jxalex wrote:

Errius wrote:

Does anyone use surround sound anymore? At one time that was going to be a big thing but then it all died away. The widespread use of headphones in online gaming probably has something to do with it.

...or the intensive use of laptops with their internal crappy speakers, and cellphones with their earphones has something to do with it? So, a proper stereo recording would be overkill for this already -- all the studio nitpicking and precision tweaks go unnoticed.

Probably.
Some people think that whatever comes out of their smartphone is really good quality when it sounds tinny like a crappy 1980s video game, and the smaller the speaker the better it sounds...clearly they never heard a good audio installation in their life. What also doesn't help is the predominance of music styles where the music solely comprises LOUD and THOUGHTLESS rhythmic drum and bass. Just yesterday I found a video for a GM module where someone said they would demonstrate what "this baby was capable of", and what followed was drab, mindless EDM that especially did not demonstrate what the module could do (garbage in, garbage out?).

Even on this forum I've seen people write that as most music today was "mono" high-end sound cards were "not needed". That makes me think two things:
1) Get better audio equipment, because if you hear everything as "mono" something is amiss.
2) If that doesn't help, listen to better music 🤣 .

I've also noticed that on my modern laptop the sound output is tweaked to emphasize bass - therefore completely destroying whatever semblance of balance the original record has. Youtube unfortunately seems to do something similar with some uploads, so videos on there can sound much deeper than the actual CD does (listening to both with the same headphones).

Well I don't know... what kinda GM module was this? I mean if you manage to get impressive EDM out of some run of the mill GM module not using very high quality samples or waveforms, etc then yeah I'd be pretty impressed with that....

I used to be into surround sound and all that stuff myself, but outside of gaming and movies it really doesn't have much practical use. Even in gaming a lot of positional queues can be achieved over stereo anyway. Although I always found the claim from people that they can hear people running up behind them when using headphones (and I mean specifically, like, behind them) to be dubious at best. That kind of positional encoding would be great to have, we have seen some really need tech demos for such technologies but nothing has ever really come to market or been used. But when I used to have surround I really appreciated the neat effects that unfortunately, were rarely used well in games. There is something to be said for playing World of Tanks and hearing artillery shells come in overhead, from behind. (I think that was a usermod though)

However, Surround gear is just annoying. I got rid of all mine. My current audio setup consists of a Pioneer SX-636, A turntable, Pioneer S-500X speakers, and a newly added Polk PSW10 sub. Once I get the spare cash I'm getting a miniDSP 2x4HD and calling it done. I run everything through the system even PC sound. Multimedia sounds great, music is alright (need that DSP to fix some stuff), youtube works pretty well... the only thing I could do is get better speakers if I had the extra room for them.

If you're concerned about the neutrality of sound on a laptop or something, you could always look for a good, quality, compact USB device.

Errius wrote:

Does anyone use surround sound anymore? At one time that was going to be a big thing but then it all died away. The widespread use of headphones in online gaming probably has something to do with it.

Surround sound in gaming has definitely taken a few steps backward from where it was heading in the late 90's to early 2000's. But Microsoft really shoved the knife in deep with Vista when they deprecated DirectSound to only support stereo output and killed EAX. OpenAL did help for a time, but eventually sound cards became rare, onboard audio included surround output, and game developers who still supported surround sound moved onto other APIs (Xaudio2, FMOD and Miles outputting via MMdevice or WASAPI, etc.).

It is now more common to see a console connected to a surround sound system than a PC. The market for PCs with surround sound systems is so small that many game developers just ignore it. I think DirectSound3D was a significant catalyst for growing 3D sound on the PC, but Microsoft killed it once they were making more money on an Xbox game sold than a PC game sold.

the SB LIve, Audigy cards have 3 stereo outputs, yet no programs which can use them as multitrack output. Was it ever meant to be used this way?

I use Sennheiser usb surround headphones, does that count? 😜

DirectSound and XAudio2 are parts of DirectX and do all their DSP in software. CPUs are powerful enough these days that this is possible. A lot of audio is pre-baked, and playing back buffers is cheap. So all sound devices do in computers these days is provide a DAC.

The reason we still need video cards is, CPUs can't handle the massive parallelism required to do the same for graphics at the fidelity we demand. And unlike audio, we haven't hit a point with video where any further increases in pixel density are indistinguishable.

What I can't wait for is GPUs being used as audio DSPs.

SaxxonPike wrote:

What I can't wait for is GPUs being used as audio DSPs.

That should not be too difficult to implement. You already have OpenCL and most/all new video cards have built in audio output through HDMI.

Don't know if one of you guys works for the 'Tech of Tomorrow' youtube channel but I saw this in my Youtube feed - and it's basically the same topic - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWqip0qw2LA

BinaryDemon wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWqip0qw2LA

I think it's more like this: Most people care more about performance and graphics than sound. Currently on-board sound is "good enough" for most, unlike back in the days there's a huge difference.

That's really what it boils down to. Humans are visual creatures. Sound is an afterthought.

(If dogs played computer games, their rigs would have overpowered sound cards and feeble graphics cards.)

I still need to watch this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWqip0qw2LA, strangely posted the day before this thread was started. Why does everyone have soundcards on the brain?

I got into surround sound when Aureal came out with sound cards and ended up buying 2 sets of 2.1 Boston Acoustics speakers to play games on. Around the same time home audio had DTS Digital Surround CDs and SACD. A good DTS CD sounds great on a 5.1 stereo system but the format didn't last that long.

One thing I hated about the switch to 5.1 stereo and the home theater craze was the end of decent cheap massed produced stereo speakers for playing rock at decent volumes. Now you are stuck with speakers with 10" or dual 8" and a powered subwoofer. I kind of miss the old JBL, Kenwood, Infinity, Technics floor standing 3 way stereo speakers with 15" bass.

Onboard sound is decent enough these days since they got rid of the low SNR and gave you 5.1 plus all the cheap 5.1 speakers you can buy. I have 3 sets of 5.1 speakers I keep around for gaming plus some old Audigy 2 cards for the older systems. If it wasn't for speakers what would Creative be selling these days? Some of the older THX 5.1 computer speakers I have still sound decent.

Everyone? Not here!

Onboard sound, high SNR???

My primary desktop has an RME HDSPe MADI FX with MADI fiber optic to a Ferrofish A32 😈

But my primary DOS system has an onboard ES688 - modern onboard sound might get high SNR compared to that 🤣

Yea, my Core2 Duo motherboard had an Analog Devices onboard chip, which had optical SPDIF out, and realtime 5.1 DTS encoding of any surround audio.
So I had a fully digital 5.1 surround signal path with high fidelity.

At what point did the signal to noise ratio, etc. improve to the point where a normal listener with, say 320kb mp3s and decent average computer speakers, would not find it worth it to add in a secondary sound card?

Pentium 4 era? Pentium D? Core2 duo? i3-xxxx?

It is Core2 for me. I retired my Audigy 2 ZS (that I was using with my AMD Athlon 64 PC) when I upgraded into a Core 2 system (Asus P5Q Premium) in 2009. I was using XP (used it till 2013) and had PCI slots on the board, I just didn't bother

Cobra42898 wrote:

At what point did the signal to noise ratio, etc. improve to the point where a normal listener with, say 320kb mp3s and decent average computer speakers, would not find it worth it to add in a secondary sound card?

Pentium 4 era? Pentium D? Core2 duo? i3-xxxx?

I generally stuck with onboard sound in the Pentium 4 era. I never really saw an advantage to it and I only played casual games back then.

I installed a Sound Blaster Live! in my Dell Dimension 4600 to see if it had any improvement for recording audio from line in (I used it to rip songs from cassettes), I can't really say for certain since I haven't bothered with the onboard sound, but it worked really well.

David_OSU wrote:

Surround sound in gaming has definitely taken a few steps backward from where it was heading in the late 90's to early 2000's....It is now more common to see a console connected to a surround sound system than a PC. The market for PCs with surround sound systems is so small that many game developers just ignore it.

Indeed. I think one of the biggest problems for surround sound for PC (without headphones) is the speaker setup. I can understand people using their home theater with a game console as the whole setup can be used for TV and movies too, but it would be rather difficult to position your PC in that environment. I also suspect most people wouldn't want to add another 4.0/5.1 setup to their home for that same reason. I myself would need 2 of those, one for my main rig and another for retro use and that would be insane. Using surround headphones is completely understandable in this regard and I've seen many new PC speaker setups as being only 2.1 sets.