in Unreal Tournament 3 and BulletStorm for example it works wonderfully as well as Bethesda games, well Skyrim doesn't even sound properly in stereo mode for starters haha. I can easily tell directions, behind and in front and the positioning is also very smooth so it follows you more like on a 360 degree scale and doesn't suddenly jump from "center" to front right to rear right etc when turning around, it's a very smooth panning of the sound direction.

Maybe a list or tiers of good audio games? It would be nice to know which games are accurate for positional audio, and of course which ones are more fun.

 

[NamelessPFG]

 
Quote:

There's not many other chipsets worth mentioning, at least for gaming (at least that I can think of), aside from the last decade of Sound Blaster, and C-Media; VIA is too obscure anymore (honestly, when was the last time you had someone ask about an M-Audio Revolution or Chaintech AV710?); M-Audio aside (and the Delta boards are very long in the tooth, and very user un-friendly compared to Asus and Creative offerings). Would love to see a (well organized) list put together that elucidates all of the internal variations of Sound Blaster though; most people are convinced they've got a true Audigy or X-Fi and instead are looking at something...quite different. Might also want to talk about SRC (and why it isn't the boogey-man that most detractors make it out to be unless you've managed to track down a first-gen, pureblood Audigy 1).

I knew VIA made audio chipsets too, but couldn't think of any examples off the top of my head. There's also another chipset from the Win9x era that the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and some other cards were based on, but again, too old.
 
I'd also bring up Creative's new Sound Core3D products (mostly Recon3D-branded), but I don't know very much about them at the moment, other than that word is that they're actually a downgrade from the existing X-Fi line in gaming performance. Not reassuring, but the only way to know for sure is hands-on experience and testing.
 
A complete list of Sound Blasters and their variants...hoo boy. Creative won't make that one easy. Even ignoring all the classic ISA cards that VOGONS regularly discusses (which has a working wavetable daughterboard header, which has a genuine Yamaha OPL3 for FM synth, which has the ASP/CSP, that sort of thing; Creative sure changes up the "same" card a lot), there's still a fair bit of variance in the X-Fi lineup alone.
 
Sample rate conversion...I know the older Live!/Audigy ones have DSPs that only work on 48 KHz audio. Not sure about the X-Fi or C-Media lineup, but one of the major improvements with the X-Fi DSP was the SRC engine itself, or so they say. It's probably not an issue with modern cards regardless, especially if you know how to set things up right and the card has ASIO support.
 
Quote:

Yea finally some PC gaming love, I don't like consoles and haven't owned any since the days of Sega Mega drive and earlier a NES me and my bro got as xmas present when I was a small kid.
 
I'd like to bring up the discussion of speaker config setup. Do you use stereo or like me 5.1 with headphones? For me 5.1 works a whole lot better positioning wise and provides very good position in lots of games to me without using any extra fancy stuff like Dolby Headphone or CMSS-3D or whatever.
 
Noteworthy examples would be most Unreal Engine 3 based games, in Unreal Tournament 3 and BulletStorm for example it works wonderfully as well as Bethesda games, well Skyrim doesn't even sound properly in stereo mode for starters haha. I can easily tell directions, behind and in front and the positioning is also very smooth so it follows you more like on a 360 degree scale and doesn't suddenly jump from "center" to front right to rear right etc when turning around, it's a very smooth panning of the sound direction.

I'm PC-first when it comes to gaming because I like the flexibility it offers, though my small collection of retro consoles shows that I'm not against console gaming in general. However, Mad Lust Envy has that area well covered.
 
I set 5.1/7.1 in the Windows speaker setting at all times; I hear no audible difference from setting that to stereo. X-Fi control panel stays on Headphones, as usual, and I also hear no differences between that and one of the many speaker modes. For that matter, I don't hear any general audio differences between Game Mode and Audio Creation Mode.
 
For UT3, it's CMSS-3D Headphone without question; it uses OpenAL, after all. (Too bad a later UE3 version switched to XAudio2 by default, severely gimping CMSS-3D Headphone in the process. As a result, later UE3 games like Bulletstorm probably aren't using OpenAL.) But maybe I'll try it at some point, just for the sake of experimentation and knowledge.
 
Quote:

Great guide, thanks.
Maybe a list or tiers of good audio games? It would be nice to know which games are accurate for positional audio, and of course which ones are more fun.

In positioning terms, DirectSound3D and OpenAL are on top, though the rest depends on what your sound card can do with the 3D audio coordinates they provide.
 
That said, most games with software-mixed 7.1 at least provide a fairly good sense of surround, though Battlefield: Bad Company 2 needs to be called out on its lacking sense of directionality for anything (which never happens in the first four games that used DS3D or OAL). On the other hand, the sounds themselves certainly fall into the "fun" category, what with the bombastic blockbuster movie sound War Tapes provides and all...

 

[BababooeyHTJ]

Have you tried Thx tru-studio on your Titanium HD. Its really not bad. The positional audio may not be as good as cmss3d for the most part but the hit in audio quality is hardly noticeable. There is a good chance that if you leave it on and listen to some music that you aren't going to notice. It also appears to be the replacement for cmss3d which isn't appearing on creative's latest sound cards. 

 

[LilBuck]

I tried asking this in MLE's thread but got a few answers: With a Xonar DG running to a DAC/AMP combo can I still have surround in video games from dolby headphone? Does it depend on the amp?

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

Quote:

 
I set 5.1/7.1 in the Windows speaker setting at all times; I hear no audible difference from setting that to stereo. X-Fi control panel stays on Headphones, as usual, and I also hear no differences between that and one of the many speaker modes. For that matter, I don't hear any general audio differences between Game Mode and Audio Creation Mode.

Yea I didn't hear as big difference, if any on the Titanium HD TBH as it seems Creative does their own way of handling speaker config with the Creative software having its own speaker config system etc. But with all other soundcards where the windows speaker config is usually linked with the driver software, especially this Realtek HD onboard chip there's a big difference in sound using stereo vs 5.1, I always have it set like this but the "plugged in device" is ofc set as "headphone" (same settings appear if going through windows control panel):
 

 
If you got a realtek onboard hd chip I'd give it a try. (especially listen to music while changing back and forth for an immediate comparision)

 

[obobskivich]

On the SRC:
 
The original Live! cards force SRC, and the Audigy (as in Audigy 1, the original) will force SRC, as their DSP engines only work at 48khz. Audigy 2 fixed this, and will only perform SRC if you have to run a signal through the DSP engine - if you're running the card "straight" (no EAX, no CMSS, no EQ performed by the card, etc) it can run native up to whatever the top end is (96k for 6.1, 192k for stereo). If you have to do any sort of DSP stuff, it will SRC to 48k internally. It's just the chip. Audigy 2 ZS and Audigy 4 do the same. The E-MU boards based on the 10k2 have the same limitation, but (potentially) better ASIO drivers (the Creative ASIO driver is not bad). 
 
The X-Fi (20k1/20k2) can similarly run "straight" and do no SRC, but it can also run "straight" at any sample rate that it wants (from 32 up to 192k). I've never gotten a 100% bona-fide answer on Entertainment Mode outside of 48k; it supports higher and lower sample rates, and you can indeed force such sample rates within Windows, but I don't know if the engine itself is re-clocking (like you would see with an M-Audio board). That said, the SRC engine in the X-Fi is very good; Creative's whitepaper for the 20k1 specifies the SRC's noise at somewhere around -135 dB (10k2 is somewhere around -95 dB iirc). In other words, it should be transparent no matter what you're plugging it into (that was their goal). SRC is part of the X-Fi design both to deal with mismatched inputs (which is also why the Audigy does it, the difference is that Audigy has a fixed internal rate (48k) whereas X-Fi can pick whatever it wants), and I believe it still applies DSP effects at 48k but don't quote me on that (I can go dig the papers out if you really want). 
 
I have no idea about the non-hardware X-Fi or Audigy boards; the ones that do software EAX or won't do DS3D H/W, as they generally aren't doing any processing aside from DtoA and AtoD on the board. They're basically dolled up codecs. Not actually a bad model, considering the changes in audio that Windows Vista brought about (and the changes in what people need for their computers to do; unless you need the I/O abilities of the expensive DSP, why buy into it when you can get the same fidelity for playback elsewhere?). 
 
The VIA chipsets are probably more common as onboard solutions these days, but I may be mistaken (in other words, that might have ended too). Anything that says "Vinyl Audio" or "Envy Audio" is almost certainly VIA. I wouldn't consider them too old, at least in context of Head-Fi, as I'm guessing there's quite a few people using Delta or Delta Audiophile boards as part of their PC setup. You can treat them as basically a dolled up codec though, at least for the purposes of your guide; they don't have a lot of h/w support (aside from the TOTL model, Envy24) and don't do anything special for EAX or similar (The one that does h/w assist just lowers CPU usage, it doesn't get you EAX 3/4/5 like the Sound Blaster chips do). 
 
C-Media, I don't know as much about. From what I know about the 8788 (which is your Asus AV200), SRC is possible, but I don't believe it's forced. The chip can throw a lot of I/O around (at least on the level of the E-MU 10k2, if not more), and no consumer solutions fully take advantage (consider the E-MU 1820 vs the Audigy 2 ZS, both use the same chipset; there's no "E-MU 1820" for the 8788). Most of it's DSP/enhancement stuff comes from C-Media's software packages (Xear, EQ, etc) or third-party software (Dolby Headphone, DTS NeoC), contrasted to Creative doing everything in-house. The "big one" for the C-Media boards is probably Dolby Headphone (along with a lot of other Dolby branded solutions). The lower-down C-Media chips seem to be less popular as time goes on, and 8788 boards seem to get cheaper (the Sondigo was a great example of this, but it seems to have gone away). Asus buys and re-brands a couple of C-Media chips; I don't know all of the equivalents (and they keep claiming it's new IP) apart from the AV200. 
 
The Turtle Beach you mentioned uses a Crystal/Cirrus DSP (admittedly, I had to look that one up). Some of the other TB boards (like the Montego) use Aureal chips. I know there's also some ancient boards out there that use ESS DSPs, but I doubt you can get official drivers for Windows 2000 for most of that hardware, let alone anything modern. The only "worthy mention" for Turtle Beach is the DDL enabled Montego, I believe there was a Diamond branded card (that looked near identical) that was similar, XS71 if memory serves. Their cards with h/w accel should get you EAX 2 and A3D, but the DSP isn't anything to write home about (compared to the 10k2, 8788, or 20k1/2), and I'd be somewhat concerned about support going forwards. Shame really, the Montego was my "suggestion of choice" for people who needed DDL or other features on a budget. 
 
As far as the whole "5.1/7.1 vs headphone" mode configuration, my thoughts:
 
- I set everything up to "Stereo" or "Headphones" (when available) and leave it be. Some games have a "Headphones" mode that's truly spectacular. There was a time when I had the audio-card processing in 5.1 (in other words everything was set to 5.1, and a 5.1 signal was coming out) and dumping that into an outboard DSP for mix-down to stereo, and then feeding that into my headphones (and the whole thing had to re-lock if it wanted to switch into stereo). I don't feel I've lost anything in terms of positional accuracy or fidelity by removing the outboard equipment and just setting "Stereo." 
 
- The L/R-main output from 5.1/6.1/7.1/etc with stereo music should be identical to the headphone/2.0/4.0 modes (despite some claims to the contrary), unless you're using a matrix up-mix scheme (CMSS, Dolby). 
 
- Game Mode on an X-Fi board will get you EAX 5 and CMSS features that are conventionally unavailable, I believe it forces SRC to accomplish this though. Creative's claim is that with all of the processing bypassed, the card should be transparent in all three modes, SRC or no, due to the improvements (to be honest, the Audigy already hit this, -95 dB is pretty far down there). That said, Game Mode's CMSS processing can have a nasty effect on music and movies, so I don't like the feature for "daily use" as a result (it is, as you've mentioned, brilliant with games). 
 
The above points only apply to the Sound Blaster cards, other solutions likely need their own configuration tweaks, as RPGWizard points out. The "5.1 to headphones" is a common suggestion I've seen for RealTek built-in solutions for years; surprisingly I've never actually had a RealTek integrated (I think I've hit every other integrated audio device out there, and somehow passed right over RealTek; no idea how that happened).
 
Quote:

 

I knew VIA made audio chipsets too, but couldn't think of any examples off the top of my head. There's also another chipset from the Win9x era that the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and some other cards were based on, but again, too old.
 
I'd also bring up Creative's new Sound Core3D products (mostly Recon3D-branded), but I don't know very much about them at the moment, other than that word is that they're actually a downgrade from the existing X-Fi line in gaming performance. Not reassuring, but the only way to know for sure is hands-on experience and testing.
 
A complete list of Sound Blasters and their variants...hoo boy. Creative won't make that one easy. Even ignoring all the classic ISA cards that VOGONS regularly discusses (which has a working wavetable daughterboard header, which has a genuine Yamaha OPL3 for FM synth, which has the ASP/CSP, that sort of thing; Creative sure changes up the "same" card a lot), there's still a fair bit of variance in the X-Fi lineup alone.
 
Sample rate conversion...I know the older Live!/Audigy ones have DSPs that only work on 48 KHz audio. Not sure about the X-Fi or C-Media lineup, but one of the major improvements with the X-Fi DSP was the SRC engine itself, or so they say. It's probably not an issue with modern cards regardless, especially if you know how to set things up right and the card has ASIO support.
 

I'm PC-first when it comes to gaming because I like the flexibility it offers, though my small collection of retro consoles shows that I'm not against console gaming in general. However, Mad Lust Envy has that area well covered.
 
I set 5.1/7.1 in the Windows speaker setting at all times; I hear no audible difference from setting that to stereo. X-Fi control panel stays on Headphones, as usual, and I also hear no differences between that and one of the many speaker modes. For that matter, I don't hear any general audio differences between Game Mode and Audio Creation Mode.
 
For UT3, it's CMSS-3D Headphone without question; it uses OpenAL, after all. (Too bad a later UE3 version switched to XAudio2 by default, severely gimping CMSS-3D Headphone in the process. As a result, later UE3 games like Bulletstorm probably aren't using OpenAL.) But maybe I'll try it at some point, just for the sake of experimentation and knowledge.
 

In positioning terms, DirectSound3D and OpenAL are on top, though the rest depends on what your sound card can do with the 3D audio coordinates they provide.
 
That said, most games with software-mixed 7.1 at least provide a fairly good sense of surround, though Battlefield: Bad Company 2 needs to be called out on its lacking sense of directionality for anything (which never happens in the first four games that used DS3D or OAL). On the other hand, the sounds themselves certainly fall into the "fun" category, what with the bombastic blockbuster movie sound War Tapes provides and all...

Amp doesn't matter; it's taking an analog input. Is the DAC taking a S/PDIF signal from the Xonar? If yes, then you're good to go. Doesn't matter what the S/PDIF receiver is. If the DAC/AMP device takes USB in, you're completely bypassing the Xonar card (and it's pointless to have it installed).


Quote:

I tried asking this in MLE's thread but got a few answers: With a Xonar DG running to a DAC/AMP combo can I still have surround in video games from dolby headphone? Does it depend on the amp?

 

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

I tried asking this in MLE's thread but got a few answers: With a Xonar DG running to a DAC/AMP combo can I still have surround in video games from dolby headphone? Does it depend on the amp?

Apparently the drivers don't let you you output the Dolby Headphone processed audio over S/PDIF, only the analog out.  Its all about the sound card and the drivers, not you DAC or amp.

 

[NamelessPFG]

 
Quote:

Apparently the drivers don't let you output the Dolby Headphone processed audio over S/PDIF, only the analog out.  Its all about the sound card and the drivers, not you DAC or amp.

Well put. While I do wish I could confirm/deny this myself, I simply don't have the disposable income to purchase all sorts of sound cards just to test things like this and go through the effort to sell them off afterward.
 
Quote:

*snip*

Very thorough post; I really appreciate it. I have to admit, my knowledge on the Audigy line is relatively slim, because I basically skipped from a Live! Value straight to the X-Fi Prelude; this really helps with getting my head around when SRC is a factor and when it isn't. (And I thought both Live! and Audigy 1 cards could run "straight" if all DSP effects were off, while Audigy 2/4 just added a few driver-side features...leave it to Creative to never keep things straightforward.)

 

[obobskivich]

My understanding is that Creative didn't intend the SRC "bug" with the Audigy - if memory serves it was a timing glitch that home-studio enthusiasts noticed working with Audigy 1 era cards, and the complaints were fairly loud. I know Audigy 2 "fixed" the problem, but X-Fi handles it much better (the ring-topology is the "key"). Audigy 2 and ZS are more than drivers; sure you can flash things and make the computer think you have a 2 or ZS, but you don't have the hardware (2 is 6.1, ZS is I2S for example; you can't change that with a flash). 
Quote:

 

Well put. While I do wish I could confirm/deny this myself, I simply don't have the disposable income to purchase all sorts of sound cards just to test things like this and go through the effort to sell them off afterward.
 

Very thorough post; I really appreciate it. I have to admit, my knowledge on the Audigy line is relatively slim, because I basically skipped from a Live! Value straight to the X-Fi Prelude; this really helps with getting my head around when SRC is a factor and when it isn't. (And I thought both Live! and Audigy 1 cards could run "straight" if all DSP effects were off, while Audigy 2/4 just added a few driver-side features...leave it to Creative to never keep things straightforward.)

 

 

[LilBuck]

Quote:

Apparently the drivers don't let you you output the Dolby Headphone processed audio over S/PDIF, only the analog out.  Its all about the sound card and the drivers, not you DAC or amp.

I see, obob said if it was through S/PDIF it would be good to go, so you are saying it depends on the sound card? In the end if I cannot get a definitive answer I will probably just buy the xonar dg to try it since it is so cheap. i haven't bought the whole setup yet (which will probably be a few weeks esp if I go Shiit and have to wait for backorders) but I will report back hopefully with some results if  I do end up doing things that way.
 
Also when someone says S/PDIF, does that just mean any cable that lists itself S/PDIF?

 

[obobskivich]

S/PDIF is the interface, it can be carried via coax (any old RCA cable) or TOSlink (fibre). 
 
The "worst case" with the Xonar is that you'll send an analog signal out from it, into your amplifier. Nothing wrong with that. I can't find anything authoritative that says no Dolby Headphone via S/PDIF; I do know there's a lot of mythology about S/PDIF "bypassing" a soundcard and a bunch of other nonsense though. I'm skeptical, but it could be entirely possible (such a feature would be a driver problem or restriction, not anything to do with hardware, especially not with your downstream devices). 
 
Again, if it doesn't work (in which case, please do report back), you can use the analog output and be just fine.
 
Quote:

I see, obob said if it was through S/PDIF it would be good to go, so you are saying it depends on the sound card? In the end if I cannot get a definitive answer I will probably just buy the xonar dg to try it since it is so cheap. i haven't bought the whole setup yet (which will probably be a few weeks esp if I go Shiit and have to wait for backorders) but I will report back hopefully with some results if  I do end up doing things that way.
 
Also when someone says S/PDIF, does that just mean any cable that lists itself S/PDIF?

 

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

I see, obob said if it was through S/PDIF it would be good to go, so you are saying it depends on the sound card? In the end if I cannot get a definitive answer I will probably just buy the xonar dg to try it since it is so cheap. i haven't bought the whole setup yet (which will probably be a few weeks esp if I go Shiit and have to wait for backorders) but I will report back hopefully with some results if  I do end up doing things that way.
 
Also when someone says S/PDIF, does that just mean any cable that lists itself S/PDIF?

There's no technical reason why it can't be done but apparently its a licensing thing with Dolby.
 
S/PDIF is just a format to send audio data.  In theory you could send it over any kind of cable but it usually uses either an optical cable or a coaxial RCA cable.  I don't know what cards have which types but it should have one or the other.

 

[SniperCzar]

Brand new user's massive first post warning -
 
I've been picking up lots of audio equipment for a year or two now, most of it for free from friends/clients. Needless to say, that didn't give me much choice in components when putting my system together, but I think it turned out very very well. Now I'm looking to finally spend a little cash to better suit my system to my habits, those being FPS gaming, anime BD rips on my 9TB RAID media server, and a lot of music (mostly electronic/orchestral but some rock/alt as well.) My current collection is as follows:

Creative X-Fi Titanium Pro (picked up on sale for $20)
JVC RX-6020V receiver (picked up for free from my dad's friend)
Acoustic Research HC6 5.1 system (free from same person)
iPod video (free from a computer client, put in a new battery)
Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro 80s (picked up VERY lightly used for $130)
 
As you can see, I've got over a grand in equipment for so cheap I'd rather not pay more than $200 on additional amp/DACs. Here's the gear I'm currently considering, in order of interest:
 
FiiO E17
O2
Astro mixamp
ODA/ODAC
 
I think I've got my virtual surround needs fairly well met by the the X-Fi and the CMSS-Headphone paired with the 770s (opinions on that to follow), though I would definitely consider ditching it and taking the Astro over the FiiO's nice features if Dolby Headphone offers a noticeable improvement over CMSS. I don't do any console gaming at all. I'd really rather not invest in a second pair of headphones, as I find the current Beyers insanely comfortable compared to anything else I've ever tried to fit on my abnormally large head for long periods of time. That's not even mentioning the fact that they're built like a complete tank and survived a year coexisting with 50lbs of school books in my backpack during two seasons of bus travel for rowing regattas. The fact that they're awesome for directional audio and sound excellent are just added bonuses.
 
I've been playing around with the virtual surround settings and stumbled upon the easy way to counteract the intense muddiness of the bass on the Beyers when in CMSS mode. I've found in BF3 and in anime with 5.1 audio that disabling the sub frequencies entirely via VLC's  Audio>Audio Device>"2 front 2 rear" mode or unchecking the sub in the Windows speaker config utility reduces the overbearing bass for the very low sounds by 1/2 to 2/3 which really makes the Beyers a much more viable option under a PC vs on a console as I suspect MLE was reviewing them. For the more computer savvy users out there, I'm currently trying to find a method for changing audio device/creative console settings/windows speaker config all with one batch script and some .reg files for an easy method to switch all of these software layers over without a 20 click process, and I hope I can get it all functional without losing my mind. I'll probably post up a detailed writeup of all the different windows/creative/application combos and maybe even some recorded samples. What I'd really love from the community though is just a little feedback on a good amp/DAC combo that might improve my virtual surround as well as music.