Technical investigation into PS4 and XB1 audio solutions *spawn

Would it be necessary that a customer for a specific custom device be made aware of everything AMD is doing?
Maybe Sony wasn't interested in custom audio hardware if it was offered, or Sony didn't ask and AMD didn't tell.

 

He reads B3D.

 

As Dave said all the 2013 ip blocks were at their disposal.And for AMD putting it into a console would give it wings.

 

Dave! My buddy! My pal! Deets!

I _love_ that the PC is getting a dedicated audio DSP that will come "free" with their GPU. How good a DSP is it? How does it compare to the Creative emu10K/emu20K that's in the X-fi cards? Does it have fixed function blocks (like SRC - which Creative cards, and most DSPs have) or is it purely programmable DSP?

 

Now, SHAPE doesn't look as exciting...

 

Yeah, but it's only available in 2 out of 5 SKU's? R9 290X and R7 260X?

 

I thought it was 3. Both R9's and the high end R7.

 

Or maybe it is in there. Just one of the additional sundry processors that were presented but never named? Perhaps they just aren't as interested about the sound side of things when all the tech guys seem to be about GFX etc.

 

if it was in there surely sony would have talked about it. that and they wouldn't have that audio chip that was posted earlier today on vg.

 

There are 3 R9s.This nomenclature...the worst in history.

 

Welll they could of concieveably not talked about since AMD hadn't announced it thus NDA but yeah it would seem to make the other chip redundant. Either way we'll know in the next few weeks or so

 

Maybe it is.....I just followed this : http://www.anandtech.com/show/7369/amd-announces-next-generation-r7-and-r9-video-cards

This specifies 4 R9 SKU's - 290X, 290, 280X, 270X?!?!

 

Yeah it seems like the the ones that have audio are new chips while the ones that don't are rebadges of old chips.

 

Probably possible, yes. Here's a convolution reverb VST plugin that runs on your GPU using OpenCL. Seems there's many more plugins like this one out there.

 

hopefully someone can answer this question. and hopefully I have this right.

When it comes to PS4/XBO multiplatform games. is it accurate to say that the mixing and filtering will be done on PS4's cpu for the PS4 version and for the XBO version that is sent off to SHAPE to do and as developers get familiar with with GPGPU in the later years they can move it from CPU for PS4 to its GPU?

but as it stands now in regards to multiplatform games to keep parity its basically

pc/ps4 = mixing/filtering on the cpu
xbo/pc = mixing/filtering on SHAPE/sound card (if the gamer has one)

since ps4/pc is the low denominater the audio portions will be build around its cpu for mixing/filtering?

 

Do you think true audio is an "all or nothing" proposition for consoles or could some features be done in shape and the remainder on the CPU/GPU? (I.e. Could shape accelerate some/most of true audio via fmod or wwise)

 

if devs are using the extra hardware in new gpus they should be able to move that work over to the new audio block in the xbox one.

Its more exciting that way , should make it easier for us to get higher quality sound for xbox one owners and amd gpu owners going forward.

 

That's if developers get access to the XB1 audio block, last we heard they never had it.

But I do think this is positive news even for consoles.
It just adds to the positive things I have seen recently regarding better use of audio in games.

The hardware was probably more necessary in the consoles than the pc space considering the brute force PC's have, but it does mean that game engines will have more reason to implement environmental audio, and therefore squeeze it onto consoles.

 

This is the audio technology AMD graphics cards are going to use with their DSP.

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It seems that the PCs with AMD graphics and Xbox One are going to play audio without affecting the CPU and GPU processing of the system.

This technology might make into the PS4 as well via GPGPU? I don't know, but they made a DSP for it 'cos it does seem unviable on PCs without a DSP because GPGPU code has to be carefully crafted.

However in the case of the PS4 they could use the CUs for this, I guess. We shall see.

 

They have access to the SHAPE part of the audio block in Xbox One, and it should be very easy to leverage. What they don't have access to is the DSPs in the audio block.

That said, the fixed functionality of SHAPE is comparable to whatever this DSP is in the new AMDs cards.