Who Killed PC Audio

[Silent_Buddha]

I've heard on teh intarwebz more than a few times that those multi-driver phones are silly gimmicks. But you say you really liked them? Interesting. I should read more about them.

It depends. I've owned one in the past, and my impressions were that it couldn't touch even a cheap set of 5.1 computer speakers WRT audio location. It was better WRT standard stereo headphones WRT audio location obviously, but it wasn't something that was worth the price premium to me. The effect was pretty weak.

Regards,
SB

 

[digitalwanderer]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/596420/announcements/detail/521693426582988261

Told ya. If anything is going to resurrect PC audio, it's VR.

So you're saying nothing is going to resurrect PC audio.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I've heard on teh intarwebz more than a few times that those multi-driver phones are silly gimmicks. But you say you really liked them? Interesting. I should read more about them.

Honestly, saying multidriver headphones are gimmicks because HRTF exists is about the same as saying cheap 5.1/7.1 speaker setups are gimmicks because cheap soundbars exist.

I really liked the horizontal positioning and they're untouched in that department IMO. I didn't like the fact that the drivers and circuits were rather low-quality ones (the wires in that pic of the Kave's teardown doesn't inspire much confidence, does it?) so they weren't good for anything other than games, more specifically first or 3rd-person.
HRTF/BRTF practically disappeared with Vista and all we've had until recently was XAudio2, which is little more than horizontal positioning distributed for 2, 5 or 7 speakers. For these cases, I do think multi-driver headphones presented the next best possible thing.

Also by the looks of it , each driver can't be exactly on-axis

On the horizontal plane, they're set at about the same angle as a 5.1 surround set would ideally be. Speakers can't be exactly on-axis either on all but very rare purist setups.
These are 80-200€ headphones so don't expect them to perfectly match all kinds of ears like a professionally assembled speaker setup.

I've owned one in the past, and my impressions were that it couldn't touch even a cheap set of 5.1 computer speakers WRT audio location.

Define "cheap".
Cheap as in a Z906 set (meaning you're comparing different price points) or cheap cheap like this thing? I can assure you these phones are a lot better than the later.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Define "cheap".
Cheap as in a Z906 set (meaning you're comparing different price points) or cheap cheap like this thing? I can assure you these phones are a lot better than the later.

Cheap as in

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B003WJR482/?tag=b3d-21

That's what I'm currently using. I had the Logitech Z-5500's (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0006HBCL8/?tag=b3d-21) prior to my current ones. Positional audio is the same with both. Audio fidelity is definitely a step down from the Z-5500's, however.

Regards,
SB

 

[xz321zx]

On the horizontal plane, they're set at about the same angle as a 5.1 surround set would ideally be. Speakers can't be exactly on-axis either on all but very rare purist setups.

Without a doubt off-axis perfomance can be made good, but can it be seamless, so individual drivers just disappear .


In speaker world, good off-axis became a measure of high perfomance (because uncolored reflections, but also some deliberately listen off-axis and there is even a word for that "toe-in" ).

 

[Rurouni]

I have the great Gigaworks S750 system. Back when I was living in my parents' house, I had the speakers very decently set in the ceiling and bookshelves. My room was my man cave.
Now I have to split the office with the wife so I can only set it as a pseudo 5.1 in the desk
Not a huge problem because the living room has a very decent AV Receiver with a Jamo 5.1 setup. But my HTPC isn't as up-to-date as my desktop in the office. The GTX 660 Ti definitely wasn't a great purchase at the time.



And now HDMI 2.1. Plus, no one out there seems able/willing to make a device that extracts the audio stream from HDMI other than the 25 year-old SPDIF standards. I now own a 4K HDR TV that renders both PCM and all the high-resolution formats completely useless if I want to watch 4K content. All I can use is ARC which outputs vanilla Dolby Digital, DTS or stereo PCM.
The stupidest part here is the receivers' price is heavily influenced by the quality of its analog components, making the purchase of a good receiver the most frustrating thing ever, whenever a new HDMI standard comes up.
I guess the only solution left for me is to get a HDMI 2.0 graphics card that sends the audio through one HDMI port while sending the video through another port (if such a thing is even possible).



FreeSync will most probably be formally supported through HDMI 2.1's Game Mode Variable Refresh Rate.
Meaning any receiver maker that wants to support HDMI 2.1 for that 8K bulletpoint then it needs to support FreeSync.
As for DisplayPort, I don't really see the benefit of doing so. Are you going to hook up a high-end computer monitor to a home theater setup?




You honestly believe that back in 2004/2005 "most of the OS crashes" with sound blaster users came from the audio driver?
This was the time of Geforce FX and early days of Geforce 6. I had a 9700 Pro, then a pair of 6800GT SLI and then a X1900 XT.
All throughout this time I had a SB Live!, then an Audigy 2 and then a X-Fi XtremeGamer. I did see the drivers getting bloated and slow due to too much featurecreep just like he mentions, but I recall very well where most of my crashes came from, and they didn't come from my soundcards. My ratio of graphics-related CTDs to sound-related CTDs were probably close to 10:1.
Kind reminder that this was also the age of Netburst Intel CPUs and everyone plus their dogs were overclocking, even the ones with Athlon 64 who didn't really need to do it.

I don't know if this has been answered, but on my current Kaveri rig, I can choose the audio output independenty, as in I plug dvi (as hdmi with audio) to my main TV and hdmi to my monitor and I need to choose which one that will output audio. Actually, I would like the ability to have several audio output devices active at the same time so I don't need to switch audio output all the time.

 

[xz321zx]

multi-driver headphones presented the next best possible thing.

"Multi-driver" term is probably taken already by "balanced armature" designs:
https://cymbacavum.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/10501326_917924871557787_1356812105_n.jpg

it's a bit of a grey area, not nearly enough drivers for wavefield synthesis, too much to be audiophile darlings.

 

[mrcorbo]

I don't know if this has been answered, but on my current Kaveri rig, I can choose the audio output independenty, as in I plug dvi (as hdmi with audio) to my main TV and hdmi to my monitor and I need to choose which one that will output audio. Actually, I would like the ability to have several audio output devices active at the same time so I don't need to switch audio output all the time.

I had tried this approach and found that maintaining A/V sync was too much of a problem.

 

[Rurouni]

I had tried this approach and found that maintaining A/V sync was too much of a problem.

I have zero sync issue, but I don't have a receiver in between. Everything works perfectly.

 

[mrcorbo]

I have zero sync issue, but I don't have a receiver in between. Everything works perfectly.

You output audio to the tv while viewing video on the monitor or the opposite?

 

[Rurouni]

You output audio to the tv while viewing video on the monitor or the opposite?

I test both and I didn't feel any sync issue. Maybe I'm not really sensitive to A/V sync issue? Probably if the TV have much bigger input lag than the monitor I can imagine there'll be a more noticeable sync issue.

 

[xEx]

So much to read . Anyway in my opinion what killed PC audio were the 50 dollars USB DACs that are good enough for any user without 2k passive speakers, the active speakers quality and the silliness of spending hundreds of dollars into a sound card that is just a very good marketed DAC.

In this world buy logitech, genius or any PC related brand(god even boss) is a waste of money, there are so many really good speakers out there that offer insanely good sound for example the JBL 305 for little more than 200 dollars you have a real high end setup with insame clarity, frequency response and a 110Dbs 45hz bass that would destroy ur ears while sounding good doing it.

If the 305 are too big for you(they are not small speakers) there are other alternative but you would need a Sub because small speakers cannot output low Freq. unless you get something like the LS50 with its 1k price tag.

In headphones multi driver are just marketing crap, there is not a single multi driver high end headphone in the world, its much much worse to have multiple cheap and small drivers and use software to "coordinate" them, in marketing it looks great in reality it sounds bad. The sony MDRV6 are only 90 bucks and sounds better than any "gaming" headphones(they were made in the 90s and they are still use to master audio in professional studios).

So what killed PC audio was just the good, better and cheaper alternative of the "general" audio. Maybe with VR and the use of highly sophisticated DSP to do audio calculations for fidelity and positioning PC audio could comeback but even then the hardware, speakers and headphones will still be better outside the "PC world" where you pay more for the marketing spends than the engineering ones.