Technical investigation into PS4 and XB1 audio solutions *spawn

Many many thanks bkilian, as usual. I shall follow your advice, and since my TV is just a Stereo TV -despite featuring technologies like Incredible Surround and Incredible Surround 3D, which sound more like buzzwords than reality- I am going with Uncompressed Stereo set at the Xbox One dashboard and Stereo on the TV. What do you think?

Less lag, better sound. In my tests with Skyrim the Stereo setting on the TV didn't add reverb as Incredible Surround and Incredible Surround 3D did, but some little details of the sound were lost with these last two settings.

I tested this in a cave, opening and closing a chest various times, and some details of the sound seemed to be gone. The reverberation effect is lush, but I don't see the point if you can't hear the sound as clearly, really.

 

The "based on" could mean a different implementation of the underlying tech. eg. Maybe one DSP instead of 3. The reason Sony hasn't mentioned it is curious. I wonder if it was a possibility on the drawing board but not confirmed to be ready for PS4? So Sony went ahead with their design, and AMD finished the design in the last minute and Sony went ahead and included it? So the tech docs were true but outdated.

If the mysterious third chip in PS4 is an FPGA, could it be configured as a TrueAudio processor (connected to the APU) for launch units, to be replaced with updated silicon with the TrueAudio integrated on die?

We can go one further, and suggest AMD asked Sony to include it to promote PC adoption. Might be a 'free gift' for PS4 in the hopes of establishing the tech.

Edit: From Anandtech, AMD TrueAudio slides. They're Tensilica DSPs supporting 'HiFi2' and 'Xtensa'. So possibly the same fundamental DSP tech as XB1?

 

So Shifty, between this and what we know about X1 audio dsp, are they the same? Comparable?

 

For those interested, you can now watch the SCEA presentation "Designing a game audio engine for HSA" on demand on the APU13 conference website. They talk about the ACP...it's an hour long. Watching it now.

Again, you can register here for free to watch. You only need an email address to sign in.

 

I was wondering the same thing. Since the TrueAudio hardware is already part of the silicon for this IP level it seems tsrange that Microsoft would specifically remove it and replace it with something else. Perhaps this is just a very different software layer on top of the same hardware.

 

Shouldn't we know more about the PS4 hardware today? I think so... according to reports.

After reading the link tkf shared the inclusion of that technology is interesting because it will be also supported on the PC, and it is a new kind of 3D audio. If my observation skills are what they should I believe Cerny talked about a compressor/decompressor time ago, but then that's what the Xbox 360 has for audio.

However, a new chip compatible with TrueAudio was unheard of, and that's when things get interesting in order to cope with the audio capabilities and requirements of the new generation. We should know more details soon.

I think there are only two possibilities. It is either a new chip or a GPGPU algorithm they will use with the extra processing power of the PS4

 

Or that the audio functions that the ps4 does have in hardware, in the tech docs, (encoding decoding compressed audio, voice chat, etc) are using the same hardware and/or software that a true audio card would use. It does make sense that if Sony knew they wanted these specific functions in hardware that they just buy off the shelf than build their own.

 

Thanks for posting this. Will check back after work.

Yeah... I suspect in the dedicated h/w blocks, it's mostly of-the-shelf stuff with different software. Sony has extensive experiences in AV techniques, they would want to use their own.

Even for the scaler, when the time is right, I'd be surprised if Sony don't use their 4K upscaling technology that they seem very proud of a while ago.

 

I dont necessarily agree here. I think Cell was the last of us seeing Sony 'using their own' with regards to console silicon. Even in their home audio electronics I am pretty sure they aren't deigning/building *any* of the chips that do advanced audio processing or decoding.

 

They did the same on Vita. Implement their own AV IP on off-the-shelf audio (DSP) chip. I vaguely remember they said they will do the same on PS4.

It would be cheaper, more flexible, and arguably better (from their perspective based on their experiences). They basically talk to the developers to find out what they need, prioritize and implement the audio subsystem. Then repeat.

EDIT: I wonder if there are opportunities to have tighter integration between the different components (e.g., easier to integrate audio raytracing + audio effects + rendering + other compute).

 

Turned out "their own" 8 ACEs with 8 queue is just a AMD option...

 

Yap, but customized by Sony to suit their needs.

They use the same implementation strategy on Vita too.

 

Any idea if the PS4 will support down-mixing 5.1 channels to 2 channel stereo? As I currently use this on PS3.

 

Tweet Shuhei or the PS Blog guys.

 

I think someone from AMD said something alone the lines of the console features becoming AMD features.



I took that to mean that the Audio Chip being part of the GPU came from the work they did with the Xbox One SoC & the 8 ACE's 8 Queues coming from the work that they did on PS4 SoC.

 

"Designing a game audio engine for HSA" talks about the high level rationales for their current implementations (DSP, Jaguar and GPGPU audio code).

1) Able to own all the audio IP. Good for big and small developers (Implying no need to pay for additional royalties).

2) Security implication and latency penalty concerns.

EDIT: Essentially, developers can run audio code on any of the processors based on their needs.

Also includes a tidbit on SPU vs Jaguar core audio performance.

 

Yeah, I don´t buy PS4 has True Audio PC implementation. The "based on" wording sound suspicious, and so does not mentioning of stereo "binaural" like effects that is the greatest buying point of this IMHO ( why would you use GPGPU if with the True Audio hardware you can mix and simulate 7.1 channels in stereo? ). And the no more advertising from Sony of the audio hardware after all the noise made from XB1 "Shape" doesn´t help to believe PS4 has True Audio 3 DSPs, maybe only the one that makes the decoding.

 

What do they actually say in the keynote? In the tweet, AMD simply says "The Audio chip on the PS4 has TrueAudio technology." Also Dave Baumann linked to the GAF thread titled "PS4 has AMD's TrueAudio DSP - Confirmed".

 

And why does Sony hide this?. Can´t be full TrueAudio or Cerny, Boyes or Yoshida would tweet: "full TrueAudio". As easy as that.

 

NDA? Maybe they had to save it for the AMD keynote since it is their technology.

And when has Sony ever went in depth in explaining their hardware before? We usually get the basic stuff like cores, memory etc.