[spacemanspliff]

Just tried this: Vista 64 bit> X-Fi Titanium >gaming mode> eax on >3d-cmss off> crystalizer off> 5.1 speakers> encoding dtc pc cinema> Boston acoustics avr 7120 DTS+ Dolby headphone 1

So far it works well. I need to try it with my borrowed Darths though with my cheap $20 tsc headphones, pretty damn good for COD2 fps.

 

[ear8dmg]

Good stuff. If you can - try 4.0 speaker mode (you need to override the speaker setting with Windows). That way MacroFX and Elevation filter still work and it still sounds great with Dolby Headphone.

IMO, unless you get an SVS realizer an X-Fi with external Dolby Headphone processor is pretty much the best option for gaming with headphones just now (at least IMO).

 

[spacemanspliff]

Ah cool. I will try the 4 speaker. Been using the 5.1 and headphones. 5.1 is pretty silly. I can hear distances of folks through whatever is on the map. Talk about raising some eyebrows lol. I don't cheat i swear. It just seems that way sometimes. Sound kills and great sound rampages.

 

[spacemanspliff]

I wonder how the x-fi takes a stereo source, the game, and makes it 5.1? I got a weird noise out of it this am. It sounded like the game was freezing up, stuck in a loop. Did not crash though.

 

[Edwood]

I long abandoned PC games for lack of true 5.1 sound.

There are a few sound cards that can encode Dolby Digital on the fly, though.

 

[ear8dmg]

What are you guys talking about? Pretty much every PC game has true surround sound these days. The PC has generally had full 5.1 since before the days of the original Xbox. If you set Windows and games to be stereo, they're stereo. If you set them to 5.1 they're 5.1. If you set them to 7.1 they're 7.1 etc. Game audio is generally done on the fly, within a simulated 3d environment. You have mono and stereo sound samples within that environment but they're located in 3d 'virtual space'.

Edwood - If you must have 5.1 over digital Dolby Digital Live and DTS connect are available. Even the most basic onboard sound (with a few exceptions) does 5.1 on analogue connection though.

The only problem is generally games that use the older DirectSound3D system, which no longer works as intended in Vista or W7. If you have an X-Fi, Audigy, or Xonar this is pretty much fixed by Asus and Creative respectively. For most Realtek HD or C-Media solutions it's sort of fixed (although not as thoroughly as the Creative / Asus solutions).

 

[KingStyles]

Quote:

I wonder how the x-fi takes a stereo source, the game, and makes it 5.1? I got a weird noise out of it this am. It sounded like the game was freezing up, stuck in a loop. Did not crash though.

You could always get an astro mixamp to take a load of processing off of your computer.

 

[spacemanspliff]

Not a bad idea. Can't I just do dts and let my receiver do the processing?

 

[KingStyles]

Sure, whatever makes you happy. Does your receiver output to headphones with dsp. A lot of times they can send 5.1 to speakers but dont have the capability to do dsp to take a 5.1 signal and use dsp to output a surround effect to standard headphones. Ill just throw this in there for the fun of it. You never can have to much info.
Quote:

: I'm a PC gamer; what does the A40 MixAmp do for me? A: To be honest, we originally developed the A40 MixAmp to give console gamers something that PC gamers have had all along -- unified voice and game sound. But being PC gamers, we quickly discovered that the A40 MixAmp gave us something we loved as PC gamers as well: dedicated, separate hardware for our music and voice communication. Much like discrete graphics, audio, or physics hardware free up CPU cycles and make our games run faster, offloading communication and music duties to the A40 made our games run faster and easier as well. No more Alt-Tabbing to change volume or tracks on the RAM-tastic iTunes -- we simply plugged in our mp3 players into the A40 and controlled everything at arm's length without interrupting our games. And with daisy-chained A40 MixAmps, we had a private, high-quality, full-duplex voice channel without fiddling with complicated and finicky software. Combine all that with the audiophile-grade headphone amplifier and we were instantly hooked.

 

[spacemanspliff]

Yeah. It seems to. It has Dolby Headphone when I use DTS + Dolby Headphone. Works good with your Darths. It is an issue if I use the X-Fi to do it. When I just go DTS and not Neo Pc which means the X-Fi doesn't do as much, it sounds better. No hiccups so far either.