Technical investigation into PS4 and XB1 audio solutions *spawn

there are quite a few papers around:

http://www.aes.org/events/31/program.htm

 

-if they could do diablo2esque "desert themes" from scratch that would be sort of cool as hell ...

 

I wonder if SHAPE could be used for something like this (identifying living beings) -sounds like a great fit-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/23263266

 

1) No. It's an audio processor, not an audio evaluator. SHAPE takes in audio signals and tweaks them to output a different audio signal. That's it. 2) Why would you even want to?! Do you have grey wolves coming over to your LAN parties and have trouble recognising who's who?!

 

The latest creative card has something called scout mode

 

Sounds like they're just filtering out overpowering low frequencies on the 5.1 feed.

 

Correct. We actually implemented gamer recognition through voice for the 360. It could reliably tell which of a pair of identical twins was talking. It was cut at some point because its one of those things where you can easily get to 80%, but that last 20% is incredibly time consuming and difficult.

 

If there is no hunter around that sounds like a good idea.

Seriously... Oh well, I thought it was a good fit because of the speech recognition capabilities of Kinect, which are SHAPE related.

I couldn't help but ask. I thought it would be a good idea to use the mighty powers of the chip. Kinect has been used in things like guiding actual cockroaches on demand making them crawl wherever you wanted them to go, after all.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/26/kinect-cockroaches

So if you used a technology like that in conjunction with SHAPE, giving engineers enough time to build that technology, which they would need according to your estimates, nature broadcasters could certainly use something like that.

It would be great if games could isolate sounds like that, but with amazing quality.

Or having a character which can focus on individual sounds.

Imagine that off in the distance, there is an owl flying towards your character and that he/she has the ability to isolate sounds. It would be great if you could just listen to the owl's wings and the sounds of the wind. Or even being able to listen to the usual hoo hoo sound they make.

It's all about using the resources you have at your disposal in the most awesome manner. Luckily for me I still have a very fine hearing and sound is really important for me. I would love to play a game where I could see, for instance, a fireplace with a fire going, and the sound is so realistic and mesmerizing that I could start to feel "warm" just by listening to and looking at it.

Very few games gave me similar feelings. Only Skyrim got it right for me. I was completing a quest about two people in love -Riku and Fenrig- and it was a rainy day in the game.

Just walking around in that place, and watching the rain falling was great. The atmosphere is one of the best, most realistic things in Skyrim. It felt totally real to me, a grey-dark rainy day, with the sounds of thunder in the background. Amazing stuff.

The air felt so real, it felt like it was ozonized like during a storm. How nice it was

 

Holy crap, we actually got the oh-so-shy tritosine5G to participate in a thread.

 

Thanks, first time poster.

all I got to say is wow what a read. Thanks to all in here, and thanks to bkilian most of all for answering all the questions. Great informative read!!! from start to finish.

 

Jim Hannigan -composer in games like Runescape, Harry Potter, Theme Park and Command & Conquer (among others) and some TV shows, plus BAFTA award winner and 5-time BAFTA original music nominee and founder of Game Music Connect- talks about how audio design will evolve on Xbox One.

http://www.oxm.co.uk/59868/features...x-one-dead-space-3s-composer-explains/?page=1

 

Did he?
His discussion, or the fragments of it that were placed in the article below the Xbox One headline, seemed more wide-ranging, and in somewhat unenamored with the increase in quantity promised by technological advances.
I don't think he actually mentioned the Xbox at all.

The author spliced in a Forza dev's description of that game's fancy audio scheme, which was then followed by Hannigan's statement that he felt that fancy tech could be distracting.

I'm curious what didn't make it into the article.

 

You caught me... in flagrante there. That was very smart of you. I just read the article which I found in the gaming news feed I normally use and thought it sounded nice, but it's true the Xbox One isn't actually mentioned anywhere.

As you point out, he says that audio technology can be distracting but he also states that developers are learning more and more every day when it comes to audio, and it makes it the more exciting.

I don't see nothing wrong with new technology. Comparing SHAPE to audio chips from previous consoles is like comparing Mozart to Humpty Dumpty.

 

That is signature material right there.

 

So here is a dumb question. can Kinect be used for noise cancelation even when using a head set ?

 

It knows how far you are from it's mic, it can hear the room through your headset and through it's own mic, so in theory it should be able to "compensate" for the sound delay between the headset and the kinect mic and cancel out the noise..

Yes

 

Just calibrate wrt to headset mic and don't move your head around.

 

I don't understand. What noise are people wanting to remove?

 

I wish they could remove heavy breathing, or other gross noises people make.

Those little headset mics don't pick up much background noise, though some of the turtle beach or Astro gaming headsets seem to pick up a ton. A couple of my friends who use Turtle Beach are always broadcasting their tv audio, the sound from their fan/air conditioner or the ice clinking in their glass of water.

 

I presumed he meant "echo cancellation".