Advanced Audio Technologies (HRTF, Dolby Atmos, etc) *echo*

It has a DSP to do it, though. If the XBOne had to do this on the CPU or GPU in realtime (if it were even possible) it would make disk playback a lot less power-efficient.

There's no strictly-defined speaker layout for those formats, either. I only have the two additional ceiling mounted speakers for Atmos/DTS-X and my receiver asks me to select where, of the 3 (IIRC) possible positions, I mounted them so when it wants to put a sound on my upper right at 10 degrees it knows how much of the sound to put on the Right-Front and how much to put on the Top-Center-Right and how to delay the sound to each so it seems like it is coming from the exact right spot.

I just mean that there's no real reason you'd want your xbox to know your speaker placement and do any of that processing. If you have that kind of setup then you have a receiver which is already configured to know where your speakers are and process everything correctly.
 
I just mean that there's no real reason you'd want your xbox to know your speaker placement and do any of that processing. If you have that kind of setup then you have a receiver which is already configured to know where your speakers are and process everything correctly.

Then all I was saying is that you don't want it doing it and it's possible it actually can't even if you did. For Atmos and DTS-X it's bitstream or bust.
 
OK, time to resurrect this thread because HRTF is amazing in games.

I don't usually use headphones as I have tinnitus and headphone use can make it worse, however, I had a need to be quiet while playing tonight so used headphones while playing Warframe. I enabled Microsoft's Windows Sonic HRTF for this and OMG is it amazing. The positional audio is sooo good. I have a decent audio setup but HRTF with a high quality pair of headphones is so much better for positional audio.

This definitely makes me tempted to use headphones more often. I'll still listen to music on my home theater equipment, but man, I'm very tempted to always use headphones in games now just for the HRTF.

I really should have tried this out sooner. Not sure if Atmos for Headphones is significantly better that it's worth paying for, but I might try it out as well.

Regards,
SB
 
DolbyAtmos for Headphones is equally great. I dont know if its better or worse, it's just slightly different. Definitely give it a try for free and see which one you prefer. The cost is for lifetime and works across devices so if you have your windows account linked on your PCs you can use it there too.
 
I just upgraded my system to full Atmos with 4 overhead speakers and well, I literally cannot wait until everything I push to my amp is Atmos. It will take a while, and I’m surprised that games haven’t embraced this yet. Perhaps it really is too much to process, even though I wouldn’t think so. We’ll probably have to wait until the next gen, I guess.View attachment 2636
 
I just upgraded my system to full Atmos with 4 overhead speakers and well, I literally cannot wait until everything I push to my amp is Atmos. It will take a while, and I’m surprised that games haven’t embraced this yet. Perhaps it really is too much to process, even though I wouldn’t think so. We’ll probably have to wait until the next gen, I guess.View attachment 2636

I've found Atmos to be noticeably more immersive. Not a lot of people are willing to accommodate even a normal surround setup these days, but I think it's worth it.
 
I've found Atmos to be noticeably more immersive. Not a lot of people are willing to accommodate even a normal surround setup these days, but I think it's worth it.
Yeah in the days of popular surround soundbars and crappy quality video/audio from streaming services, it's nice that we're still advancing and accommodating high end speaker setups. I'm really looking forward to going 7.2.4 + 4k HDR
 
My theory is that enthusiasts won't benefit from it either, they'll just convince themselves that they have after they've sunk a whole bunch of money into it.

When it comes to the level of snake oil sailsmanship, nothing beats the enthusiast audio industry. Wasting 5 gigs per album of uncompressed 24 bit audio files on your mp3 player or phone is just the bees knees.

Why arent they using this technique in more media? It is impressive

It's a bit like the facial animations in LA Noir. The results are pretty cool, but its application is very specific and kinda limited. You cannot swivel the soundstage around the player for example. What you record is what you get. Hellblade, and only Hellblade afaik, uses binaural audio to great effect for example.
 
Last edited:
When it comes to the level of snake oil sailsmanship, nothing beats the enthusiast audio industry. Wasting 5 gigs per album of uncompressed 24 bit audio files on your mp3 player or phone is just the bees knees.

Do you not believe that there is a benefit to object-based audio formats and playback systems? Won't speak to the effect in games since I haven't played any games with object-based audio, but in movies it's trivially easy for me to A/B compare during playback and there's a noticeable difference when listening to the object-based soundtracks compared to the base soundtrack. As you would expect when sending more detailed audio information and adding sound emitters in an additional plane to more accurately render that information.
 
I'm into positional audio, and object-based formats make it easier. I'm not into lossless audio. That's a bunch of baloney.

Providing the bitrate of the content is high enough to be perceptually lossless, sure. For a lot of content it isn't, though. We're at the point where even lossless audio doesn't consume much storage relative to other forms of media, though, so I'm not really bothered by it.

@bkilian convinced of the pointlessness (and apparently even the potential harm) of high-res audio, though.

Edit: I tried to find a link to that discussion, but my search skills are lacking. I did find this link. though, which ought to cover it. https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

Edit 2: I didn't notice this at first, but that link covers lossless vs. perceptually lossless audio as well and in addition to my "poor encodes" reason to want lossless copies also comments on generational losses as a reason to want access to a lossless source. If at some point a better codec comes around and you want to re-encode in that format, you're going to want to have access to a lossless source to encode from. Recompressing lossy audio is a bad idea.
 
Last edited:
I think the main point is AV enthusiasts have been proven easily exploited with such things as super expensive HDMI cables that can't provide a better signal (either the data gets there or it doesn't) but which said enthusiasts can apparently hear is better.

eg. Audio data read from different digital storage sounding different...
http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=4185

And there’s the article about the sonic differences between Networked Audio Servers. The article is titled, “Listening To Storage…Listening tests reveal significant sound quality differences between various digital music storage technologies,” by Andrew Harrison and Stephen N. Harris. These guys are hearing differences between a stream of digital ones and zeros coming from one NAS and a different unit.

“As it turned out, it was possibly the best sounding source yet. It could sustain pace and drive, and gave body and richness to music where the Kingston SSD, for example, had been heard as limpid and lightweight. Maybe higher frequencies still weren’t as insightful as direct CD playback at its best, but the sound had a relaxed quality that this listener has found quite enticing enough to plan a migration of all music onto it — pending a test of other NAS combinations!”
 
I think the main point is AV enthusiasts have been proven easily exploited with such things as super expensive HDMI cables that can't provide a better signal (either the data gets there or it doesn't) but which said enthusiasts can apparently hear is better.

eg. Audio data read from different digital storage sounding different...
http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=4185

Oh, believe me I know. I've been around A/V enthusiast sites for a very long time. I'm just not sure how it relates. Within the topic of this thread, the tech being discussed would be expected to deliver an improved experience, no? It would be more surprising if it didn't.
 
That post you replied to is from discussion in 2016 when talking about lossless audio, I thought (DTS-MA).
https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1934587/
I'm not sure anyone was saying positional audio isn't better. Only perhaps that you can't tell from feedback because those for whom it sounds better may well just be hearing based on how much they've spent. ;)
 
That post you replied to is from discussion in 2016 when talking about lossless audio, I thought (DTS-MA).
https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1934587/
I'm not sure anyone was saying positional audio isn't better. Only perhaps that you can't tell from feedback because those for whom it sounds better may well just be hearing based on how much they've spent. ;)

Actually, I was replying to @Sigfried1977 quoting that post in the context of the current discussion. If it wasn't intended as such and was just a general observation, then they can say so.

Not disagreeing with what you're saying in general, though. Putting more faith in the criticisms of the invested and the praise of the uninvested is usually a good strategy.
 
Yeah, but Sigfried was responding to Scott_Arm, and Scott_Arm was responding to RobertR1, and that whole line was talking about codecs, not positional audio. I don't think Sigfried's comments were part of the current line of discussion. More likely he was reviewing the thread and responded to that post by Scott without appreciating how old it was! ;)
 
Big hassle to install overhead speakers though, isn't it?

Not really! I mean it really depends on your room and generally how much you care. Then again my new house was already wired for that. I probably would have thought of something else if it weren’t.
 
Back
Top