NextGen Audio: Tempest Engine, Project Acoustics, Windows Sonic, Dolby Atmos, DTS X

Sorry, the blind tests I was talking about was in relation to wether people can actually tell the difference between ultra high end headphones and speakers worth mega dollars, to good quality speakers and headphones worth nowhere near the amount.
depends on how good your remaining hearing is. As a child this is probably super easy. As an adult, this is going to be much harder, you lose your top end frequency quickly.
 
depends on how good your remaining hearing is. As a child this is probably super easy. As an adult, this is going to be much harder, you lose your top end frequency quickly.
It's not as simple as frequency response and how high the speakers go. There is so much more to sound quality. For example with speakers, the soundstage a high end pair of speakers can produce can be astounding, given a suitable room/ other equipment.
 
Is the XSX audio chip contained in the SOC or is it elsewhere on the board?

It depends on what you mean by the audio chip. If you mean audio chip as is typically seen on a PC motherboard, this is often just a DAC. Something like that is likely a separate chip on the XBS board.

If you mean audio chip as in the hardware accelerated audio support that XBS has? This is built into the SOC.

Regards,
SB
 
It depends on what you mean by the audio chip. If you mean audio chip as is typically seen on a PC motherboard, this is often just a DAC. Something like that is likely a separate chip on the XBS board.

There's no codec / DAC chip in any of the 9th-gen consoles because they have no analog audio out. Interestingly, there is one in every gamepad nowadays.
 
Add accurate acoustics to 3D environments with Project Acoustics 2.0, now with expanded support for #Unity and #UnrealEngine. Read the full update and watch the demo: http://msft.it/6017nVnjN

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com...t-acoustics-2-0-is-now-available/ba-p/2412893

Project Acoustics 2.0 is now available!

Full list of new Project Acoustics 2.0 features:
  • Unreal
    • Dynamic openings – handle changes in geometry at runtime
    • Acoustics probe volumes
      • Material override – set acoustic material for all meshes within a volume
      • Material remap – swap material names for all meshes within a volume
      • Probe spacing – change probe spacing within a volume
    • Acoustics runtime volumes – update design parameters within a volume
    • Pinned probes – place your own probes
  • Unity
  • Faster bake times - Acoustic simulations are twice as fast as before
  • Various bug fixes and performance improvements
 
There's no codec / DAC chip in any of the 9th-gen consoles because they have no analog audio out. Interestingly, there is one in every gamepad nowadays.

There must be a codec since the consoles can output PCM (decoded from various compressed formats). But your definition of codec might differ from mine.
 
There must be a codec since the consoles can output PCM (decoded from various compressed formats). But your definition of codec might differ from mine.

That post is a few months old, but I believe I used the term "codec / DAC" in the same context as @Silent_Buddha 's post, meaning an audio IC with codecs, DACs and ADCs from e.g. realtek or c-media like the ones we see in PC motherboards.

I'm sure the new consoles have audio codecs but they're probably software based as the CPU overhead to handle those is tiny at this point (could be part of the OS's truncated resources).
 
Anyone know of any good examples on PS5? Do we have next-gen audio yet?

Returnal is supposedly taking advantage of modern hardware for audio aswell, demon souls and spiderman. I do not think its a 'large leap' over what we have got previously but hey, its audio, still largely under-rated, no one really cares (same for reviewers). CP2077 sounds just as good, if not better then these titles.
 
Project Acoustics now has UE5 plugin.
I should have said it is a long video, but lots of intresting bits like, cost when backing on azure both time and financial, sort of things they have on road map, technical discussions on why audio is so demanding example being RT lighting is rays, audio is waves.
And that's not including the obvious whole point of demoing how to use it in UE5.
 
Returnal is supposedly taking advantage of modern hardware for audio aswell, demon souls and spiderman. I do not think its a 'large leap' over what we have got previously but hey, its audio, still largely under-rated, no one really cares (same for reviewers). CP2077 sounds just as good, if not better then these titles.

Cp2077 have spatial audio feature. But even with its disabled. It still sounds ridiculously good. Albeit with worse "presence". Not really noticeable tho. As audio directions are still there
 
Cp2077 have spatial audio feature. But even with its disabled. It still sounds ridiculously good. Albeit with worse "presence". Not really noticeable tho. As audio directions are still there

Enable Dolby Atmos in this game and use headphones. Its top of the pack regarding audio experience. Sadly no-one really cares, audio will never get the attention graphics do.
 
Enable Dolby Atmos in this game and use headphones. Its top of the pack regarding audio experience. Sadly no-one really cares, audio will never get the attention graphics do.
The game also sounds good on a dolby atmos system ;) but headphones is a bit easier for most people.

But I really don't think that audio will be improved that much more. The problem with audio is, that it is even more subjective than graphics. Most people are happy enough with TV-speakers or a cheap soundbar (which already improves audio quality quite a bit).
Dolby atmos is also a bit "strange" to use. My TV (Sony x9005h) does not pass through the dolby signal. So I can't connect the xbox directly with the TV if I want to use dolby atmos. I have to connect the xbox with the soundbar and than the soundbar via earc with the TV. This way I get 4k/60 10Bit HDR + VRR and dolby atmos but I miss the 120Hz mode :(
Connecting all needed devices can quickly get expensive and complicated, too.

On the other Hand, even the 7.1 from the PS4 Pro sounds great e.g. in Uncharted games.

btw, as I now can only use 60Hz on xbox I activated black frame insertion. Some things look much better now (e.g. DVDs that with old series like Magnum).
 
I'd disagree, IMO the most impactful potential improvements this generation are:
  1. Density of geometry.
    • I put this at the most impactful because compared to lighting world geometry was so bad in games compared to lighting which was in a comparatively much better place.
    • Just increasing geometric density with current lighting is a massive improvement in helping things to look and feel real.
    • Tricks like, for example, POM only help in relatively narrow view ranges and breaks down (quite badly in some cases) if you move outside of the optimal viewing angles and distances for it. The same goes for tricks that attempt to smooth or hide triangle intersections and edges, especially when viewed as a silhouette when suddenly those straight edges combined with points where triangles intersect completely destroy the illusion of a curved surface that the texture was hiding.
    • Really high world geometry basically making the lighting look more realistic.
  2. Audio (which could leverage RT)
    • Again, I have this second because audio is so far behind compared to both geometry and especially lighting.
    • It's also just as important as the other two categories WRT making a scene feel real. Without truly good and representative audio, the scene will feel unrealistic even if someone might not be able to put their finger on "why" it doesn't come close to being convincingly realistic.
    • I don't have it above density of geometry just because it is harder for some people to notice than improvements in the density of world objects.
  3. RT (lighting)
    • This isn't discounting the importance of RT WRT lighting affecting everything within a scene, it is also essential to making a scene feel real. That is to say that it is of equal importance WRT a scene being passably real.
    • However, it's last because lighting has received the lion's share of development budget (WRT engine technologies) compared to world geometry and audio.
    • Consequently, I see a much smaller jump with RT combined with current world geometry density compared to something like Nanite with current (non-hardware assisted RT) lighting.
      • Note - neither are convincingly realistic without both an excellent RT implementation combined with greatly increase world geometry density.
      • This is just saying that if I absolutely had to choose one or the other, I feel like increased world density combined with non-RT lighting is more preferable to really good RT lighting (rare in current RT games) combined with current world geometry density just because the former represents a significantly larger leap than the latter. But I would prefer to have both.
    • Just like high world geometry density makes lighting look better, really good RT lighting makes high world geometry density look better but comes at the cost of making low world geometry density (current games) look absolutely horrible, IMO. NOTE - it makes the world geometry (objects and terrain) look absolutely horrible, whether the game as a whole looks better or not depends on the game and on the importance each person's brain applies to the data each person's perceptive organs provide it to determine if something appears "real".
Of course, opinions will vary due to each person's personal quirks WRT how they view or experience the world (for example, POM breaking the illusion at oblique angles REALLY annoys me), so don't take this as me being dismissive of someone else's opinion that RT lighting is the most impactful change. :)

Regards,
SB
 
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If i'd had to choose i'd put RT (not just lighting) together with geometry/normal raster at the top, for now we need normal rasterization still since tracing rays is still too expensive to forget about the rest, but at some point it is the future though.
I believe a game going full-on using say 20tf's of compute power to render normal rasterization together with effective use of ray tracing, mesh shading, VRS, reconstruction (no matter what one) would be really amazing. Audio would come at the bottom for me in importance, even though i also think audio tech has been standing still since the first Xbox in 2001 but ok (HRTF).
 
I'd be curious to see what people would choose if given a blind test between the Matrix demo with "last gen" quality sound or the Matrix demo with a more traditional lighting system in place of Lumen (which is a form or RT in both its hardware and software variations).

Another example could be Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition vs the original Metro Exodus with "next gen" audio.
 
I'd be curious to see what people would choose if given a blind test between the Matrix demo with "last gen" quality sound or the Matrix demo with a more traditional lighting system in place of Lumen (which is a form or RT in both its hardware and software variations).

This is a fascinating idea. I think much would depend on how people experience audio. I would wager a massive amount of people just use their TV's average/lacklustre speakers and have never experienced good audio, whether through a separate audio system connected to their TV or a really good set of headphones.

That said, RT is not setting the world on fire either and I wonder if part of that is because game developers have got really good at faking lighting. I'd similarly wager that most people don't care about accurate (RT) lighting, but they want atmospheric lighting.

Nonetheless this kind test would be really interesting to watch observe. :yes:
 
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