I also miss 3D sound from the original Xbox days, but then it all was gone with the Xbox 360 and its rather above average but not-incredible-at-all sound processed via the CPU. Sigh.
Yes, now that you mention it Incredible Surround 3D seems to implement some kind of HRTF feature.
As I said, if I set the console to Stereo and if, for instance, I am facing someone who is talking in Skyrim, if I am just in front of them their words sound neutrally centred.
If I then use the right stick to look towards my right side, leaving them placed at the left side of my body, all the sound goes to the left ear of my character -that's to say, the words they are speaking sound in the left speaker of the TV-. :smile:
On the contrary, if my character faces left, leaving the people speaking at the right side of his body, the NPC voices go to the right speaker of the TV, which feels realistic as they are talking towards the right ear of my character. :smile2:
If I set the console to Dolby Surround 5.1 or Dolby with WMA Pro -this is the setting I use when I choose surround- then the same happens but as I said people behind me sounds really, really close, but if I turn around -still in place, without moving from where I am- facing them then they sound far.
This means that the Incredible Surround 3D setting of the TV could feature HRTF -in this case trying to imitate the behaviour of a surround system-.
However, as you pointed out already, the sound can get muddy.
This only happens when the Xbox 360 is set to surround 5.1 or Dolby with WMA Pro, because in trying to mix the different sounds from all the channels at times either the sounds of the characters sound behind the harmony of the music or the music sounds behind the voices of the characters.
This is pretty understandable though. I shall experiment, like you say, when I have the Xbox One. I am leaning towards Stereo uncompressed and 7.1 uncompressed.
The "most surround sound like" experience I ever got from the TV and the Xbox 360 happened while playing Blazblue: Calamity Trigger, when I completed the game with Noel Vermillion.
The ending features a bed, all looks white and there was a high frequency *bip* -similar to one of those hospital machines you can see in movies- coming from some place within the room.
The sound only went straight to my right ear, it was A-mazing. It always goes like that because I can play that sequence whenever I want since I have finished the game.
Since it is a high frequency sound it is plenty irritating, but this made me realise that I was still getting a differenced sound from each speaker.
I hope so, too. Richard and the rest of Digital Foundry staff would have to create audio-graphical focused articles, and I think it would be worthwhile.
PS4 is going to feature sound through GPGPU in the future and Xbox One has SHAPE and the rest of the audio block.
Lacking an audio section in future articles would be a missed opportunity for the most complete coverage of future games, imho.
It's not 1980 and we are not using chrome cassettes anymore....
Thanks goodness, I still have a pretty sensitive hearing -long story-, sometimes too sensitive, and I can discern/separate sounds pretty well.
I also watched this brief National Geographic video the other day and testing my hearing I only missed the last two frequency sounds.
Congratulations to those who can hear all the high frequency sounds.