[DJINFERNO806]

@purpleangel

It was discussed in the z series thread here and other forums that the soundstage and surround effect are different from the line outs.

It makes sense too if you think about it. The hrtf needed for headphones beside your ears would be different to those needed in front of you a good few feet.

@vague

It would be a decent setup however I'm not sure of the effect that amping the headphone out would have as its already amped.

 

[PurpleAngel]

@purpleangel

It was discussed in the z series thread here and other forums that the sound stage and surround effect are different from the line outs.

It makes sense too if you think about it. The hrtf needed for headphones beside your ears would be different to those needed in front of you a good few feet.

The Titanium HD can send CMSS-3D headphone surround sound thru it's front speaker jacks (RCA).
So was not sure if that feature was carried over the Z cards?

 

[DJINFERNO806]

I tried and it doesn't sound the same through the line out in the z at all. Directionality isn't the same from what I could tell.

However its not easy to tell what its supposed to do since sbx surround seems to be a feature for both speakers and headphones. Its not labelled like cmss3d headphones. Which sucks for the consumer.

 

[Flumphy]

Im deciding between these two:
 

• Asus Xonar U7: http://tweakers.net/pricewatch/340645/asus-xonar-u7.html
• Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi HD: http://tweakers.net/pricewatch/273674/creative-soundblaster-x-fi-hd.html

 
Asus has Dolby Home Theater v4.
Creative has THX TruStudio Pro.
 
I hear good thing about Dolby, but it also has some weird 'room' effect? 
Does the Dolby sound a bit muddy or is it as clear as the THX?
How good is the surround on THX?
 
Which one offers the best overal sound quality?
 
It will be used with an open headphone for competitive fps.
 
Greetings,

 

[Merzbro]

Hey I don't know if any of you guys watched the AMD GPU conference, but they announced that their new cards will support "AstoundSound" on a hardware level.
 
Never heard of this tech before but the demos sound pretty great.
 
http://astoundsound.net/technology.php

 

[SniperCzar]

Oh snap!

AMD just brought back HRTF-based PC sound processing!

Skip to ~4:30 when they start talking about TrueAudio - http://anandtech.com/show/7368/amd-gpu-product-showcase-live-blog

More news as it breaks...

EDIT: Beat by 25 seconds D:

 

[xero404]

Pretty happy that they announced that. The Presenters were so terrible though. 

 

[Fegefeuer]

Thief 4 will be using TrueAudio.

 

[xero404]

if its anything like the last theif games it'll sound amazing. 

 

[SniperCzar]

First details and hands-on impressions - http://anandtech.com/show/7370/amd-announces-trueaudio-technology-for-upcoming-gpus

 

[PurpleAngel]

  I'm deciding between these two:
 

• Asus Xonar U7: http://tweakers.net/pricewatch/340645/asus-xonar-u7.html
• Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi HD: http://tweakers.net/pricewatch/273674/creative-soundblaster-x-fi-hd.html

 
Asus has Dolby Home Theater v4.
Creative has THX TruStudio Pro.
I hear good thing about Dolby, but it also has some weird 'room' effect? 
Does the Dolby sound a bit muddy or is it as clear as the THX?
How good is the surround on THX?
Which one offers the best overal sound quality?
It will be used with an open headphone for competitive fps.

I'm not really knowledge enough about FPS to recommend one over the other, but you might try comparing other features of the Asus vs Creative, some other feature might be come the deciding factor.

 

[LB Felipe]

If there is no a PCIe slot for a sound card like the Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD or Sound Blaster ZxR, the Sound Blaster X-Fi HD (external USB) might be enough in terms of effects on FPS games?
 
What are the drawbacks to using it instead of those aforementioned PCIe versions?

 

[DJINFERNO806]

 
Oh snap!


AMD just brought back HRTF-based PC sound processing!


Skip to ~4:30 when they start talking about TrueAudio - http://anandtech.com/show/7368/amd-gpu-product-showcase-live-blog


More news as it breaks...


EDIT: Beat by 25 seconds D:

Lol i think you meant 3D coordinate based  HRTF?  Like directsound3d or OpenAL?  HRTF algorithms never went anywhere, they were just made from premixed signals.  Dolby Headphones, CMSS3D(fed from 5.1), SBX surround are examples of  these.


But ya, I am excited for this but at the same time as an Nvidia user, Im not

Question is, will this be useable from lets say my sound blaster zxr's headphone port?  Or only through motherboard jacks and USB devices?  The only way I can see this work through anything would be to do what RAZER does with its surround and creates a "virtual" sound devices in your control panel. 

So I get this correctly, AstoundSound is the technology behind AMD's TruAudio right?

P.S. Coincidence given AMD hardware and a dedicated spu in the Xbox one? On one hand Microsoft usually use their own API(XAUDIO updated version) but on the other hand it just seems so coincidental.

UPDATE:

Well the AstoundSound guy mentioned this will be available for windows and next gen consoles as well.

So seems that Xbox one will indeed feature this.

My theory is the new xaudio api for the console will allow hardware acceleration and 3d coordinates and its main method of HRTF will be astound sound.

 

[benbenkr]

And the weird coincidence is that the PS4 doesn't have anything similar to TrueAudio or the Xbox One's hardware audio...
 

 
Hmmm. As far as the ACP sounds, it's just a process that handles the audio to either the CPU or GPU. But has no hardware to do any sort of DSPs through it,  they will have to rely on a game engine (which means again, through wwise or fmod then) to do it.

 

[NamelessPFG]

Funny thing is, I've been thinking about GPU-processed audio ever since GPGPU designs started becoming a reality about six years ago. I mean, if they can trace rays of light, how about tracing waves of sound like Aureal did in the late 1990s?
 
However, if it's exclusive to ATI/AMD, that's going to be a problem. Vendor-specific graphics card tech rarely sees much adoption, like ATI's old TRUFORM tessellation tech back in the Radeon 8500 days. NVIDIA's PhysX is a strange exception, possibly because it can still run on the CPU, albeit inefficiently and at reduced detail.