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What Happened To PC Gaming Audio? 131

Posted by simoniker from the beep-beep dept.
Thanks to The Adrenaline Vault for its feature discussing why computer audio has become a critically undervalued part of a PC purchase. The author indicates the worry that "computer audio is taken for granted, and that other components make the difference between high- and low-end systems", and voices concern that "most new [PC] computer games - including major releases - don't take advantage in any significant way of the capabilities of the latest generation of audio cards." He ends with the heartfelt wish: "I'm waiting for the day when I hear someone say, 'That game sounds so great, I have to buy it!' I hope people become more educated about audio so they can talk about it with the same enthusiasm that they discuss 3D video hardware acceleration or high definition plasma screens."
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What Happened To PC Gaming Audio? More

What Happened To PC Gaming Audio?

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  • guys, the target audience, experience love with their eyes, girls with their ears, or so the old saying goes, paraphrased for lack of decent memory

  • Hidden and Dangerous (Score:4, Informative)

    by gkelman ( 665809 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @03:24AM (#9450003) Homepage Journal
    H&D 1 had surround sound support and it's years and years old. It was fabulous, you could hear yourself getting shot from all sorts of directions.

    • Re:Hidden and Dangerous (Score:2, Informative)

      by kb ( 43460 )
      Even DOOM 1 had surround sound. Had to find that out when we were playing deathmatch, I had my Dolby surround system with me and suddenly a chainsaw went on directly behind me. Talk about being scared ;)
      • errr... I don't think this is true. Pretty certain Doom didn't have 3D audio. It used *midis*, for crying out loud. Half the games released TODAY don't even support 3d audio correctly.

  • It's not dead! It's just pining! (Score:5, Informative)

    by obeythefist ( 719316 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @03:28AM (#9450025) Journal
    But seriously.

    Recently I bought a Creative Labs Audigy 2ZX, a reasonably good quality gaming card, sitting just below professional audio specifications.

    The Audigy 2 ZX supports EAX4 and EAX3 audio standards. EAX3 makes a tremendous difference in 5.1 audio output when gaming, it's very precise and the environmental effects are amazing to listen to. The quality of output is vastly superior to any onboard sound solution.

    Nonetheless, very few games use EAX3, I don't know of any that use EAX4. But for the games that do, the difference is noticeable.

    Also, the Audigy ZX is very independant of the CPU when gaming, so when you do play games with full audio, you get better performance from your hardware. Many review sites run benchmarks with the audio disabled for the game, just to remove that area of confusion - however this makes benchmarks even more obfuscated from real world performance.

    So there are two reasons why you can benefit from a little spending on your game audio. But unless you're a particularly hardcore audiophile, most mainboards have onboard 5.1 sound nowadays. So no real need to splurge, unless you want the luxury, or the cutting edge responsiveness from your hardware, or the trippy environmental effects.
    • Not just the Audigy ZX, but Creative cards in general are very good at not being CPU-abusers.

      Mainboard audio is generally good for most people because they don't spend several hundred dollars on speakers that you can actually notice a difference on, so it's not just a "hardcore" thing.
    • Yes, Creative has nice sound treatment, like EAX 3+, however, they keep them to themselves as a competitive argument and by doing so, they are slowing their market adoption.

      Before them, you had also A3D2, which was actually coupled with the geometry environment to generate the sound (so, real 3D, but at the expanse of huge bandwidth).

      Also, Onboard sound has probably improved more in the past 5 years than dedicated cards. Except for the cards in the ~$100 range, most onbard can cope. And Intel is pushing f

  • It's the drivers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Nutter9182 ( 621637 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @03:34AM (#9450058) Homepage
    The answer is very simple - audio drivers are *SO* incredibly bad that they can't be relied upon for anything more than the absolute bare minimum functions.

    Working at a well known PC game studio, we (and many other studios) have had to implement all audio mixing in software, only using the soundcard for raw playback.

    That wonderful audio card you have? It's no more useful than on-board audio.
    Don't like the situation? Neither do we - blame Creative and the other manufacturers who constantly pump out junk drivers.
    • Crazy drunk drivers!


      Sorry, I saw Back to the future yesterday...

    • Soundblasters used to be required. Now they are more a pain then a gain. I have often found that a really crash prone game can be saved by the simple removal of the soundblaster from my system.

      The sound is a little bit better when it is in use and the game makes proper use of it so I sometimes put it back in for certain games but I am certainly not going to buy another one.

      Creative get your bloody act together and write some decent drivers.

      You are loosing a customer who has had every soundblaster upto an

      • Praise the lord. I'm an audiophile, so says my 300$ sound card. I use the onboard sound of my NForce2 system for games n'stuff because the pro card doesn't do 3D. I can hear a slight difference in dynamic range if I do A-B comparisons, otherwise the onboard is just fine to me. Oh, maybe that's because I run it straight digital through a high-end DAC into my mixer, crossover and then to the amps.

        But yeah, even the analog outs are better than SBLive. Nothing like cheap ECS boards where you hear the AGP
        • If you can hear the AGP bus humming in your PCI audio card, you need to move the audio card to the far slot. AGP is always at the top of the board (at least on every board I've seen). Put your audio card in the bottom slot.

          This will accomplish two things. The first is that it will put distance between that 350 hojillion Hz GPU and your APU generating 20kHz signals. The second thing is, it puts the audio card on a PCI bus that's more than likely unused. PCI only supports 3 slots per bus. Most motherboards h
    • Oh so have to agree with this. I loathe Creative Labs and their half-assed devices, if only because of pathetic driver support.

      I once splurged and tried the Audigy when it first came out. 48 hours later I was paying a restocking fee to get it out of my sight. It wouldn't grok my 4.1 speakers, insisted on 5.1 (which means anything panned dead-center was mute on my system). The ASIO would crash/stutter consistently, and it didn't sound nearly as good as they claimed.

      I went out and bought a Midiman Audio
    • Drivers have a lot to do with it. Those of us that bought Soundblaster cards from Dell know all about this as we see non-OEM cards getting driver upgrades, but our non-standard OEM card does not, making the sound in games such as Neverwinter Nights to suck. A year later, we finally get an upgrade, but only after the support message boards are flooded with scathing complaints.

      The other issue is setups. You know, number of speakers and their arrangement. The game/driver has to be able downmix the sound

    • May I suggest you look into the KX driver project, available at http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/index.php?language=e n [lugosoft.com]

      I have been using this driver as a replacement for the sucky Creative drivers for years now. The difference in performance and features is simply astounding. Works particularly well for low latency applications such as Cubase or Reason, although I see no reason why gaming would not benefit also.

      • have you (or anyone) ever had problems with IRQ sharing in winXP and the sound card screaching? would love to know if it fixes that. I am a little worried about disabling acpi but it seems that is the only solution left...
        • A lot of people spread this myth that IRQ sharing and/or APCI cause sound and video slowdowns or problems; that's mostly a lot of bollocks. If your sound card is having trouble, most of the time it's due to poor PCI traffic management by your southbridge. I had a VIA KT400 (or whatever) chipset motherboard a while back, paired up with a Creative Audigy Deluxe, and a Promise IDE controller. Any time I started to copy files to/from the drive connected to the promise controller, my sound would skip and pop and
  • I can see where your coming from with this article but really when you think about it, sound is just not that big of an issue, in games or any other application.

    Given that most people will listen to games with headphones or a set of desktop speakers, what is the point of improving sound quality. The classic example, I think, is Metal Gear Solid 2. Apparently in parts of the game dolby surround sound was of a major advantage in game. But who even HAS surround sound? No-one I know. And who on EARTH has surround sound on their PC?

    Most people also aren't big into sound quality. The tone deaf masses usually encode at 128kbps and like it! (I know I do) Top this off with the fact that even stereo sound is technically quite difficult to implement and that most programmers aren't versed in phonic theory, you can see why most users could buy a ten year old sound card and see no loss of quality.

    (N.B. The author still thinks music from old sonic games is groovy. As such its comments should be modded down at the earliest possible moment.) :E

    • since the huge price drop in 5.1 surround speaker sets (As low as 50!), it should be common place by now. A decent card/speaker combo (sb live 5.1 + creative 5.1) could be had for 150; not that expensive when you consider how much it improves watching dvd and playing games. Maybe the biggest problem is with the setup, I am still waiting for an affordable wireless speaker set, since the cables all over the place really annoy me.
      • God sound cards should cost no more than $20 there is sufficient power in the mobo now to run any system.

        I run Logitech Z540 from my Asus A7n8x Deluxe (Soundstorm) and it sounds fantastic.

        I got surround sound for my movies, doesn't matter much since they are mostly encoded in XviD (DivX sucks dude :)).

        People who buy an audigy 2 are wasting money and it's pretty sick. Put a little money in on some decent speakers and keep the rest for upgrades and popcorn, you don't need 256 channels, and half a frame i
        • Maybe I don't need "half a frame" (whatever that is supposed to mean) in games, but I do "need" the world's best gaming soundcard. Thief 3 is the perfect example. I couldn't IMAGINE playing that game without being able to tell WHERE the gurads are just by listening. I'd much rather run the game in 800x600 or 640x480 than have to endure useless non-positional audio. You're not going to get that with your onboard sound chip. Sure, your XVIDS and MP3s will "sound fine", but they'd also "sound fine" on a S

      • Re:Sounds Good enough to me! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by AllUsernamesAreGone ( 688381 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @05:59AM (#9450578)
        Price isn't the only factor involved. For example, I could go out and by a 5.1 or better system right now but I don't, in fact I only ever use headphones.

        Why? Well for a start, housemates would be less than happy about me playing half my games at ridiculous times in the morning on a surround sound system. Then there is the fact that, with thow machines in the room, the fan noise would make any low volume sounds inaudible. I'm certain I'm not the only person here in this situation. Yeah, I'd love to have a good 5.1 setup but until I get a soundproof room with watercooled machines getting one would be pointless.

        Until then, it's headphones.
    • i have surround sound on my pc, but couldnt ever imagine actually diving in and getting it for my tv. i like it for my pc, because i enjoy hearing bullet shots from all round in counterstrike.. but have never seen a REALLY good implentation, and no matter what, it doesnt fool me that much...
    • A friend of mine back at school has 2 5.1 surround setups in his apartment, one for his pc, and the other on the huge tv his parents bought him. It pisses me off, especially when he starts rambling on about "the morons who don't realize how great surround sound is." Yeah, or the normal people who can't afford a $400+ price just to hear something a little clearer and coming from behind you.

      Am I really the only one sick of this "must have the best everything in my pc" movement? You can have your $400 5.1

      • I went to target and bought a $100 system made by Yamaha (well, sold by them) which has 5.1 digital. It only has coaxial in and is absolutely intolerant of low-voltage SPDIF so I can't use it on my PC until I get a real power supply - my 5V is more like 4.77. SPDIF is specified at 5V but I don't know what range it's supposed to allow - regardless the yamaha won't allow diddly. Works fine with my panasonic DVD player, though, and it came with a full set of teensy speakers including a cute little subwoofer. T
    • And who on EARTH has surround sound on their PC?

      A lot of people who bought 4-speaker or 5.1-speaker sound cards, that's who. I run my ASUS A7N8X Deluxe's SP/DIF output into a receiver and play stuff in 5.1

      As a side note, it seems more and more games _are_ handling audio better. Max Payne 2 sends all "vocal" content to the center channel (like a movie) if you have 5.1 -- True Crime does something similiar. Counter-Strike works in 5.1 mode via EAX emulation. Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic also utili
    • Hey, I have a 5.1 sound system. It was cheap at $80. It rivals my stereo systems for bass. Why not have surround sound?
    • I think that anyone with a recent home theatre system has surround sound capabilities. At home, my PS2 is hooked up to my receiver via an optical cable. I use surround sound whenever possible. It definitely makes the experience cooler, particularly for games such as SOCOM 2. It's pretty handy knowing you're being shot from behind. I don't have surround sound hooked up to my PC. My PC is in my bedroom and I'm not sure where I would put those extra speakers. But I do use a nice 2.1 speaker set.
    • Man, I thought everybody had that. Last time I went to buy PC speakers (two years ago) I picked up a cheapo logitech set with four surround speakers and a subwoofer for $50. I guess I hang out with too many other gaming dorks. Beyond movie-watching, it's a large help in games, as you can tell by sound which direction someone is shooting at you from.

    • This was a good post. However, I respectfully disagree. Much of the love (ok, slight obsession, but that's really none of your business) with Half-Life that kept me playing that game far longer than was sane, were the sound effects, the sound map laid over the entire game experience. It really doesn't make any difference to me what level of Dolby SurroundSound is used. I use headphones, and I use them exclusively. What matters to me is, does the sound in the game enhance the game play, or is it tacked on be

      • Yeah, HL was th bomb for sound. And this article guy is sort of mistiming his complaints: all the big next gen games are going to be doing some amazing things with sound. HL2, Doom3: all of them use really sophisticated environmental effects and some GREAT sounds. HL2 is even taking the HL1 idea of silence... then music that kicks in at key moments, to the next level, with music that adjusts in intensity and changes themes and so on in response to what the player is doing.

  • stereo 16bit 44khz.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @04:03AM (#9450168) Homepage Journal
    ..is plenty.

    almost all modern mobos have that built in, if the da's shit it's still good enough. very few of us are hifi freaks, people just don't care that much about something that isn't going to save a crappy game anyways. If the audio would be the only thing making you want to play the game, why the hell not just put some music on?

    on the other hand there's plenty of games with superb audio, but audio isn't just about 'quality' as such - the one game I played shitloads just for the audio was Star Control 2.

    • oh yeah and I forgot to say that very few hifists or 3d card enthuasists really know what they're babbling on(they just like shiny stuff and shiny words). I really hope that people don't get semi educated in that field.

      and that 16bit/44khz is plenty for output.. anything better isn't going to make a game any more greater or better selling.
      -
    • > the one game I played shitloads just for the audio was Star Control 2.

      Star Control 2 has been the only game which impressed me by its audio. Back to the days PC sound cards use to be rare as ice cream in Hell. Sound fx and music was limited to "beep bob beep". Compared to the sound standards of the era, R2-D2 was a potential Eurovision candidate.

      Then SC2 came and pushed 4 channel digital sound through PC speaker on 286 using similiar technique as some PC tracker softwares. Instead of annoying beeps y
    • Maybe, but one thing that bugs me about new mobos is the almost total lack of a game port -- which you need for MIDI. For those who may not know, MIDI is what you use to hook up keyboards/synthesizers/drum machines/other musical instruments to a computer.

      I was considering a new DFI LanParty mobo for the Athlon XP (this was before I decided to go the Athlon 64 path). An e-mail to the company resulted in "Yes, it has a game port header. If you buy the mobo, I can mail you the cable to bring the game port
    • Something makes me think that you havent played a game w/ 5.1 surround sound. Playing SOCOM II is a different experience w/ the surround sound. I can hear where shots are coming from. its not pinpoint, but I can tell w/in 20 degrees or so where someone is hitting me from. In addition, I can feel it when grenades go off next to me. It adds to the experience. In games like Final Fantasy, those 5.1 scenes look and sound better than most movies.

      This is on a PS2 hooked up to a very nice home theater system,

  • heres why (Score:3, Interesting)

    by lucas teh geek ( 714343 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @04:07AM (#9450179)
    its easier to tell the difference between a DVD and a Divx of the same movie than it is to tell the difference between an audio cd and an mp3 of the same song. heck, most people cant even tell the difference if you play the one after the other.

    now why exactly is that sort of person going to fork out more cash for better hardware with features they probably wont even notice? I know im not paying the extra bucks for an audigy3 (or whatever the latest and greatest may be) when these days built in sound or an old SBLive sound exactly the same to my ears

  • What about... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by fusionlab ( 783652 )
    One game whose sound effects grabbed me lately was Call of Duty - there are superb stereo effects when all the bullets and explosions are flying around.
    • I agree with this. It is the only game that really stupified me just because of the sound. I have a 4.1 sound system, and I could hear the mortar round crashing in all around me, sounding incredibly realistic. (that is in the first minutes of the SP demo)

  • PC Audio is much more mature (Score:5, Insightful)

    by martinthebrit ( 565913 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @04:37AM (#9450272)
    I think one reason that we don't see Games taking advantage of the latest gee-whiz auto card features is that PC audio cards have been able to deliver realism for a long time now. Sounds are sampled, environmental processing effects applied (which are, in the main, not processor intensive enough to require much hardware acceleration) and, with a decent pair of stereo speakers - to say nothing of a 5.1 system, the effect is realistic enough that you feel immersed in the game. The same is only just becoming true of 3D graphics with the current state-of-the-art hardware, and there's still a long way to go.

    As many people point out, for the unwashed masses who cannot tell the difference between a 128kbps MP3 and the original audio, pro-level audio soundcards like the Audigy are just overkill and will remain in the domain of the musician and those who care about sound quality. We are a lot more forgiving about audio quality than visual quality; I know I will happily listen to a LW radio broadcast, but I find a low signal TV broadcast unwatchable.

    Until games use more audio gimmicks; real-time physically modelled sounds generated on the fly for example, we will have no requirements over those currently implemented on all on-board audio.
    • I think that's exactly it.

      It's all about human perception. Audio exceeded the limits of human perception (for all intents and purposes) over five years ago. Can you hear the difference between a computer-generated WWII battle sequence and one recorded at the time? Neither can I.

      Can you SEE the difference between a computer-generated WWII battle sequence and one recorded at the time? Damn straight. But as soon as you can't, graphics cards are going to go through the same bout of commoditization and ap
      • Because there's no such thing as 32-bit color? 32-bit, for all intents and purposes, when on a display.. is the exact same as 24. The only reason there's 32 bits is because 1) it's easy for computers to deal with (since we have 32 bit computers, not 24bit), and 2) to accomodate transparency. Why doesn't X have 32 bit color? Because there really isn't such a beast.

        The only time more bits matters is for processing precision: 48 bit and 64 bit (integer or floating point) colors are good for intermediate w
  • My mobo has 5.1 audio built in as well as an optical digital output. I tried to use/"upgrade" to the top of the line soundblaster, but it crashed my computer over and over again, till I removed it. I don't use computer speakers, but a 500 watt amp and real speakers. Very rarely does any game take advantage of my setup, but conversly, my XBOX takes full advantage of the 6.1 setup in the main room. As does the Gamecube. The problem with computer audio, is the flexibility problem; always designed to accom

  • Where's the marketing? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Vincman ( 584156 ) <vincent@vanwylick.gmail@com> on Thursday June 17, 2004 @06:01AM (#9450586) Homepage
    You want to hear people rave about sound, then it will have to be sold to them. In movies this already happens in the cinema, which makes people want their own home-entertainment system. Since there's no similar event for gaming (appart from cult-gatherings, etc), how many people will consider it an issue? At the same time, the integration of game-consoles into existing entertainment systems has raised the attention-level a bit.
    There's also the matter of soundtracks, which is an underused option in games. A great soundtrack will make me want to see a movie and vice versa.
    All that being said, I have not really found sound in games lacking, even though I have $7 pc-speakers. I find wearing earphones actually gives me an advantage in games like counterstrike, in which hearing the enemy approach is of vital importance.
  • Perhaps it's "undervalued" because you can still play a game with the sound turned off but you cannot play the game without a monitor. It's undervalued simply because it is of little value for the gameplay.
    • I have to disagree with you on this one. That may be true for some games, in other games, you need the audio. I'm thinking of FPS titles, specifically Call of Duty. I would say that is one of the few games with audio that just amazes me; and it still does, every single time I play it. With EAX3 and a 5.1 surround sound setup, you feel like you're there. You need every bit of help you can get in figuring out where the enemy is - wether it's identifying just who is shooting beyond that hill by the sound of t

    • Re:Turn the monitor off (Score:5, Informative)

      by Sigma 7 ( 266129 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @10:37AM (#9452999)
      Perhaps it's "undervalued" because you can still play a game with the sound turned off but you cannot play the game without a monitor. It's undervalued simply because it is of little value for the gameplay.
      Actually, I'd have to disagree with you there.

      As shown on Deaf Gamers [deafgamers.com], there's a significant amount of games that omit features that make it possible to play without sound. In particular:

      1. Critical announcements - ceratin RTS games only have an audio announcement that you are under attack.
      2. Speech - some modern FPS games rely on in-game speech, and forget to include the subtitles.
      3. Cutscenes - as with speech, some cutscenes are not subtitled.
      4. Directions - some games (e.g. Counterstrike) use audio to indicate where action is occurring. If you accidently reverse the audio channels (e.g. by afaulty driver or because you placed the earbuds in the wrong ear), you will be disoriented. The only game that countered this problem to an extent would be Ghost Recon. Most other games only alert you to the direction of an attack after you are hit.
      5. Voice Chat - it's much faster than typing in text (and in most games, you can't defend yourself while typing. The only one where it was possible would be Rise of the Triad.)
      6. Mandatory system requirements - some games, require a sound card to be present in the system, regardless of whether it is actually useful or not. Two examples would be X-Wing (Win95 Collectors Edition) from LucasArts (program will quit if it cannot initialize audio), and Machines from Acclaim (program will crash to Desktop if it cannot find a sound card.)


        1. Of course, the amount of information gained from audio is being messed up in some aspects - in some cases, the noise is too low to be certain, while in others, it's being overshadowed by my CPU/Powersupply fan. (And I'm still looking for an easy way to quiet it down and take care of the heat problem as well. I have heard something that takes care of sound, but the heat problem still remains. )

    • I know in Unreal Tournament 2004, it really does help to hear which direction the action is coming from.

      It's so important that I was recently faced with a choice. I'd bought some nice USB headphones with mic to use the voice chat, which is also quite useful, but the OpenAL library that ships with (Mac) UT2004 has a bug where you don't hear with a proper stereo image. Other versions of the OpenAL library fixed this problem, but do not see audio inputs.

      In the end, I had to choose the accurate stereo image.

  • The Thief franchise (Score:5, Informative)

    by Synkronos ( 789022 ) <<synkronos> <at> <gmail.com>> on Thursday June 17, 2004 @06:15AM (#9450649)
    There has in fact already been a game that people bought for the sound. Friends of mine actually went out and upgraded their PC sound purely to get a better play experience out of Thief: The Dark Project [eidosinteractive.com] (1998). It was one of the first games that used positional sounds as an integral part of the game, making for an innovative play style that spawned the stealth genre which now also includes games like Metal Gear Solid [microsoft.com] and Splinter Cell [splintercell.com]. Thief works slightly differently to the other Stealth games, since you are very weak in open confrontation. Not paying attention to certain important sounds (like a guard's footsteps for example) can lead to a swift and painful death. This new genre is very successful at the moment, with sequels for all three games mentioned coming out this year - Thief 3: Deadly Shadows [thief3.com], Metal Gear Solid 3 [konamijpn.com] and Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow [splintercell.com], all of which have received good to excellent reviews.
    • Thief was the first thing I thought of when I saw the article. I bought that game on the basis of it being audio-orientated (opposite of your friends).

      To be honest though, no other game I've see has made such good use of sound, or at least been so innovative with it. Maybe that one Half-Life boss..? meh.
    • Er. Metal Gear Solid 3 hasn't received excellent reviews because it's not out yet.

    • It was one of the first games that used positional sounds as an integral part of the game, [...] that spawned the stealth genre which now also includes games like Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell. [...] This new genre is very successful at the moment, with sequels for all three games mentioned coming out this year - Thief 3: Deadly Shadows, Metal Gear Solid 3 and Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, all of which have received good to excellent reviews.

      There's also the Rainbow Six series, the latest of whic

      • Hey, I'm with this Raven Shield LAN party comment. The problem as I see it, Trepalium, is this:

        CS has a huge installed user base

        It is very stable after about 14 million patches and such incredibly extensive user game play

        It is free (bingo!)

        It genuinely is a lot of fun, still to this day

        People who play a lot of it continue to find ways to become better (grenade tricks, different qualities for guns, *scripting*, map knowledge coupled with such a massive number of maps out there)

        That's a lot going in i

  • Make it LOUD (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Icyfire0573 ( 719207 )
    As far as I've seen in my limited life experiences, nobody reallly cares about the audio quality, all they wanna do is turn it up real loud and if it sounds kinda good then, thats all they really need
  • I would think most of us just don't care. I am a pretty hardcore gamer, get everything that comes out, try most demos, upgrade my pc all the time, want the greatest graphics card there is..

    but..

    I have never found a need to get anything other then my 5 year old Sound Blaster Live Value card. Just makes no difference to me at all. I know a guy who bought a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 EX (or something) and I really can't tell a difference between his $200 card and my old $15 (today's price) card.

  • sophisticated audio (Score:2, Insightful)

    by bmorton ( 170477 )
    As much as I like neat sound effects and what not, I don't think it's really necessary for video games to use more sophisticated processing for audio.

    I would rather the developers spend more time choosing and mixing sounds more carefully. I've played at least a few wonderful games with sounds and music that don't go well together, drown each other out, or are just plain annoying. And let us not forget games that are any combination of those.

    There's nothing like a great game that sounds and looks great,
  • Do you prefer to VIEW pr0n or HEAR pr0n?

    Gotcha eh? Next article please!
  • I am rather disappointed by the quality of this article:
    "I just got a new computer with a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 card with amazing sound and music capabilities. For example, theres support for 24-bit EAX Advanced HD sound,"

    What the fuck is 24 bit EAX Advanced HD Sound? Its not a feature, its a fucking marketing term. EAX may loosely refer to 3D Audio features but the author clearly doesn't know what he's on about.

    Firstly let me get something off my chest - creative fucked ME over. my Sound

  • Thumbnails (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Noah Adler ( 627206 )

    I'm waiting for the day when I hear someone say, 'That game sounds so great, I have to buy it!'

    I'm a semi-pro musician, and I was discussing coding Csound [csounds.com] instruments with a friend of mine the other day. We were lamenting the lack of a centralized online repository of free instruments, but the problem is the number of instruments to wade through quickly becomes unmanageable (easy to recognize, difficult to solve). Why is this?

    Because audio clips can't really be shown as thumbnails. Where you can show

  • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Two Points (Score:3, Interesting)

    by th1ckasabr1ck ( 752151 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @08:14AM (#9451490)
    I have two things to contribute:

    1. DOOM3 is using an extremely advanced (and impressive) audio system. There is an excellent write-up of it here [planetdoom.com]. For an atmospheric game like DOOM3, that sounds absolutely perfect.

    2. Beware the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum if you are a gamer. It sounds fantastic, but the live drive (or whatever the Augidy 2 generation 5.25" sized input access is called), consistantly crashed games in my system (3000+, 9800 Pro, 1 GB RAM). To my surprise, when I disconnected the live drive and left the PCI card in, everything ran beautifully again. I always thought it was my viedo card acting up, but when Quake3 started crashing consistantly I had to do some investigation and to my surprise the Audigy was the guilty party.

  • I know most casual gamers don't have a 5.1 surround system, much less a 7.1 that the newest gen of cards support.

    There is one game I just read about that is focusing more on the sound of the game. It's called Black, and unfortunately I can't find a direct link for info from google. (Pretty poor name for a game)

    But they want the firing of the gun to be actually like firing a gun. Nice LOUD bang, richocets, etc.

  • Uru (Score:3, Informative)

    by Winterblink ( 575267 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @08:34AM (#9451685) Homepage
    Anyone who's ever played the Myst series of games knows that audio is at the forefront of the experience, never off at the sidelines. I recently picked up Uru, the now not-so-online sequel to Myst. I have to say, it has some of the most immersive audio I've ever experienced with a game since Riven. A ton of work had to have gone into it to get all the distinct sounds, write the music, and put it all into a package that supports EAX so well you can close your eyes and just listen to the ambience.

    Just my opinion, but I think there are a rare few developers out there that already have this down pat.
    • When I played Uru, I was impressed. I'd expected the audio from the series to suffer because of the improvement in visuals.
      • You know I thought the same thing, but I was floored by how much they IMPROVED the audio. It's right up to snuff with the visuals. Those guys are truly pioneers in the gaming industry, it's a pity Uru Live flopped. :(
  • All motherboards started including sound, it's dificult to find one whithout it, so the instaled base is of simple stereo speakears, so developers don't worry about improved sound systems for PC only games.

  • No competition (Score:2, Informative)

    by ksiddique ( 749168 )
    There hasn't been much in the way of audio for PCs because there's a lack of competition these days. There doesn't seem to be much innovation.

    Back in the day there was the good old A3D vs. EAX debates. Things steadily improved as Aureal and Creative Labs tried to outdo each other. Sadly, Aureal couldn't hack it and bowed down to CL. Soon after, CL became complacent (in my opinion).

    Playing Half-Life with A3D and four speakers was so cool! :)

  • Background Noise and Hardcore Gamers (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Carrion Creeper ( 673888 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @09:24AM (#9452242)
    So most spiffy new games require spiffy new and FAST computers. Most new fast computers have a baseline noise level which is not so quiet, expecially after you drop in your turbine powered GPU.

    Most audiophile-type distinctions in terms of fine quality can only be made in relative silence. I am not an audiophile, but I can tell a nice system when I hear it, but only with no background noise.

    Therefore, for most people not blessed with silent hardcore gaming PCs (and even those who are but live in loud areas), the distinction is virtually impossible to make without the sound turned up so far that neighbors in the next zip code are complaining.

    This is exactly why when I went to visit someone and they had an $8,000 plasma TV with a cooling fan I thought it was the dumbest thing ever. It totally defeated the purpose of the $5,000 sound system's capabilities.
  • I think people's emphasis on the visual has something to do with the fact that sight is an active sense. If you want to see something you have to point your eyeballs at it and adjust your focus, whereas hearing just happens naturally. Sight is a directed sense focused on some target, whereas you hearing is immersive...you hear everything around you. Since we tend to pay more attention to what we are actively involved in, sight gets top billing.
  • I did psychology as part of my degree and vaguely remember something like a human's overall perception is 96% from vision. that only leaves 4% for sound, smell and whatever else, so that's the reason we all focus more on game graphics than sound.

    ( Apparently a dogs perception is largely built on smell, so they would judge a game based on the odour of the box it came in! )

    The major difference/benefit for gamers these days of having an expensive sound card over using the AC97 codec on your mobo is not overa
  • Developers do not have the time to write effects that only work on a limited subset of cards, Especially when driver and feature support is spotty and weak. It generally ends up being more trouble than it is worth.

    Also, any of you folks with a Soundblaster card that think you are fronting "Pro" audio gear are completely fooling yourselves.

  • When I first saw this, I started wondering what tools are available for recording 5.1 surround. Google didn't find any in my searches (though I may have chosen poor search words).

    Although I didn't find any free tools, I did find several commercial tools, which makes me wonder if you need a license to record and/or distribute 5.1 audio (sorta like mp3 - I'd assume this would apply to licensed technologies like EAX and Dolby). There also doesn't appear to be a good open format for 5.1 or 7.1 audio, meaning
  • First, I will concede a few points:

    1. On a regular pc game, 2.1 and regular stereo quality is really about as immersive as 95% of people will ever need. Not to mention the fact that there's something ironic about having a tiny little 23-inch screen and BIG FAT AWESOME 15.3 sound system.

    2. Most games really don't do a very good job of utilizing advanced sound options, and that includes some pretty awful canned sound effects.

    3. Creative is only at the top of the heap because no one else wants to be.

  • I recently purchsed a couple Bose [bestbuy.com] PC speakers, and have been pretty happy with them.

    I'm not a big audio person, but they sound fine to me. Not a ton of low end, but the mids and highs are nice.

  • A long time ago, on a platform far away (well, Amiga actually), there was a game called Agony.

    It was a pretty simplistic little side scrolling shoot-em-up, which probably wouldn't have deserved anyone's attention if it hadn't been for it's awe inspiring sound track (and graphics too, but a lot of games had those).

    The sound track of Agony was the reason I bought the game, and I still have the intro MOD file in my music play list tucked away among all the MP3s; it was that good.

    So in answer to the heartfel

  • Its called "good enough" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by voss ( 52565 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @12:18PM (#9453963)
    On my recently purchases HP desktop I have an integrated Realtek ALS650 chipset with built in 5.1 sound. Its light years above my old computer and if Soundblaster has something better I dont care because its not better enough for me to spend $100 on.

  • What happened to PC audio? Creative Labs. When Aureal introduced their 3D audio spec the games made that supported it (Unreal, and Half-Life I believe) were incredible. I remember playing Unreal and knowing were a monster/enemy was by the sound! Then Creative had to f#$k everything up by putting them out of business (and eventually buying all the IP, but NOT USING THE TECHNOLOGY). I have not bought any Creative products since then, but since Aureal isn't coming back, I may give the new Audigy2 card a t

    • Creative didn't put them out of business. They bought their IP after they were done. My Audigy 2 ZS is great, I have no problems with it at all.
      • Creative didn't put them [Aureal] out of business. They bought their IP after they were done.

        Yes, they did put them out of business. Creative sued Aureal. Aureal won the court battle but the effort bankrupted them. Then Creative scooped up Aureal's IP at bargain basement prices. Classic example of a big company using its army of lawyers to crush a small company instead of competing in the market.

  • Companies think they can shovel "sound cards" like the Audigy [bash.org] on consumers, that's what happened to PC Gaming Audio.
  • The biggest issue that I have with sounds in games is that many companies seem to have put the bare minimum into their development, especially in comparison to the video. I hate playing a visually stunning game only to get voice sets that sound like Kermit in a tin can or sword fights that sound like dropping silverware in a drawer.

    Given the current state of things, I don't even care about 5.1 audio. Reasonably good headphones like the Sennheisers HD280 Pros that I am using now have made a bigger diffe
  • As more people use their PCs for a home theatre component. I'm building a computer soon, and its geared towards multimedia, i'm getting a widescreen monitor, 7.1 speakers, and an Audigy 2ZS Gamer card (although my mobo will support 5.1 surround, might as well get the $120 card that comes with $200 woth of GOOD games). I'm also getting an ATI AIW card and dont plan on having a TV. So not only will i be doing my TV and Movie watching on my PC, i'll also be gaming and hooking my Xbox up to it. I realize i'm in
  • As a game audio guy I read that article with both a "hell yeah!" and a pissed off feeling. I'm so sick of people saying how important audio is, but not giving it the time and resources it deserves.
  • Remember how monitors started off as monochrome... then 16-color, then 256, then 16-bit; finally 24 and 32 bit? We didn't go to 64-bit. Why? No one can see that many colors.

    Same with sound - we've long passed the point where any video card can reproduce a sound well enough so that 99% of us can't tell the difference between the recorded version and the original.

    If you're giving me the option between a $20 and a $200 sound card, and I can't tell the difference, why would I pay the extra cash?
  • There's all sorts of ways you can cut costs on stuff like video cards, harddrives, even processors (use bad ram, slow, big capacity drives, the Celeron), but I don't think you can really do that with speakers. It doesn't matter how nice you're sound card is if you're pumping it through a $5 pair. OEM PC sales is all about selling cheap crap with good specs (the #'s in the advert) for way more than it's actually worth. Adding a good pair of speakers makes it harder to get the kind of margines pc makers are u

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