The dedicated audio hardware is custom silicon to decompress streams. We've been explicitly told this. I can't see any reason to attribute it to the use of a conventional core?
Technical investigation into PS4 and XB1 audio solutions *spawn
- Thread starter Brad Grenz
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why would you need them?
If you have them in the main chip, redundancy gives no benefit, especially considered that chip is for low power states/bkg download tasks, as far as we know.
These are the audio options of the Xbox One system settings.
Audio:
HDMI: Stereo uncompressed, 5.1 uncompressed, 7.1 uncompressed, DTS digital surround
Optical: Stereo uncompressed, DTS Digital surround.
Does this mean that all the sound in the console is going to be uncompressed?
Why DTS Digital Surround can't be uncompressed?
Audio:
HDMI: Stereo uncompressed, 5.1 uncompressed, 7.1 uncompressed, DTS digital surround
Optical: Stereo uncompressed, DTS Digital surround.
Does this mean that all the sound in the console is going to be uncompressed?
Why DTS Digital Surround can't be uncompressed?
These are the audio options of the Xbox One system settings.
Audio:
HDMI: Stereo uncompressed, 5.1 uncompressed, 7.1 uncompressed, DTS digital surround
Optical: Stereo uncompressed, DTS Digital surround.
Does this mean that all the sound in the console is going to be uncompressed?
Why DTS Digital Surround can't be uncompressed?
It should be possible to play compressed audio since some early Blu-ray and digital movies won't have uncompressed audio.
Edit: and of course video too. ">_<
djskribbles
Legend
Outputting uncompressed audio isn't really impressive in itself. The audio could either be compressed on disc, decoded by the X1 and output as uncompressed; or it could be uncompressed on disc and output as is. The better question is if the audio on the disc is lossy or lossless (quality reduced from the master audio, or bit for bit the same as the master audio).These are the audio options of the Xbox One system settings.
Audio:
HDMI: Stereo uncompressed, 5.1 uncompressed, 7.1 uncompressed, DTS digital surround
Optical: Stereo uncompressed, DTS Digital surround.
Does this mean that all the sound in the console is going to be uncompressed?
Why DTS Digital Surround can't be uncompressed?
DTS is a lossy compression codec, so the audio quality isn't bit for bit the same as the master audio. Outputting DTS means that the X1 will bitstream the audio, sending the compressed track as is to be decoded by either your TV or AVReceiver/amp. DTS-HD Master Audio is a lossless compression codec, meaning it is bit for bit the same as the master audio once decoded.
PS3 already output uncompressed PCM audio. Some games even had uncompressed lossless audio.
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loekf
Regular
If 16:1, it's lossy.
Okay, loekf. If it is compressed I am going to choose other audio formats, most probably.
For it to be listed though, there might be some advantages to it.
I will probably go with 7.1 uncompressed. Not that it is going to make a big difference for me, perhaps, as my TV has crappy speakers -they are much better than the ones in my previous TV, which were only 3W-, but they aren't winning any awards anytime soon. They produce pretty decent sound, but without a proper surround sound system it is not the same, imho.
As much as I would love to have said sound system, it doesn't mean I'd use it necessarily often and with the release of new consoles and personal life and have enough expenses for now, it's not a priority.
For it to be listed though, there might be some advantages to it.
I will probably go with 7.1 uncompressed. Not that it is going to make a big difference for me, perhaps, as my TV has crappy speakers -they are much better than the ones in my previous TV, which were only 3W-, but they aren't winning any awards anytime soon. They produce pretty decent sound, but without a proper surround sound system it is not the same, imho.
I'd try the stereo uncompressed option as even if your TV can downmix back to 2.0 it likely won't do as good a job as the console.
DTS had a marginally higher bit rate for the rear surrounds compared to Dolby 5.1 IIRC. Both pale next to either Dolby Lossless or DTS Master, both are uncompressed so why we need two standards I will never know. DTS and Dolby 5.1 are both there for people like me who don't have HDMI compatible AV amps and still use SPDIF which lacks the bandwidth for the lossless codecs.
djskribbles
Legend
The only benefit of selecting DTS using HDMI is that the X1 will bitstream the audio so that your AVReceiver can decode it, and some prefer bitstreaming over sending an uncompressed PCM stream because they feel that their AVReceiver will do a better job of decoding the audio. But, if the audio on the disc is lossless, you're better off choosing uncompressed audio because DTS will lower the quality because it's a lossy compression codec.
If you select 7.1 uncompressed and you're using your TV speakers you might lose audio information because your TV probably doesn't support that format. You're better off selecting uncompressed 2ch or DTS (if your TV has a built in DTS decoder). Selecting uncompressed 2ch will mix the 8 channels into 2.
If you select 7.1 uncompressed and you're using your TV speakers you might lose audio information because your TV probably doesn't support that format. You're better off selecting uncompressed 2ch or DTS (if your TV has a built in DTS decoder). Selecting uncompressed 2ch will mix the 8 channels into 2.
I am going to try to follow your advice and select uncompressed Stereo for my TV because that has been puzzling me as of late, and I have been thinking the matter over and over again.
I recently purchased a new TV and I set the Xbox 360 to surround sound -with WMA Pro instead of 5.1-.
My TV has a setting called "Incredible Surround 3D", but all it does for me is enhancing the sound with a very lush -and excellent btw- reverberation, but some sounds seem to be far.
If I turn my character around everything sounds more clear behind their back, and when I turn around and I am looking towards people that is talking in the game I hear them far, far away.
Sometimes I simply switched to Stereo because of that, but even at Stereo, the sound goes from left to right during conversations in Skyrim, for instance, depending on where you turn your head.
Thus I always go back to use surround sound because I have a feeling that then *I won't miss anything*.
Playing Stereo sound doesn't produce that odd effect
where if I turn around giving my back to characters they sound EXTREMELY clear.Then with my character in the same place if I just turn him around facing the people who are talking they go from sounding like they are talking directly to my ears to sounding as if they were 100 metres away from me.
Thus I am going to switch to Stereo on the Xbox 360 whenever I power it on again and select Stereo uncompressed on the Xbox One from the get go, in order to avoid those oddities -I like the sound from the Incredible Surround 3D of the TV, so I am going to keep that enabled though-.
I am completely certain it is a boon to have people like you in the forum. As I said to Lalaland before I am going to switch to Stereo on my current console and select uncompressed Stereo for the Xbox One, til I have a surround capable sound system.
The exception being those games which have compressed audio, but if they don't find out in the typical Digital Foundry face-offs and stuff I don't know if the games' cases are going to specify that fact and give detailed information on that.
I hope audio gets a much in-depth coverage the next generation, especially when you can use uncompressed audio because both the consoles' capabilities and the storage format allows that.
It looks like allegedly simple games like Lococycle have uncompressed audio, for instance. I mean, Lococycle takes up to 13GB of space in your HD.
How is that even possible if not for the audio assets? This is the game, for quick reference.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md3C0qxptNM
My TV has a setting called "Incredible Surround 3D", but all it does for me is enhancing the sound with a very lush -and excellent btw- reverberation, but some sounds seem to be far.
If I turn my character around everything sounds more clear behind their back, and when I turn around and I am looking towards people that is talking in the game I hear them far, far away.
Sometimes I simply switched to Stereo because of that, but even at Stereo, the sound goes from left to right during conversations in Skyrim, for instance, depending on where you turn your head.
Thus I always go back to use surround sound because I have a feeling that then *I won't miss anything*.
Playing Stereo sound doesn't produce that odd effect
Hmmm if your tv has a good implementation of HRTF (Head Related Transfer Functions aka 'fake 5.1') and your main gaming seat is in the right spot you may get more benefit from feeding it DTS. Well implemented HRTF can achieve remarkable effects, as you've seen, but they can make non game content muddier (especially music content).
It's your TV though so hop back and forth and choose whichever gives the best result for you!
I do hope the next gen consoles implement HRTF as standard for 2.0 outputss (with the option to disable of course). I miss my Aureal A3D
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