L33t Masta
Gawd
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2008
- Messages
- 605
Whats the next big audio card that everyoe is talking about? Is Creative releasing anything new?
![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
What's Next?
- Thread starter L33t Masta
- Start date
NKDietrich
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- Jul 25, 2004
- Messages
- 5,442
Haven't heard about anything.
Which is weird, the X-Fi has been out for ages now. You'd think they'd try and find some way to milk people even more. Especially since so many people are just using onboard.
Which is weird, the X-Fi has been out for ages now. You'd think they'd try and find some way to milk people even more. Especially since so many people are just using onboard.
Got a summary?
I really don't see how sound can be "improved" in any way. I was hoping my X-Fi XtremeGamer would give me an ear orgasm after hearing new sounds but the only spectacular difference I've heard is the sound of the rain hitting the windshield while playing Flight Simulator 2004. It actually sounded real like it does when it hits the windshield of my car. That was cool.
Right now, '3D sound' is essentially a bunch of mimicry. The X-Fi processor uses a palette of generic effects (reverb, chorus, filters and others) layered on top of existing voices. Defining how the reverb sounds is like trying to define the acoustic properties of a fake environment, and sounds don't actually interact with any surfaces as they do in real life. Wave tracing is what's required to make believable audio much more realistic and accurate -- modeling the way sound waves would interact with the environment dynamically -- and manufacturers have abandoned the concept of wave tracing for now.
Instead of just defining how big a room is, which is basically what you do with EAX, the wave tracing algorithm shoots out a number of traces which make a number of bounce passes off of various surfaces (surfaces would be defined as being wood, metal, stone, carpet and so on, and would accurately reflect the actual acoustic properties of those materials). These bounces could be used to determine what values to send to a reverb processor so that the reverb is fairly accurate to how it would sound to the player at that exact position at that exact moment, or, if enough traces are done, each bounce could be voiced, filtered and equalized to achieve an extreme level of accuracy. When you move from one room to another, the depiction of sound would be accurately maintained, whereas with EAX and the X-Fi, it just blends between two different statically-defined environments -- you go from a small hallway to a theater-sized environment almost instantly. You might have noticed by now how poorly this works.
Other EAX effects like elevation and occlusion are also just mimics (though the elevation part isn't that hard to get right). Wave tracing would allow the actual effects of a piece of cloth in front of the sound source to be calculated pretty accurately.
There's still a lot of potential for improvement. The DACs might not improve that much, but what gets to the DACs still leaves a lot to be desired. Killzone 2's supposed to have some sort of wave tracing engine, but I don't know how complex it is, so it might not be any kind of model for how well wave tracing could work.
Instead of just defining how big a room is, which is basically what you do with EAX, the wave tracing algorithm shoots out a number of traces which make a number of bounce passes off of various surfaces (surfaces would be defined as being wood, metal, stone, carpet and so on, and would accurately reflect the actual acoustic properties of those materials). These bounces could be used to determine what values to send to a reverb processor so that the reverb is fairly accurate to how it would sound to the player at that exact position at that exact moment, or, if enough traces are done, each bounce could be voiced, filtered and equalized to achieve an extreme level of accuracy. When you move from one room to another, the depiction of sound would be accurately maintained, whereas with EAX and the X-Fi, it just blends between two different statically-defined environments -- you go from a small hallway to a theater-sized environment almost instantly. You might have noticed by now how poorly this works.
Other EAX effects like elevation and occlusion are also just mimics (though the elevation part isn't that hard to get right). Wave tracing would allow the actual effects of a piece of cloth in front of the sound source to be calculated pretty accurately.
There's still a lot of potential for improvement. The DACs might not improve that much, but what gets to the DACs still leaves a lot to be desired. Killzone 2's supposed to have some sort of wave tracing engine, but I don't know how complex it is, so it might not be any kind of model for how well wave tracing could work.
matrix563
Fully [H]
- Joined
- Sep 1, 2006
- Messages
- 19,136
the prelude (xfi) looks just like the xonar(asus) (inputs on back). they aren't both based on the x-fi chip are they? 
L33t Masta
Gawd
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2008
- Messages
- 605
So really, there is no next big thing in audio cards right now...the X-FI Plat I just got and installed is basically it.
Well I'm sure Creative has something under development, but who knows what it is? For gaming, yes the X-Fi (and I include the Prelude in this) is as good as it gets. If it is just converter quality you care about, you can do much better than an X-Fi by getting a pro card. However, they aren't going to have any acceleration for games at all. How much this matters depends. Some games, especially some newer ones, do it all in software anyhow so the X-Fi isn't getting you anything. Others make extensive use of hardware processing and the EAX extensions if they are available.
So at this point that is pretty much it. In your case you could get an Elite Pro or a PRelude if you wanted to get higher quality converters/opamps but it still has the same DSP as all the other X-Fis. For games, there just isn't anything better. You can find a few other high end soundcards with powerful DSPs on board, but they are amazingly expensive, and games don't know how to use them so they'd do you no good for that.
PCMusicGuy
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2006
- Messages
- 1,222
The way I read it is that EAX 5.0 may be supported in software, meaning it will not be hardware accelerated like the X-Fi series cards can do.
I'd think it would mention the X-Fi processor specifically somewhere if it supported EAX 5.0. Hmm.
From what I understand, EAX 5.0's licensing costs are so prohibitive so that outside vendors wouldn't even think about implementing it on any non-Creative chip. I think it probably is a typo -- they probably mean EAX 2.0, which is the latest open version of EAX. If they mean that it supports EAX 5.0 in software, then be prepared for a pretty hefty performance hit with that.
From what I understand, EAX 5.0's licensing costs are so prohibitive so that outside vendors wouldn't even think about implementing it on any non-Creative chip. I think it probably is a typo -- they probably mean EAX 2.0, which is the latest open version of EAX. If they mean that it supports EAX 5.0 in software, then be prepared for a pretty hefty performance hit with that.
This is just my guess, but I'm thinking there will be a whole new wave of features coming out. Features like PCIe and HDMI will be sure to come... Perhaps in a few years or more we can look forward to lossless audio for games?
Lossless audio is not that likely any time soon. It just takes a lot of damn space. Take speech for example. You can get speech that sounds really good at about 64k. I mean even listening on good gear it is hard to tell it is compressed. So that gives about .5MB/minute to store it. Cool, that means you can have a whole lot. 10 hours would only be 281MB. Now suppose you want to do the same thing lossless. You take 44.1kHz 16-bit mono PCM. That is 5MB/minute. 10 times as much. That'd mean your 10 hours of speech would now use 2.8GB, which is a non-trivial amount of space on a DVD. Same deal with music. An hour of music @ 192kbps, which is quite high quality even if you aren't listening to it in the background of other effects, is 84MB or so. Same audio as uncompressed CD-quality PCM is more like 600MB.
Now for a lot of reasons, it is desirable to keep games to one DVD in size. So you would have a hard time selling to a publisher that you went over one DVD just because you didn't want to compress the audio.
Even if you start to worry about having really high end sound, compressed audio is still probably the way to go. With reasonable compression rates, it is simply very hard to tell apart from uncompressed on all but the most high end gear (which people don't generally have). You also have to add to it that in a game there's lots of sounds going on at the same time. You aren't going to need the same detail in music that is in the background of explosions as you are when it is all you are listening to.
Sycraft is dead on. I'm doing some sound design for an independent project, and we're targeting ~96kbps VBR Vorbis for mono files and ~160kbps VBR for stereo files (musical cues, mostly) at 44.1kHz. With an extremely well-optimized encoder like AoTuV beta 5, very few people could hope to ABX the encoded files against their lossless counterparts.
The problem isn't lossy coding, it's that developers are pushing bit rates down too low to pack in everything onto a single DVD or to push content through the digital distribution channels. The average bitrate of Doom 3's audio is about 40kbps, and you can easily make out compression artifacts (they desperately need to re-release this game for that reason -- try playing it on good headphones some time). Oblivion's speech files are as low as you can realistically go without making speech unintelligible -- but the all of the SFX are actually lossless. Older games would simply drop the bit depth or sampling rate, going down to 8-bit/11.025kHz PCM or 4-bit ADPCM for speech.
Blu-ray should hopefully change things a bit, but that won't really happen for another couple years.
The problem isn't lossy coding, it's that developers are pushing bit rates down too low to pack in everything onto a single DVD or to push content through the digital distribution channels. The average bitrate of Doom 3's audio is about 40kbps, and you can easily make out compression artifacts (they desperately need to re-release this game for that reason -- try playing it on good headphones some time
). Oblivion's speech files are as low as you can realistically go without making speech unintelligible -- but the all of the SFX are actually lossless. Older games would simply drop the bit depth or sampling rate, going down to 8-bit/11.025kHz PCM or 4-bit ADPCM for speech.Blu-ray should hopefully change things a bit, but that won't really happen for another couple years.
That's why I gave the time scale of a couple years. With the advent of blu-ray, there would be plenty of space if they chose to go uncompressed. Again, I'm just thinking of what an upgrade could be. Especially with 1TB drives becoming more affordable
I'm sure they will pull some marketing jargon like they did with the X-Fi XtremeAudio. Give the X-Fi a new name and tell people it's something different.
I do see HDMI and PCIe in the near future though. Auzentech is already working on it. The add-in HDMI board in a few months will be nice.
It'll be more than a couple years for it to change anything. The problem isn't if it is available, but if it is widespread. You might notice that DVD games were fairly rare on computers until the last few years. The problem is that there was still a non-trivial number of systems with only CD readers.
Well, same deal again here. Games won't start largely going Blu-ray until most computers have a Blu-ray drive.
Well, same deal again here. Games won't start largely going Blu-ray until most computers have a Blu-ray drive.
Yep. Just snagged myself a Prelude in anticipation for the HDMI X-Tension, though it'll be a shame to not use those very nice DACs they're nice enough to put on itI do see HDMI and PCIe in the near future though. Auzentech is already working on it. The add-in HDMI board in a few months will be nice.
And we dealt with that multi-format model for a while not long ago either (still going in some capacity too, I presume). I own at least five games that had a DVD variant available at the time yet I didn't own a DVD drive, so I had to get the 3, 4 or 5 CD version.
This time it's unlikely to be quite as bad, I think. I'd expect to see games with two, possibly three DVDs or as a single Blu-ray. Likely enough for lossless audio, but still probably a waste of space in my opinion. Mono/stereo 16/48kHz Vorbis at 256kbps should be transparent to just about anyone on the planet except with very particular killer samples, and it still offers a good compression ratio. That's about 39 hours of audio per single-layer DVD (excluding header/container data, so figure ~38 hours) if my math isn't completely fucked. Lossless audio would require around three times more space if it were losslessly encoded and around four or five times as much space if it were unencoded.
Yep. Just snagged myself a Prelude in anticipation for the HDMI X-Tension, though it'll be a shame to not use those very nice DACs they're nice enough to put on it
Ah, you made me think of something else. DDL and DTS:Live is just now getting more common. Lossless will unlikely be any time soon because they would have to encode into DTS:HD or DDTrueHD
A majority of gamers still use computer speakers or headphones so unlikely they would notice (if any) as much a difference as those with a mid-high end HTPC audio.And you are right about blu-ray discs. Many people still don't have DVD drives (why not? spend $200 on a video card but not $15 on a dvd drive? lol), and it will be some time before blu-ray drives are common. Blu drives can be had for less than $150, so within a few years that should drop significantly. (and you are right about getting the CD version instead - the stupid DVD encryption [starfarce] was a pain!)
It's possible to encode any type of lossless audio to lossy Dolby Digital or DTS. The cards are responsible for encoding to those formats, and developers can use any kind of audio format they want (WAV, OGG Vorbis, AAC, etc.) In reality, using lossless audio for games is advantageous because the audio won't be subjected to two lossy encoders that use different perceptual models for those people using DTS Connect or DDL -- just the one.
L33t Masta
Gawd
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2008
- Messages
- 605
So until we start using anotherformat other than DVDfor lossless audio, do you think there will be a major audio upgrade like the X-FI?
My guess is probably not. Most likely what is going to happen is games are going to start using Xaudio more, which is purely software audio processing. Given how powerful processors are getting, and that Vista doesn't support hardware acceleration of DS3D and that Creative is the only company that has ever really been doing much with hardware acceleration, I think it is likely that software processing will become the standard.
AdmiralFlameberg
Gawd
- Joined
- Dec 24, 2006
- Messages
- 565
Unless they start getting Alchemy to convert xAudio into openAl.
L33t Masta
Gawd
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2008
- Messages
- 605
I recently aquired an X-FI Plat and it's really blown me away as to what it can do. Alchemy brings surround sound back into Vista (even though I never really noticed it left) and gives it a pretty good boost. Don't you thinkthat they would be kind of stupid to not allow their cards full compatibilty with the new OpenAL sound system onf Windows? (I'm pretty sure it's OpenAL).
The problem isn't Creative, the problem is the game developers. OpenAL only works if the game uses OpenAL. It is one option for how to implement your sound system. However there are other options. the one Microsoft is now pushing is Xaudio and it is 100% software. There's nothing for the X-Fi to accelerate.
That is what I believe is going to happen: Games are just going to start going the all software audio route and so it won't matter that the X-Fi is capable of accelerating audio, they just won't make use of it.
That is what I believe is going to happen: Games are just going to start going the all software audio route and so it won't matter that the X-Fi is capable of accelerating audio, they just won't make use of it.
Asus and Creative both have PCIe x1 cards out. Neither have hardware acceleration of 3D audio. See two good reviews (the first is a good comparison of recent sound cards on Vista.)
http://techreport.com/articles.x/13874/1
http://www.elitebastards.com/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=496&Itemid=27
Asus's offering stands up really well in terms of sound quality. However, hardware-accelerated EAX effects are still a factor in today's games; even some recent ones that are OpenAL use the Environmental Extensions if you can run them. Asus can't do this yet.
Even if XAudio is pushed hard Creative can still 'extend' this API with some version of EAX that is run in hardware; it just depends on how much game developers are supporting the process. So far they are, so for now EAX hardware acceleration is the decision point for me.
Negative Decibel
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2005
- Messages
- 3,588
wow. is x-fi really that great? I have not had the opportunity to hear the difference. The last sound card I owned was a generic sound blaster 16 clone in my Cyrix 486-dx2 80mhz rig. Ever since then, every computer I owned has had onbord sound cards, and I must say, I have been perfectly happy with them so far. I have gotten better quality sound by purchasing better speakers, but would x-fi make that huge of a difference to me?
It can make a real big difference in games that use it properly. It handles things like room reflections, occlusion (sound happening behind a wall or the like) and such things. Does a pretty damn good job, especially with newer EAX revisions.
How much of a difference it makes depends on the game. If you take a game that's 100% software processing, like say Call of Duty 4, then it'll make no difference. Well, I suppose it might sound a tiny bit better due to better electronics, but no major differences. However if it is a game that uses OpenAl and EAX fully, like Quake 4 or something, then it'll be a major step up.
L33t Masta
Gawd
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2008
- Messages
- 605
Yea it really is. I used to be perfectly happy with what I had before on my 680i for an onboard sound card. Then it broke and I bought an X-FI Platnium. A whole world of diference on movies, music, games and everything. It's like on that one episode of Corner gas where they used to drink the $10 wine and be happy with it, then someone brought over a $50 bottle and then when they tasted the $10 wine again they realized it was crap. Only the $10 wine = onboard and the $50 wine = X-FI. It's wonderful to hear much richer bass. Bass is my sex.
I get the willies everytime someone mentions a type of fish and sex in the same sentence.
I get the heebie jeebies when somebody mentions "willie", fish, and sex in the same sentence.
Review of the Creative 'X-Fi' PCI-e - my above summary is accurate - basically no hardware acceleration on an x1 PCI-e slot.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/sound/505/
http://www.guru3d.com/article/sound/505/