Wouldn't Dolby Digital 5.1 cripple one of the cores in X360?

[Leeco]

Do I understand it correctly that the original XBOX had a dedicated processor for handling Dolby Digital 5.1 signal....
And that MS decided not to follow the same root (and save some money) by allowing the decoding being done in the CPU.

Is this right?

If it is, wouldn't one of the three cores spend all it's time in decoding 5.1 signal?

Am I missing something or does it look like a really bad idea from MS?
How much processing power does decoding DD 5.1 require?

 

[AlNom]

Decoding is easy. Encoding in real-time is not as simple.

 

[hey69]

probably the cpu is so powerfull it barely will tax the system to do it trough software +CPu instead of dedicated hardware

 

[BenQ]

probably the cpu is so powerfull it barely will tax the system to do it trough software +CPu instead of dedicated hardware

Exactly. With CPU's as powerful as the Xenon and Cell, it hardly makes sense to have a seperate chip for such things.

 

[AlNom]

hm... so would it actually be Dolby Digital or DTS in real time or is it just some digital 5.1?

 

[hey69]

why would it be some digital 5.1 form if you have some nice standarts

 

[BenQ]

hm... so would it actually be Dolby Digital or DTS in real time or is it just some digital 5.1?

DD 5.1

 

[one]

Isn't the third core reserved for sound and Live anyway?

 

[two]

why would it be some digital 5.1 form if you have some nice standarts

From PS3 Specs:

Sound: Dolby 5.1ch, DTS, LPCM, etc. (Cell- base processing)

 

[scooby_dooby]

One of the execs in an interview stated 5.1 DD as the standard, with 7.1 also being an option.

 

[AlNom]

I heard the speaker setup was completely arbitrary (which led me to my question above).

why would it be some digital 5.1 form if you have some nice standarts

they might want to use different compression... I don't know.

 

[Guden Oden]

Obviously, most game programmers would just use a standard sound library, rather than write their own sample mixer/surround encoder, something that can be very complicated when it comes to 3D audio simulation, particulary if wavetracing, occlusions/obstructions etc come into play.

This sound library would likely contain licenses for DD, DTS, or both, with the game either permanently defaulting to one of them, or having an user option to select either.

Furthermore, I don't believe any particular core will be dedicated to any one set task by microsoft, I expect that to be up to the individual developers to decide how they want to manage resources. One 3.2GHz processor would surely sit and idle a lot if all it does is process sound and handle xbox live stuff...

 

[hey69]

I heard the speaker setup was completely arbitrary (which led me to my question above).

why would it be some digital 5.1 form if you have some nice standarts

they might want to use different compression... I don't know.

yeah that also off course, but at least it will be complaint to standarts in the very least

 

[AlNom]

So instead of a whole core, would it just be left to one "thread" like Allard has mentioned

 

[ralexand]

What are stantarts?

 

[c0_re]

Yea I wonder about this too, I mean if DD 5.1 is trivial and can be hadled by a single thread why was the Xbox1 the only system capable of REALTIME DD 5.1 last gen?


I mean is REALTIME DD 5.1-7.1(Sounds effects and music) audio all about FP performance?

 

[hey69]

What are stantarts?

think about it, its not hard to figure it out

not everybody has english as his first language

 

[AlNom]

Yea I wonder about this too, I mean if DD 5.1 is trivial and can be hadled by a single thread why was the Xbox1 the only system capable of REALTIME DD 5.1 last gen?


I mean is REALTIME DD 5.1-7.1(Sounds effects and music) audio all about FP performance?

Weren't there one or two games on the PS2 that the devs actually managed to get working with DD5.1? If so... I wonder how much processing effort it took...

 

[PG2G]

I think they were EA games, and it was DTS 4.1

 

[Sean*O]

Seems like a cheap ~$5 sound chip would have been a good addition. They will have to encode the audio info to a DD bitstream on the fly, that has to take some small bit of CPU to do.