Technical investigation into PS4 and XB1 audio solutions *spawn

[Darius]

Wow, just::.. it's astonishing. With all those capabilities at its disposal... Does it mean that they could create a 3D audio engine for Shape alone after the console is launched? -sometimes afterwards- Or just in my dreams, maybe?

XpiderMX, surely it sounds great and you piqued my curiosity. I have already watched the video you shared though and I even gotten further sharing it twice in two different threads.

That's really the only answer I'm interested in hearing. From the looks of it, it sounds like a very powerful processor for current gen audio. That's great but...that's not what I really want, I'm more interested in quality than speed. I'm still pining for a return to the days of real 3D sound, full blown HRTFs and wavetracing reverb. I'm totally ready to give up graphics for better audio...but that's not up to me.

If SHAPE can't do what AMDs DSP can do, and real 3D audio is still too expensive to execute on the CPU or GPU, or devs get lazy and use only what SHAPE is capable of...then however powerful it may be, it's still a disappointment in my eyes.

 

[eastmen]

That's really the only answer I'm interested in hearing. From the looks of it, it sounds like a very powerful processor for current gen audio. That's great but...that's not what I really want, I'm more interested in quality than speed. I'm still pining for a return to the days of real 3D sound, full blown HRTFs and wavetracing reverb. I'm totally ready to give up graphics for better audio...but that's not up to me.

If SHAPE can't do what AMDs DSP can do, and real 3D audio is still too expensive to execute on the CPU or GPU, or devs get lazy and use only what SHAPE is capable of...then however powerful it may be, it's still a disappointment in my eyes.

Any forward movement is good in my opinion . The audio blocks in the xbox one should be very good at moving sound forward. If the dsp in the amd chips are popular maybe MS will open some more of the audio block to developers.

What i'm interested in , is how much of the amd stuff the xbox one can do using its audio block.

 

[RudeCurve]

Why are all of these noob accounts being created to post about being disappointed about a console they'll never buy?

 

[bkilian]

Any forward movement is good in my opinion . The audio blocks in the xbox one should be very good at moving sound forward. If the dsp in the amd chips are popular maybe MS will open some more of the audio block to developers.

What i'm interested in , is how much of the amd stuff the xbox one can do using its audio block.

If you count the AVPs and ASP, all of it, at least all of what they announced at their reveal. I'm hoping that developers and the audio team will at some point be able to retask one of the AVPs for audio effects. Having PC games starting to use those effects may help with that conversation.

 

[bkilian]

Why are all of these noob accounts being created to post about being disappointed about a console they'll never buy?

Probably GAF again, this thread has garnered some attention there recently.

 

[RudeCurve]

Probably GAF again, this thread has garnered some attention there recently.

"it's more like pretending to be disappointed in a technology they never cared for, engineered by a company they don't trust, on a console they'll never own, made by a company they feel threatened by. But still voicing disappointment about it."
-BoardBonobo

 

[eastmen]

"it's more like pretending to be disappointed in a technology they never cared for, engineered by a company they don't trust, on a console they'll never own, made by a company they feel threatened by. But still voicing disappointment about it."
-BoardBonobo

He forgot about them champion the same technology when another company announces it a few months later

If you count the AVPs and ASP, all of it, at least all of what they announced at their reveal. I'm hoping that developers and the audio team will at some point be able to retask one of the AVPs for audio effects. Having PC games starting to use those effects may help with that conversation.

I really hope so. I used to love buying new sound cards every 2 years and being amazed. I remember when I got my awe 32 bit sound blaster back in the day , that thing was amazing.

 

[Darius]

If you count the AVPs and ASP, all of it, at least all of what they announced at their reveal. I'm hoping that developers and the audio team will at some point be able to retask one of the AVPs for audio effects. Having PC games starting to use those effects may help with that conversation.

I guess what I don't understand is why didn't that conversation already happen? I know that's just a rhetorical question, but it's not like 3D audio is a new thing, it's been waiting for the better part of a decade for someone to revive it. I'd have thought that would have been the starting point for a next gen audio chip.

If not repurposing one of the locked off blocks of shape (which is used for what anyway?), can it be done effectively on the CPU or GPU instead?

I'm just really tired of this virtual 7.1 nonsense for headphones, and nothing but straight panning for surround speakers. Game audio should be so much better by now, and I'm a little concerned that they'll limit themselves to whatever shape can do on it's own instead of pushing the limits.

And no, I'm not from GAF, and I'm still buying an Xbox One and PS4 on day one, while keeping my PC up to date, just like I have been for the past 20 years. Just been struggling to find a place where people know what they're talking about instead of a bunch of kiddies.

 

[Darius]

I really hope so. I used to love buying new sound cards every 2 years and being amazed. I remember when I got my awe 32 bit sound blaster back in the day , that thing was amazing.

Nothing will top the total war between EAX and A3D. I actually owned both a SB Live and Vortex 2, and would switch between them depending on the game. I used to buy games just because they had good 3D audio support, I was super excited about A3D 3.0....and right before it came out, Creative finally succeeded in suing Aureal out of existence, buying up all their superior tech and burying it under a rock, and just cruised on EAX until MS finally killed it with Vista. It's been like the dark ages for game audio ever since.

 

[Solarus]

if theyre not using cus for audio then how is audio being handled? I've read from someone way more knowledgable than me and up there with you guys that ps4 HAS to use 2-4cu for audio to keep parity with xbo and shape. and thats because since theyre using the same cpu if they dont keep parity then it results in framerate problems and bad physics/ai.

 

[Betanumerical]

if theyre not using cus for audio then how is audio being handled? I've read from someone way more knowledgable than me and up there with you guys that ps4 HAS to use 2-4cu for audio to keep parity with xbo and shape. and thats because since theyre using the same cpu if they dont keep parity then it results in framerate problems and bad physics/ai.

2 CU's is more powerful then the entirety of the audio block * 2. The SHAPE part of the block can probably be implemented on a core or less on the PS4 (depending on what your doing).

 

[zupallinere]

if theyre not using cus for audio then how is audio being handled? I've read from someone way more knowledgable than me and up there with you guys that ps4 HAS to use 2-4cu for audio to keep parity with xbo and shape. and thats because since theyre using the same cpu if they dont keep parity then it results in framerate problems and bad physics/ai.

Maybe the audio on the PS4 is Balanced

I am not aware of any devs complaining about the audio system on the PS4 being a problem but who knows, I mean it's not like Sony would know anything about audio or the like.

 

[Love_In_Rio]

Probably GAF again, this thread has garnered some attention there recently.

this thread no, you

 

[bkilian]

I guess what I don't understand is why didn't that conversation already happen? I know that's just a rhetorical question, but it's not like 3D audio is a new thing, it's been waiting for the better part of a decade for someone to revive it. I'd have thought that would have been the starting point for a next gen audio chip.

If not repurposing one of the locked off blocks of shape (which is used for what anyway?), can it be done effectively on the CPU or GPU instead?

I'm just really tired of this virtual 7.1 nonsense for headphones, and nothing but straight panning for surround speakers. Game audio should be so much better by now, and I'm a little concerned that they'll limit themselves to whatever shape can do on it's own instead of pushing the limits.

And no, I'm not from GAF, and I'm still buying an Xbox One and PS4 on day one, while keeping my PC up to date, just like I have been for the past 20 years. Just been struggling to find a place where people know what they're talking about instead of a bunch of kiddies.

3D audio needs to be tightly integrated with the game engine, generally. It can easily be done on CPU or GPU. Problem is most console gamers don't game using headphones, and you need to know lots of stuff about the speaker setup and gamer position and head orientation in order to do good 3d audio positioning when headphones aren't in use. Even when they are, you still need to know head orientation if you're going to do it right. Humans, and other animals, use head movement to determine the true 3d position of a sound. Without that, you get an audio effect kinda like the head tracking pseudo 3d graphics effect. It looks good, but since your eyes are both getting the same information, your brain isn't really fooled.

The reserved blocks on the audio chip are used for codecs and Kinect speech processing. The Kinect speech pipeline is one of the most impressive audio graphs I've seen. One of the PMs printed it out once as a block diagram, and to get the text readable it had to be on a 5 by 3 foot sheet of paper.

 

[baten]

It's been like the dark ages for game audio ever since.

Could it be because there is little demand from customers?

For instance I am one of the dinosaurs that can do with only stereo or virtual 5.1 and need nothing more...

 

[bkilian]

this thread no, you

I could just quote lines from random books and some idiot on GAF would repost it there and assume it had deep meaning about the "secret sauce" he desperately hopes exists. There's a reason I don't post there, even though they finally gave me an account.

 

[RudeCurve]

Maybe the audio on the PS4 is Balanced

I am not aware of any devs complaining about the audio system on the PS4 being a problem but who knows, I mean it's not like Sony would know anything about audio or the like.

The last notable audio chip SONY designed for consoles was for the SNES...

 

[Betanumerical]

Just a small note, I only just bothered working/remembering the GFLOPS/core of jaguar (iirc its about 12) anyway back to the point, if SHAPE offloads >1 CPU as Microsoft says, and we can assume its <2 CPU cores then its offloading somewhere between 12 and 24 GFLOPS, somewhere between 1/8th and 1/4th of a CU I have no idea about how efficient these algorithms can translate to the GPU but if its at least 1/8th to 1/4th the efficiency then you should be able to do it on ~1CU.

 

[Relab]

The chip can do 512 "high quality" polyphase SRC (resampling factor from 1/4 to 4 I think), 512 3 band EQ - comprised of 3 biquad filters, 512 Compressors with a hard knee response, 2500 state variable filters + volume changes, and 512 WMA like decodes per audio frame. Now you've already said just the state variable filters a would take 90% of one of your high end DSPs, which when included alone in a card costs about $250, you also estimated the EQ/CMP at 48% of a DSP, which seems a little low, but you're the expert. We're already at a minimum of a two DSP card (~$500) and we haven't even touched the SRC. Unfortunately, I don't know the number of taps on the FIR filter, but you could use the standard mid-quality 64 taps in your calculation if it makes you feel better.

The mix buffers will mix >4000 channels per frame, at 28 bit. The rest of the pipeline is 24 bit.

The DSP numbers are based on completely arbitrary routing (including split of streams) and function, like : In -> SVF(BP) -> SVF(LP) -> CMP -> SVF(BP) -> SRC -> EQ1 -> EQ2 -> SVF(HP) -> EQ3 -> Out. If SHAPE have restrictions related to routing or functions, we could optimize the DSP functions further.

I would have prefered that part of this thread was moved to 'Console Technology' for a technical discussion. I'm not interested in the XB1 vs PS4 discussion, only in the audio technology side and the decisions behind the choises.

How do you define frame? Sample?

We don't have much information other than what have been posted by Vgleaks. I would imagine that the different blocks inside SHAPE are tied up (resource sharing) in a specific combination, like : XMA Decoder -> SRC -> EQ/CMP. Does any of the modules share resources, like EQ/CMP + FLT/VOL and XMA + SRC?

The audio path is 24bit, what about the actual processing (coefficiencts etc.)?

In every other case, a general purpose DSP would be better, but a lot harder to convince developers to use, they hate writing DSP code.

I think this is the primary reason for the dark age in game audio.

 

[RudeCurve]

Just a small note, I only just bothered working/remembering the GFLOPS/core of jaguar (iirc its about 12) anyway back to the point, if SHAPE offloads >1 CPU as Microsoft says, and we can assume its <2 CPU cores then its offloading somewhere between 12 and 24 GFLOPS, somewhere between 1/8th and 1/4th of a CU I have no idea about how efficient these algorithms can translate to the GPU but if its at least 1/8th to 1/4th the efficiency then you should be able to do it on ~1CU.

Didn't bkilian address that in the other thread? He said SHAPE is ~ 100GFLOPS for doing on non-fixed function processor like CPU. He said it would need >1 Jaguar core which is almost equal to XCPU's "100GFLOPS" due to IPC. How many GFLOPS can 1CU process?