Technical investigation into PS4 and XB1 audio solutions *spawn

You would need a speaker array to "beam" sounds. The XB1 includes no such hardware. You are confusing that technology with Kinect's microphone array, which is used to localize incoming sounds and reject background noise.

[EDIT] Beaten by the man himself.
 
patsu said:
"Can choose" is more flexible. :)

Does game audio without your own voice chat make sense ?
Click to expand...

One of the Sony wireless headphones has a physical slider in which you can chose if you want to hear only PS3 game sounds, only chat or both.
 
In addition, Kinect has a 4-channel beam forming microphone with multiple antennas to direct the audio signal where you want it to go. So games and other apps can direct audio in the direction of a specific person.
Click to expand...

They are using this to map your location with this tech. It assists in recognizing where a person is in the room by recognizing their voice along with the IR and Visible light. It can also be used to direct sound to individual persons in the room provided you have the correct speaker setup which does not exist yet for the consume. MS however is apparently working on this.

http://www.zero1gaming.com/2012/12/13/50-shades-xbox-future/

What’s that? You’re proud of your nice 5.1 surround sound set up? Think it gives you that ‘real life’ feeling? Well, think again. Tuyen Pham, CEO of A-Volute: 3D Sound Projects, says ‘The effect of 3D sound is astonishing’. The general concept is that a rack of 16 focussed speakers projects sound at you and, linked to Kinect 2.0 and Augmented Reality, reacts to your head movements, changing the sound projected. While, by Pham’s own admission, ‘the hardware components…are still too expensive to be used in consumer products’ Microsoft Research has already developed and presented their own sound prototype for this set up, meaning a consumer-grade 3D sound set up is at least a strong possibility. Indeed, when pressed further, Pham was only able to say ‘after checking with our legal department I can’t disclose that [who they are working with]. We’re working with a gaming company, but the information I could give is under NDA [Non-Disclosure Agreement]’, which does sound rather promising.
Click to expand...
 
An Xbox One game has "redone" its audio:

An Xbox One launch title has had its audio completely redone after Microsoft Studios audio leads decided it was not up to standard.

Microsoft Studios audio director Paul Lipson let slip the comment during a discussion about how platform holders are handling sound production for the next generation.


“We did the full lobotomy,” he told the audience at Game Music Connect in London, which Develop was part of.

Lipson would not be drawn on which launch title specifically he was referring to, but emphasised that Microsoft’s internal audio team has had to step in to rescue the title.

Lipson’s job at Microsoft involves hiring and managing teams of composers and sound experts for its first-party studios and external third-party studios worldwide.

He said one of his first jobs when visiting a studio that’s partnering with Microsoft is to assess its audio team to see if it meets Microsoft’s standards.

“We have teams of 15 audio guys,” explained Lipson, and if a project calls for it, he said he will assign that many sound specialists and composers to projects.
Click to expand...


http://www.develop-online.net/news/45304/Xbox-One-launch-title-gets-total-audio-overhaul
 
Dead Rising 3 seems like a good candidate if you're looking at 3rd party launch games. Capcom seemed to fall behind the curve on tech last gen.
 
It's not limited to exclusive titles...

Lipson’s job at Microsoft involves hiring and managing teams of composers and sound experts for its first-party studios and external third-party studios worldwide.
Click to expand...

Microsoft's first-party studios and external third-party studios (isn't external third party studio a bit redundant?). Basically any studio that wants to publish on Xbox One. Of course, the smaller the scope of a project (more niche) the less likely they'd get all 15 audio guys from any given audio team.

Regards,
SB
 
That may be 2nd party - third parties hired by MS to make a game. I question if MS flies around helping every single developer improve their audio including for cross-platform titles (although improved audio could be exclusive to XB1).
 
Shifty Geezer said:
That may be 2nd party - third parties hired by MS to make a game. I question if MS flies around helping every single developer improve their audio including for cross-platform titles (although improved audio could be exclusive to XB1).
Click to expand...

I imagine it's the same way how AMD and Nvidia developer relations helps developers out with their hardware. Again, though, the smaller the project, the less likely you'll get extensive help.

In this case, Microsoft may feel invested in making sure all games on its platform don't have bad audio that could tarnish the audio reputation of the Xbox One. They did put some effort into the audio side of things after all. And obviously they probably wouldn't do much to help the developer get things improved on the competing platform.

Regards,
SB
 
Especially for launch, I think. A limited number of a titles and a desire for a good first impression. After that, they probably scale back operations to requested support, as these companies do sending out coding ninjas to help with titles.

As for helping things improve on rival platforms though, if the audio engineers are working on capturing and authoring sound as well as the technical aspects of playing it, the content can be used on any platform. How would that be handled then? Would the developers be sworn to only include the better audio samples on the XB1 version?

I'm inclined to think this is more just a launch programme for exclusives, interpreting the aid as authoring as much as utilising the special hardware.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
As for helping things improve on rival platforms though, if the audio engineers are working on capturing and authoring sound as well as the technical aspects of playing it, the content can be used on any platform. How would that be handled then? Would the developers be sworn to only include the better audio samples on the XB1 version?
Click to expand...

Things like that will obviously carry across. Similar in a way to how TressFX (AMD implementation of hair in Tomb Raider) worked on Nvidia hardware as well. But they spent no time effort in optimizing it to run well on competing hardware.

So anything common to both platforms (resampled audio, for example) would carry across. If they helped offload audio to the audio block, however, that wouldn't carry across. As well, unless there has been an upclock on the PS4, any audio using the extra CPU resources from having a higher clock may not be feasible on the competition's hardware if they are already hitting CPU limits. Of course, it may be possible to use GPU compute for that, but that would be where Microsoft wouldn't have any incentive to help as they have more CPU power and can offload audio to the audio block.

Regards,
SB
 
Silent_Buddha said:
So anything common to both platforms (resampled audio, for example) would carry across. If they helped offload audio to the audio block, however, that wouldn't carry across...
Click to expand...
What you say about using hardware and faster CPU is true for cross-platform development, but I don't see where the Audio Ninjas come in to that. Devs will be using the audio block anywhere, and the faster CPU. Unless the Audio Ninja's are piling on the audio, which is possible, to effectively add more than other platforms can fairly cope with.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
What you say about using hardware and faster CPU is true for cross-platform development, but I don't see where the Audio Ninjas come in to that. Devs will be using the audio block anywhere, and the faster CPU. Unless the Audio Ninja's are piling on the audio, which is possible, to effectively add more than other platforms can fairly cope with.
Click to expand...

That's certainly possible if they are seeking performance parity in the game between the two platforms. Speeding up the CPU portion by freeing up more CPU resources might shift potential bottlenecks around. One system might end up doing particularly well in GPU limited portions of the game code while the other system might end up doing particularly well in CPU limited portions of the game code.

So many things we just won't know until the games are out. And even then, it'll be interesting to see if cross platform developers will be free to go into details about any differences.

And, of course, there's always the potential for them to just make the audio better on the Xbox One. But will people notice that? Hell, people (in general) don't even notice graphical differences.

Regards,
SB
 
Tensillica DPU's

In my research on Tensillica's DPU's, known to be used in the Xbox Ones Audio processors, I came across this.. (apologies if this is a common thing in the HW silicon industry, but I found it interesting)


1. Post-silicon programmability


And in more detail ...


Reuse of the Same Hardware for Multiple Tasks

Complex SOCs consist of millions of gates of logic and are de- signed to perform multiple tasks. Often these multiple tasks do not need to be performed at the same time. This provides an opportunity for multiple tasks to share the same hardware units. Processors are particularly amenable to enabling this type of sharing.
Designers can specify a datapath in TIE that consists of a set of execution units that can be used by multiple tasks and then use the programmability of the processor to determine which tasks are executed. For example, an audio engine can be designed to implement a range of audio codecs, such as MP3, AC-3, WMA, etc.

Flexibility to Fix and Upgrade Algorithms Post Silicon
Using an Xtensa LX3 processor to implement an algorithm lets the designer fix, enhance and tweak the algorithm close to and after the SOC has taped out. In particular, post-silicon bugs now have a chance of being worked around.
Algorithms that are a subject for continuous research, such as half-toning in printers and image and video post processing, are ideal candidates for implementation in an Xtensa LX3 processor.
When new and updated standards emerge, such as for audio and video processing, they will likely run on your existing hardware because it is programmable.








Anyway ... these DPU's are interesting, I wonder if the other 50+ microprocessors spread across Xbox One are also DPU's or something similar...
 
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