Game Sound for Blu-Ray: Does the DTS spec apply?

[PC-Engine]

First things first -DTS doesn't always indicate surround sound - you can use it in a manner to simply output the front LR channels (similar to the use on the PS2 with 4.1 solutions).

Why go through the trouble if it's only stereo?

Maybe it's not "trouble"... Maybe the DTS kit gives the devs more tools to do whatever they want, i don't know, but there might be reasons.

In the end, all next gen games will have at least 5.1 DD - or at least that's what MS said.

Not sure where 2D games stand on that, though i'm sure they can gimick it out even there.

Well there's a different between 5.1 dynamic direction sound and 5.1 streamed music.

 

[London Geezer]

First things first -DTS doesn't always indicate surround sound - you can use it in a manner to simply output the front LR channels (similar to the use on the PS2 with 4.1 solutions).

Why go through the trouble if it's only stereo?

Maybe it's not "trouble"... Maybe the DTS kit gives the devs more tools to do whatever they want, i don't know, but there might be reasons.

In the end, all next gen games will have at least 5.1 DD - or at least that's what MS said.

Not sure where 2D games stand on that, though i'm sure they can gimick it out even there.

Well there's a different between 5.1 dynamic direction sound and 5.1 streamed music.

I know, and that's why i'm saying that 2D games might just get 5.1 music just for the hell of it. Really, we've seen worse wastes of resources.

 

[twotonfld]

First things first -DTS doesn't always indicate surround sound - you can use it in a manner to simply output the front LR channels (similar to the use on the PS2 with 4.1 solutions).

Why go through the trouble if it's only stereo?

Maybe you wouldn't go through the trouble - but that's not really the point. The point is that any game - even Tetris - that comes out next generation should support more than 2 speakers. Even for 2D games - a 3.1 solution should be the minimum.

All that said, devs are still stuck having to consider stereo and even mono because - well - they're stuck. That said, those should probably be moved to the afterthough stage now that this is supposedly the HD generation. HD in my opinion does not equate to video only.

 

[AlNom]

I know, and that's why i'm saying that 2D games might just get 5.1 music just for the hell of it. Really, we've seen worse wastes of resources.

Define waste I think 5.1 is better than 2.0, so it's not a waste.

 

[twotonfld]

Imagine the tension that could be created in a 5.1 based puzzle game. Using Tetris as the example, when the music speeds up as you approach your bitter end, the tension increases by wildly panning the components of the music from speaker to speaker in order to heighten the mental vetrtigo induced by the already intense situation.

 

[London Geezer]

I know, and that's why i'm saying that 2D games might just get 5.1 music just for the hell of it. Really, we've seen worse wastes of resources.

Define waste I think 5.1 is better than 2.0, so it's not a waste.

Well ok, not "waste" in the strict sense, but it wouldn't be real 3D sound as it is, for example, in FPS games where it is functional to the gameplay. It would be an embellishment with no purpose on the gameplay, although they could find ways to make it interesting and functional i guess.

 

[Onix]

iirc, neither the 360 nor the PS3 have dedicated soundcards, the CPU will have to handle the audio.

DTS is faster to run than DD in realtime, so I wouldn't be surprised if most games go with that, or DPLII.

As far as the new audio standards for HD (DTS+ and DD+, or whatever they're calling them this week), I don't know which would be easier (or possible) to run in realtime without dedicated HW.

Granted, they can both run lossless and are to be used on a high memory media ... so maybe they aren't very compressed at all? Of course memory and bw could then be an issue ...

 

[archie4oz]

A: Simpler and advanced. Basically we adopted the same CPU core as PowerPC G5. It's based on PowerPC G5, but we removed unimportant features from it. For example instead of having L2 cache for each core we adopted L2 cache shared by 3 cores.

Personally I'd prefer to just be able to have an analog direct to a receiver's multi-channel analog inputs (a digital solution would be better as you wouldn't be constrained by the D/A conversion of the console) and avoid the formate conversion latencies of Dolby Digital and DTS...

 

[Sean*O]

I bet it is easier on the hardware to compress full rate DTS audio ~1500kbps max vs. DD audio ~640kbps max. Less cramming and calculating going on, but I don't know if real time DTS encoders are as widely available or cheap as the DD ones?