Aces High Bulletin Board
Help and Support Forums => Technical Support => Topic started by: Sally on August 08, 2007, 11:52:27 PM
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does anybody fly with these and if so are they worth the price?
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Aces High does not use Dolby surround encoding. The game uses true 3D sound positioning via DirectSound. No encoding is needed for this. Just FYI.
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so are ya saying a 5.1 surround head set won't work in aces high, or it won't be true surround?
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If the headset depends on Dolby 5.1 encoding to work, then the surround mode will not work in Aces High II.
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Which format is better, Dolby's 5.1 or 7.1 or the 3D positional audio that DirectSound uses? Any thoughts about ever incorperating EAX sound?
ack-ack
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DirectSound positioning is the best.
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I have a Medusa 5.1 surround sound headphone set that plugs into my Sound Blaster Audigy 2 LS 5.1 card. With this hardware, I hear surround sound in AH, along with pretty much all my other games.
I can hear planes climbing into my dead-6 blind spot. I can hear bullets fired behind me to the left or right. It almost isn't fair. To them, I mean. The effect is much more impressive in games like Counter Strike Source and other FPS games.
Highly recommended.
-Llama
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Every stereo headset ive ever had enabled me to tell the position of a nearby tank....19 bucks
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Isnt DirectSound under Vista dead? That might be a factor too.
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Originally posted by bj229r
Every stereo headset ive ever had enabled me to tell the position of a nearby tank....19 bucks
no doubt. ya only have 2 holes on the sides of your head.. a "5.1 surround headset" sounds like a great marketing gimmick.
Surround earbuds might even be better!
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Originally posted by Chalenge
Isnt DirectSound under Vista dead? That might be a factor too.
DirectSound is being emulated under Vista. MS just routes all the DirectSound calls through the normal Windows Sound API. It was the only way they could get DRM to work in DirectSound.
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Originally posted by kvuo75
no doubt. ya only have 2 holes on the sides of your head.. a "5.1 surround headset" sounds like a great marketing gimmick.
Surround earbuds might even be better!
Don't be an idiot.
Surround Sound Headphones have multiple speakers inside each of the cups on the side of your head. They aren't "imitating" surround sound; they ARE surround sound. They are the same setup you'd get from a 5.1 speaker set, but instead of placing large speakers all around the room, they are placing small ones all around your ear.
The ones I have from MedUSA contain 4 speakers per ear, each arranged carefully to try to generate separation. There's a subwoofer (or really, a low-frequency-tuned speaker) in the outside part, a rear-sound speaker towards the rear, and then two a general-purpose speakers in the center pointed at your ear canal (one for the center channel, and one for the main left or right channel.)
Sennheiser has a unit that's basically the same setup.
Up until last year, these headphones were banned at most of the top-level CS:S tourneys due to it being too much of an advantage. I don't know if that rule is dropped, but I can tell you that *I* have the advantage over *you* when I'm using them.
-Llama
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Don't be an idiot.
Don't be a salamander:)
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Originally posted by llama
Don't be an idiot.
Surround Sound Headphones have multiple speakers inside each of the cups on the side of your head. They aren't "imitating" surround sound; they ARE surround sound. They are the same setup you'd get from a 5.1 speaker set, but instead of placing large speakers all around the room, they are placing small ones all around your ear.
-Llama
How the hell does your ear tell direction?
I've always understood that we perceive the location of sound sources just by the difference in time it takes for a sound to get to each ear. so, you cannot tell if something is directly in front or behind you if you have no other cues i.e. visual, or without tilting your head.
I'm not sure either way, you may be right.. Im gonna do some more reading.
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kvuo75, if the enemy is coming at you from the right rear, the right spaeker gets a bit more power, and in llama setup seeing as you have 4 speakers in each ear, they adjust the power in each to fool the ear into hearing from which ever direction they need.
Have you never tried surround sound? gone to a movie theater recently?
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And it gets even better if you also have a TrackIR, which I do.
In addition to Fugitive's excellent description of different power levels fooling your hearing, if you have TrackIR, you *can* tilt or turn your head, even minutely, and the surround sound speakers "swivel" the noises all around you.
So, for example, if you only *think* you hear something behind you, just wiggle your head a little bit and you can hear the noise move from your 6-low to your 7-low to your 5-low and back to 6-low.
In most games the center channel helps you zero-in on low versus high sounds.
It really is amazing, actually. I would never have bought the TrackIR (I won it), and I would never have bought the surround sound headphones (XMas Gift from Wife - boy does she know me), but now that I know what they can accomplish together, I would buy them again in a heartbeat.
-Llama
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Originally posted by The Fugitive
kvuo75, if the enemy is coming at you from the right rear, the right spaeker gets a bit more power, and in llama setup seeing as you have 4 speakers in each ear, they adjust the power in each to fool the ear into hearing from which ever direction they need.
Have you never tried surround sound? gone to a movie theater recently?
Yes, we're talking about headphones though. If you only had 1 ear, do you think you could tell which direction anything was coming from in a headphone? no matter how many speakers were in it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_localization
going back to my surround sound earbud, if you had an earbud with a "front half" and a "rear half". do you think your ear could tell front from rear?
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Originally posted by kvuo75
If you only had 1 ear, do you think you could tell which direction anything was coming from in a headphone? no matter how many speakers were in it.
I doubt it, but since I have two ears, I can.
I bet you could to.
I'm not really sure what you're getting at here, other than being obstinate. There are about a million review of surround sound headphones and 5.1 speaker setups you can look at over the internet. As a professional hardware and software reviewer myself, I can assure you that I would like nothing more than to publish a review stating that expensive hardware didn't do what it was advertising. I can't find a single review like that for the Medusa 5.1 headpone set.
Next you'll be telling us that 3-D Imax films aren't really 3D because they wouldn't work for people with one eye...
-Llama
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Originally posted by llama
I doubt it, but since I have two ears, I can.
I bet you could to.
I'm not really sure what you're getting at here, other than being obstinate. There are about a million review of surround sound headphones and 5.1 speaker setups you can look at over the internet. As a professional hardware and software reviewer myself, I can assure you that I would like nothing more than to publish a review stating that expensive hardware didn't do what it was advertising. I can't find a single review like that for the Medusa 5.1 headpone set.
Next you'll be telling us that 3-D Imax films aren't really 3D because they wouldn't work for people with one eye...
-Llama
Remember, the plural of anecdote is anecdotes, not evidence. Reviews are anecdotes.
The "audiophile" community is rife with testimonials about sound. As someone with some experience in music, and recording music, I've learned a bit about sound. I've learned that the "audiophile" community is rife with weirdo beliefs about the physical world which have no scientific basis. Either as a religion, or regret, when they spend $2K on speaker cables, they will not change their minds. I have no idea. Nevertheless.
You have two ears, two eardrums. Since "hearing" is the perception of the eardrum vibrating from oscillating sound pressure, we just need to make each eardrum vibrate. The real world, loudspeakers, headphones, anything. There are only two membranes you need to agitate, your eardrums.
We can process the actual signal quite easily with modern computers. delay, change phase, introduce effects, etc. etc. etc. We can model the filtering of the outer ear, etc. etc. etc. All we need to do is get that processed signal directly to your eardrum with a minimum of outside influence.
NOW,
Earbuds IN the ear = $10?
Cheapo headphones = $20?
Surround headphones = $50+?
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I have surround headphones. I plug it into my sound blaster using three 1/8in jacks, one for front left and front right, one for rear left and rear right, and one for center/sub.
I also have a senheiser (sp?) stereo headset. I've tried it in both stereo mode and in simulated 3D modes which various games and the sound blaster itself offers.
The surround headphones are much more convincing. I do hear sounds that apparently are coming from around me, just like my 5.1 home theater setup. So regardless of whether you think its possible or not, I'm telling you that it works, and works a hell of a lot better than stereo headphones, even good quality $120 stereo headphones like the ones I bought.
And I paid ~$60 for the surround headphones, broke them 2 years later, and bought another of the exact same model to replace them, which I'm still using to this day, in many many games, now including Aces High.
So to sum up, surround headphones really do work, they work with Aces High, and IMO they are worth the money.
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Boiler,
Well I appreciate another data point, but Kuvo is quite convinced we're all insane, and will classify your post as "another anecdote."
I have the suspicion that Kuvo will soon be telling us that all the bumblebees we see flying are figments of our imagination since the physics of flight say bumblebees can't fly.
Really, I'm tired of trying to explain things to this guy.
BTW, boiler, what model did you buy? I'd like to recommend a less pricey set to my nephew.
-Llama
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Aside from my earlier points, Skuzzy says in early in the thread:
"Aces High does not use Dolby surround encoding. The game uses true 3D sound positioning via DirectSound. No encoding is needed for this. Just FYI."
and,
"If the headset depends on Dolby 5.1 encoding to work, then the surround mode will not work in Aces High II."
AHII produces 2 channels of audio. Somehow you're getting 4 or more? Where are they coming from? Magic?
And I'm the idiot?
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Um... Dolby 5.1 isn't the only way to do surround sound perhaps?
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Originally posted by kvuo75
Aside from my earlier points, Skuzzy says in early in the thread:
"...The game uses true 3D sound positioning via DirectSound...
And that's all a 5.1 sound system needs to do it's thing.
And a word about anecdotes and magazine/online reviews:
If you're so willing to dismiss all reviews about 5.1 surround sound headphones working as anecdotal, then would you also be willing to dismiss a review claiming that they *didn't work* as anecdotal? If not, why not? At what point does an overwhelming ratio of work/doesn't work reviews become evidence in your eyes.
And along those lines, please provide for me a URL to a reviewer that says the 5.1 surround sound system they reviewed didn't actually provide surround sound, so that we may determine if it is an anecdote or not. True, I only spent 5 minutes on google looking for one, but I didn't locate one.
Note that audiophile products, such as moster cables, are a very good example. For every breathless review about how good an audiophule product is, you can almost always find some, if not many, reviews or articles stating how pointless such products are, or you'll find studies about how a sampling of tested listeners can't determine the difference between two things, one being "reviewed as super" and one "normal" item.
You simply won't find negative articles about 5.1 headphones, or studies about how listeners can't tell the difference. Why is that, do you think? I would suggest it is because 5.1 headphones work as advertised.
In the end, I think it comes down to you complaining about a product being "impossible" to work without actually testing it with your own two ears.
-Llama
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Originally posted by llama
Boiler,
BTW, boiler, what model did you buy? I'd like to recommend a less pricey set to my nephew.
-Llama
I use http://www.xoxide.com/ltb-ac97-51-surround-headphones.html
but it seems its now out of stock. I recall paying about $60 for it.
It looks like this is the follow-up product to it: http://www.xoxide.com/ltb-magnum-51-ac97.html
I only link XOxide because they have nice pictures btw, not endorsing them.
Mine uses the USB jack for power only, no data flows through it. And that's the only flaw, since USB power picks up noise from the computer. So I bought a $8 USB powered hub and plugged it into that. Works great. But the new version comes with a AC/DC converter so you don't need that any more.
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I have never tried 5.1 headphones but the sound positioning is definitely correct from my 7.2 surround setup. I did have to switch from my Audigy 2 ZS back to the onboard sound to make this happen; though. I send a 5.1 Dolby signal from my PC to the receiver and it is converted to 7.1 Dolby Digital EX.
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Not to take any one side of this issue, Here is my 2 cents. I work professionally in the sound reinforcement industry, and the things that can be done with today's technology is amazing. Yes, as humans, we have only two ears, but that is not where it ends fortunately. The brain, although very complex and powerful, CAN be fooled. Simple example is a movie theater (go see an action flick to experience this) The other would be a concert hall, or house of worship, etc. The trend today is to have wide, and fairly shallow venues (think twice as wide as it would be front to rear).
In these cases, to get true stereo (or surround) seperation is a battle. If you sit on the exterme right or left of the auditorium you are closer to one speaker than the other. To combat this the new designs are a LCR setup (Left-Center-Right) with the center cluster having speakers that point left, center, and right. All of the speakers fire off at different times. A basic example is that you, as the listener, are on the far right, you would normally hear sound from the right speaker first because it is closer. With the DSP technology today, that sound from the right can be delayed (measured in milliseconds even) as the center cluster fires off it the left ear so that the listener's brain is fooled into thinking that both sides arrive at the same time (most newer home theatre systems now have this delay option to make up "perfect" mounting). Also if the room is fairly deep front to rear you may notice another cluster (or two) hanging from the ceiling towards the rear of the room (i.e. in front of the listeners in ther balcony) these are also typically delayed or synched with the other speakers in the room. This is so you see and hear the action at the same time because you are farther from stage than the rest of the audience. e.g. a drummer hits the snare drum and you hear the sound at the same he/she puts the stick on the drum head unlike seeing a flash of lightening, then hearing the thunder.
In "surround headphones" there are five (or six) different speakers angled at you ear canal in different ways. Keeping this in mind the DSP software can fire off different speakers at different times. Although there is no true distance/time = speed arithmetic involved, your brain "perceives" space, dimension and distance. As far as bass/sub-bass freqs. are concerned, they are non-directional and that is the reason for them being on the outside of the phones' most of the time. So if you have an ugly sub at home, stick it behind the couch, or better yet, in the corner(facing it) and you will notice no difference.
I apologize for being so verbose, but this is the simplest way I can describe it, without getting into doppler effect, and how the Digital Signal Processers actually work, and so on.
Quick add-on: If the signal going to your phones, stereo, etc is not a 5.1 (or other ype of signal i.e. Aces HIgh2), then you will not get TRUE channel seperation as you would with a proper signal. This is not to say that they will not work, or even somewhat sound like 5.1, but that it will not be TRUE surround sound.
Thanks for (ahem) listening.