Soundstorm R.I.P.
- Thread starter cristic
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Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
cristic said:
Told you so when Jen-sun was bullshitting about bringing back Soundstorm at "some point" in the future. It'll may be something that might get the name "Soundstorm" for marketing reasons, but it won't be what we know as Soundstorm from the Nforce 2 boards.
What was so great about soundstorm anyway? Honestly, I can only think of one thing:
dolby digital encoding.
And that has everything to do with licensing and very little with technology.
That said, some competition would sure be nice, creative sits on their emu10k chips since ages and doesn't look like they'll bring a really new product to market in the next decade or so...
Maybe some day we'll see some REAL 3d audio, similar to raytracing for video - though it's actually a significantly more complex problem than video since you'll need to deal with refraction/diffraction.
dolby digital encoding.
And that has everything to do with licensing and very little with technology.
That said, some competition would sure be nice, creative sits on their emu10k chips since ages and doesn't look like they'll bring a really new product to market in the next decade or so...
Maybe some day we'll see some REAL 3d audio, similar to raytracing for video - though it's actually a significantly more complex problem than video since you'll need to deal with refraction/diffraction.
Soundstorm is pretty buggy in the 3D audio dept. Far Cry didn't like it at all. The DD encoding works very well though.
Creative's not too bad lately to be honest. I picked up a Audigy 2 ZS Gamer for $50 after rebate like 6 months ago. It sounds very good on these Klipsch Promedias, noticeably better than my 4 year old Live! 5.1 did.
And hell, they did support the Live!'s from Windows 98 thru XP with new drivers up till 2003. It got a lot of driver revisions. That's not bad support. I have a few NEWER sound cards in the drawer that don't even get audio acceleration in XP (Philips Seismic Edge (worst support ever), all Aureal cards (not fair I suppose) , Yamaha YMF724).
But, it sure would be nice if we'd get a new player. But apparently if NV gave up, I'd say that the quality consumer audio/acceleration market is hopeless. And I think that's mainly because 90% of people don't care at all whether or not they use their mobo's Realtek codec or a Envy24/Audigy.
Hell, most of the SoundStorm ravers don't even know they didn't have Soundstorm cuz they don't know they need to have the NV-APU in the MCP-T. AND they are usually running their beloved SoundStorm thru a Realtek codec! To get quality sound out of Soundstorm you must use optical out.
So, basically, only like 10% of SoundStorm users even get quality audio
Cuz I doubt many of them have dolby digital receivers.
Creative's not too bad lately to be honest. I picked up a Audigy 2 ZS Gamer for $50 after rebate like 6 months ago. It sounds very good on these Klipsch Promedias, noticeably better than my 4 year old Live! 5.1 did.
And hell, they did support the Live!'s from Windows 98 thru XP with new drivers up till 2003. It got a lot of driver revisions. That's not bad support. I have a few NEWER sound cards in the drawer that don't even get audio acceleration in XP (Philips Seismic Edge (worst support ever), all Aureal cards (not fair I suppose) , Yamaha YMF724).
But, it sure would be nice if we'd get a new player. But apparently if NV gave up, I'd say that the quality consumer audio/acceleration market is hopeless. And I think that's mainly because 90% of people don't care at all whether or not they use their mobo's Realtek codec or a Envy24/Audigy.
Hell, most of the SoundStorm ravers don't even know they didn't have Soundstorm cuz they don't know they need to have the NV-APU in the MCP-T. AND they are usually running their beloved SoundStorm thru a Realtek codec! To get quality sound out of Soundstorm you must use optical out.
So, basically, only like 10% of SoundStorm users even get quality audio
Cuz I doubt many of them have dolby digital receivers.This is pretty dissappointing to me. I have 3 Soundstorm setups just for the DD encoding. One in my theater room - 100" projector - great for flight sims! And the other 2 in my livingroom - one MP3 box(works great for background music) and another hooked to my 50"DLP. I'd love to replace at least 2 of them with AMD64's........
I really don't get it why people like Soundstorm. Besides DD thingy, it's just another crappy soundcard. I have it in my machine (disabled, of course) and after one hour of trying it I just couldn't take it anymore, so I shut it off and re-installed my trusty ol' Terratec DMX6fire 24/96.
With new Creative chip coming next year and hopefully another evolution of Envy24 as well, who really cares if Soundstorm is gone? I can only imagine that people who don't have money for an extra soundcard will miss it.
With new Creative chip coming next year and hopefully another evolution of Envy24 as well, who really cares if Soundstorm is gone? I can only imagine that people who don't have money for an extra soundcard will miss it.
_xxx_ said:
I certainly would miss it, since I prefer not to have three analog cables draped across my living room to my amp, thank you. One cable (digital, please! hasn't everything else gone that way?) for discrete channels.
It's not that hard. I'll buy a new sound card when one that does it as well as SS is on the market. In fact, it's the ONLY reason I haven't bought a whole new rig - A64, mobo, PCIE card, etc. Why downgrade, even if it's "just sound".
For me, the only thing Soundstorm has is the DD encoding...... all three units I have are digitally plugged into multichannel recievers....... Otherwise, there are many products on the market that work as well - and many work better - as soundstorm. BTW, I use Audigy's in my gaming computers......
_xxx_ said:
Just because you've got a digital (be it optical or coax) doesn't mean it will give you any kind of descreet multi channel sound. It really sucks to have a great home theater system with 5.1/6.1/7.1 sound and only get stereo out of your computer......... And this is what Soundstorm hardware can do that nothing else affordable can.......
martrox said:
Could you please explain this in detail? Discrete isn't the same as digital (AFAICR it's just a sampled analog signal where the level is the same as the analog signal, just time-discrete. Digital is 1's and 0's only), but what does this have to do with the media used to transfer the signal? I have a rig playing DD and THX via SPDIF happily since like two years (non-PC stuff, just normal hi-fi devices).
EDIT:
Or do you mean that no other HW supports the required protocol for transfering DD over SPDIF?
And you get 5.1 descreet sound? Or do you just get stereo and a senthisized multichannel sound? In order for a DTS/Dolby Digital sound to be decoded, it must be encoded for either. Now, most all multichannel recievers can do senthisized sound, but it's not remotely the same......
EDIT 2: Yeppers....you got it......
EDIT 2: Yeppers....you got it......
I get real Dolby/THX, but it's a dedicated HW, not a PC. But implementing that in SW is pretty much a child's play and every HW could emulate it, I guess the reason will probably rather be the licensing fees Dolby wants (last I remember while I was working at Bose was like $1 per device - rear seat entertainment in Maybach has a Bose amp using SPDIF for DD/THX).
I care about competition in soundcards because my Aureal back in 2000 had better 3d sound then my Audigy has now. (Heck, Half-life 1's 3d sound was better then Half-life 2's.) Hopefully, EAX will soon match what A3d had then... the new Soundblaster Zenith is supposedly coming out this month. Hopefully, this time it won't take 18 months to get decent drivers._xxx_ said:
If a person's main interest is music or movie playing, then there are enough "good enough" options available. But 3d positional sound in games has been advancing (and I use the word "advancing" quite loosely) at a tepid rate since Creative got a defacto monopoly. Soundstorm was the closest thing to competition Creative had for a long time.
Alas, Soundstorm, we hardly knew ye.
Oh, now I get it. I was just assuming he's talking about DVD's (which already have the DD sinal right away). That would be a simple transfer of data over SPDIF, that's what got me wondering.
Do you mean like when you play Doom3, Soundstorm creats a digital 5.1 signal in HW instead of doing it in the driver? While that's a nice idea, I don't really see the benifit since emulating that does not take more than 3-4% CPU time. Or what else is it good for?
And I really can't buy the argument with three cables. When you twist them, they're not much thicker or annoying than a single cable
EDIT: or do you mean I'll get no DD from a game at all with other cards, also not through emulation?
Do you mean like when you play Doom3, Soundstorm creats a digital 5.1 signal in HW instead of doing it in the driver? While that's a nice idea, I don't really see the benifit since emulating that does not take more than 3-4% CPU time. Or what else is it good for?
And I really can't buy the argument with three cables. When you twist them, they're not much thicker or annoying than a single cable
EDIT: or do you mean I'll get no DD from a game at all with other cards, also not through emulation?
