Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Wishlist => Topic started by: cegull on August 12, 2014, 09:47:58 PM
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I think the sim could use better engine sounds for inline and radial engines. A Merlin or Alison inline sounds a good deal different than a Pratt or Right radial for example. Bullet strikes on dirt should throw up more dusty stuff and those on water could be enhanced as well. In real life air combat tracers looked like round glowing balls or 'tomatoes' (as Cat Eyes Cunningham put it) and the strikes on the opponents plane looked like light colored smokey puffs with bits of stuffs blowing back in the slip stream. I think most of todays players have puters that can handle some extra effects and the player immersion effects would be greater also.
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I am fairly sure that the sounds are kept simple by default so that people with older systems are not overwhelmed. There is a lot more to it then just that, of course, but that to start with. There are plenty of sound packs to chose from to fix things if you do not enjoy the default audio.
As to effects we will have to wait to see what is under development.
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you can download sound packs for your engines---and the sparkies you see when bullets hit planes or gv's is fine with me.
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strikes on the opponents plane looked like light colored smokey puffs with bits of stuffs blowing back in the slip stream.
hit someone with a >30mm up close and you'll see just that already.
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hit someone with a >30mm up close and you'll see just that already.
:lol
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I am fairly sure that the sounds are kept simple by default so that people with older systems are not overwhelmed. There is a lot more to it then just that, of course, but that to start with. There are plenty of sound packs to chose from to fix things if you do not enjoy the default audio.
As to effects we will have to wait to see what is under development.
This is a really incorrect, its more or less they would rather put the time into plane models and physics than hi-fi sounds. The fact that a new user has to rely on a 3rd party to make their game not sound like complete crap is frankly pretty terrible.
The only reason I can see sounds being omitted from the game is for systems with low hard drive space but, for me atleast the sound mix I currently have set up are 153 Mb. A lot of people think sound is magical but it really isn't, its just an AC signal, at the same time any system with capable 16 bit stereo output could play any sound that is 16 bits and stereo. I doesn't mater how "simple" or "complex" the sound is because in the end all sounds are the same complexity and the only thing which makes them distort is the amp, DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) and then what the user is listening to them on. Going onto that example the idea that game sounds could cause a system to run slower is simply incorrect. Sure on an unoptimised sound engine it could but miles is pretty well regarded.
And its quite funny because in game the system still has to preform all the 3d calculations of where the sound is at relative to the listener and yet you never see this complained about (this is true even in mono outputs).
And let me edit this, yes more sound files would infact cause a slow down because the system would have to index more of them and thus use CPU time on it. But to be honest the 3d positioning would take much much more CPU time than simple indexing.
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This is a really incorrect, its more or less they would rather put the time into plane models and physics than hi-fi sounds.
<snip>
This is quite incorrect.
And let me edit this, yes more sound files would infact cause a slow down because the system would have to index more of them and thus use CPU time on it. But to be honest the 3d positioning would take much much more CPU time than simple indexing.
This is also incorrect, on all counts.
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Then please explain to how aces high differs from almost all games. You never see any other game not come with proper sounds for objects with in the game for reasons other than licensing or simply wanting to put work else where.
Also it is correct to say what makes a sound file more demanding on the CPU to play is the bit resolution, the sample rate, the length of the sound file, and any up sampling/down sampling that needs to take place. So based on the fact that:
*All sounds with the same bit resolution, sample rate, length, and assuming no up/down sampling (OS process anyways) are equally complicated
*Playing these sounds is a small task for any CPU that is newer than a pentium 4
*Each plane would have a class which would play the respective sounds that plane uses (assumption, not sure if done like this but a reasonable guess)
Then we can conclude that the order of events of the game playing the sound for 1 plane would be:
*Locate sound file to be played (Game process)
*Load file from HDD if need be (OS process)
*Play said sound file (Game process)
*Return (Loop)
So the only thing that slows down the sound file would be the indexing of more sound files and then playing them possibly at the same time. One has to remember that modern for modern CPUs this is an a very easy task. Sound cards used to have on board RAM and processor for playing sounds (this is around the 2005 era) but this was phased out as modern CPUs can play multiple sound files just fine.
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Modern sound cards still have their own processor and RAM.
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Modern sound cards still have their own processor and RAM.
in other words why buy sound cards with no ram or cpu when most mobo's have their own sound, right?
semp
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in other words why buy sound cards with no ram or cpu when most mobo's have their own sound, right?
semp
Sounds cards should be bought because one wants better sound not because of better FPS. A external USB DAC+AMP combo will provide the same thing a sound card does with out all the buggy drivers and silly EQs. I personally still use a sound card because they have a good price to quality ratio.
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So, olds, you think that it is just as easy for a computer to process a 36kb wave file as it is a 1.4MB wave? I mean if compute cycles aren't important why is it that modelers have to go through LOD reduction? Why do texture artists have to provide mipmap levels? And the tell-all is why is there a limit on the number of sounds that a game can handle at one time? Why is it some onboard VIA chips (for example) can handle only 16 voices, while a top-of-the line card can handle 128? It's not hard drive limited I can tell you that!
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Sounds cards should be bought because one wants better sound not because of better FPS. A external USB DAC+AMP combo will provide the same thing a sound card does with out all the buggy drivers and silly EQs. I personally still use a sound card because they have a good price to quality ratio.
no what I meant was dont get a sound card that doesnt have a cpu or ram. it's a waste of money. get those who have their own cpu and ram. they cost the same in most cases.
semp
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So, olds, you think that it is just as easy for a computer to process a 36kb wave file as it is a 1.4MB wav
No remember what I said about the complexity is dependent on sample rate, bit resolution, and time? Assuming we are sticking to 1 file type the only reason a file gets bigger or smaller is dependent on those 3 variables.
I mean if compute cycles aren't important why is it that modelers have to go through LOD reduction
Are we talking about CPU cycles or GPU cycles, GPUs for the most part handle graphics and are extremely different beasts than CPUs.
And the tell-all is why is there a limit on the number of sounds that a game can handle at one time?
Simple, its engine dependent and the design must consider what they want to put their money/time and in some cases processing power. Yes if you have 128 different sounds it will take more processing power than 16 sounds. But fancy this, a modern dual core super scalar out of order CPU running at 3ghz would be MUCH better at processing sound files than a 100 mhz single core VLIW DSP. Sure they are different workloads and the DSP would have a better instruction per cycle but its running at a crawling 100 mhz compared to the 3000 mhz CPU.
It simple math:
DSP can:
*Process a max of 8 instructions in an in order software pipeline
*Run at 100mhz
*Bit width of 16-32 bits
*Execute 1 thread at a time
Dual core CPU can:
*Process a max of 3 instructions in an out of order hardware pipeline
*Run at 3000mhz
*BIt width from 32-64 bits (Or 128-256 bits with vector streaming instructions)
*Execute 2 threads at a time (or 4 threads with hyperthreading)
So how many instructions per second can these two processors do?
DSP: 8 instructions * 100,000,000 cycles per second (hz) * 1 thread @ 32 bits
Instructions per second: 800,000,000 aka 8 million instructions per second (MIPS)
Dual core CPU: 3 instructions * 3,000,000,000 * 2 threads @ 64 bits
Instructions per second: 18,000,000,000 aka 18 billion instructions per second (MIPS)
So
Sound cards DSP: 8 MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second)
Computer CPU: 18000 MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second)
18000-8= 17992
So with a sound card installed the CPU would do 18000 MIPS and without one it would do 17992 MIPS
Not that big a difference.
EDIT: and if you don't believe my numbers I will gladly compare real world DSPs (that are used in sound cards) and CPUs (that are used in an average comptuer) of any model you chose :)
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It's not engine dependant. It doesn't matter what the variables are if the size is larger it takes more room, time, and thus cycles. It doesn't matter whether its CPU or GPU, cycles matter. You save process time where you can, which is why you bother to reduce complexities where you can. When HTC made things use standard sounds the complexity was reduced to a minimum. No, it's not engine dependent, it's processor dependent. Like I said some onboard chips can handle only 16 voices, while the better soundcards can handle 128. If it depended on the engine alone then you would have zero voices, because the engine cannot play sounds alone. And a CPU alone will not do it. You can upgrade an old 780i system to a rocking Titan, but if the CPU is still an E8400 then the game isn't going to run any faster. However, switch out from a standard VIA chipset to a SB ZxR audio card and you will instantly have better sound. No, your frame rate won't increase (maybe a little), but you will probably get fewer audio anomalies in heavy traffic. Speed up the CPU to an i7 but use a 5400 rpm hard drive and you still have a bottleneck.
This is why they make audio cards, rocking video cards, Xe hard drives, and water cooling.
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Chalenge you are quite misinformed how little of processing time actually goes to audio playback. Secondly the anomalies you are describing is almost always a driver dependent issue.
Have a external DAC+AMP config that connects via USB and you will never have anomalies (Unless hardware failure of course), No drives, and it works on any USB device.
Here is a good link:
http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/02/gain-and-headphone-ampsdacs.html
Poke around on his other articles and you will see why all the BS that goes around with "Advanced EQs" and "Special hardware thing that magically makes the result better than the source" is simply BS.
With that said I still use a sound card because they have a great price to quality ratio compared to external devices.
EDIT: And yes one could do everything a sound card does completely in software and on the CPU, Their is no magic.
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Olds, that blog concerns straight up audio without a game playing in tandem. You need to go back and actually read what I wrote and take into consideration that I have actually tested audio in the game on many different systems to come to the conclusions that I have. Plus, I use an external "DAC" for audio input and that I am quite aware of the improvements by removing any type of load from the system altogether. However, your 'external DAC' does no 3D positional calculations whatsoever. None. It's all done on the CPU. Read up on latency, which is something you want to avoid.
We're not talking audio quality like your blogger friend. We're talking lack of latency instead.
I can make this real easy for you. Imagine you have a job sitting at a desk and taking a red ball from a dispenser and inserting it into a cup. You get the red ball from one dispenser, and the cup from another. You get really fast at doing the job and once you achieve 'flow' everything is smooth. Then the manager comes to you and suggests that shipping keeps dropping the balls out of the cups and that you now need to use a virtual third arm-hand combination to tape over the mouth of the cup to retain the ball. But, since only the best customers care if the ball is in the cup or not the application of tape will be purely random. It will take some small amount of mental power to generate the third arm, but it will only slow you down by 9% to reshuffle everything. So, you start again only this time once you gain 'flow' a red light flashes and you have to reshuffle your thought processes in order to 'make room' for generating the arm and telling that third virtual arm what to do. Plus, you have to download the code to generate the arm, because it's not part of what you normally do (not in your DNA).
Now do you get it?
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Chalenge you are forgetting how fast modern processors actually run. A couple million instructions execute in the micro second range. Secondly the CPU for the most part spends most of its time doing other things that are NOT game related such as keeping track of page tables, handling interrupts, managing PCIe lanes. So your CPU still has to move all the data to the sound card and give it instructions over the PCI/PCIe bus so while its not directly doing the calculations it still has to tell the sound card what to do and when to do it.
Almost all games (and I have lists) use the CPU instead of the sound card for 3d positioning. Even if the sound card has the option to because the CPU is faster (even while doing complex calculations and OS processes) than the slow DSP that is on your soundcard. This wasn't always the case (Back around 2005 sound cards could actually improve FPS a bit) but now it is.
Again let me say it: The CPU will always do the 3d positioning calculations faster than the sound card's DSP. It is a fact even while running stress tests for example because the OS will always give the sound some priority (Unless you set your process's priority to high or real time in task manager for example). This is done via a timer which triggers a hardware interrupt to APIC (Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller) and the OS can set what priority said interrupt from the sound processor's timer is. For the most part its priority is higher than the keyboard. Once the switch happens (called a context switch in OS terminology) the sound calculations have ALL of the CPUs processing power for a certain amount of time. Its a very common misconception of how multitasking works in a OS and how the CPU handles it.
In short the higher the priority of the process (Sound in this case) the longer time slice it gets. However even on a very low priority sound calculation it will almost always calculate faster than the DSP on the sound card.
Also you don't use a DAC for audio input a DAC is a digital to analoge converter for input you would use a ADC.
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First off, a USB bus connected sound system suffers enormous interrupt overhead, as each byte traversing the USB bus requires an interrupt to be serviced. No way around that one. Each time an IRQ happens, it invalidates the CPU cache as well. It also causes all cores to suspend until the IRQ is serviced.
Next, FFT code running on a CPU is going to be orders of magnitude slower than a dedicated hardware FFT chip. Those high end audio cards can parallel process up to 256 FFT instructions per cycle, versus the 4 a high end quad core CPU can and those hardware FFT chips can process those instructions with fewer cycles as well.
As far as the 3D positioning of sound, in a game, goes. That is actually done on the graphics card, not the CPU. When you use 3D positioning in a game, you set a vertex point as the source and a vector for the direction. It is translated by the GPU, not the CPU and you use the translation for the 3D positioning. Virtually no overhead at all. What overhead there is, is the same for a high end audio card, versus a dumb motherboard chip.
Now, if you are talking about Dolby, that is a different beast. Dolby support via their hardware chip, on a sound card, is much faster than the CPU can accomplish. Licensed sound cards use the hardware from Dolby labs for this. However, only a moron would use Dolby positioning in a game.
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One other thing. A good quality sound card moves the data for the CPU. The CPU just provides the address and the count, and sends it on its merry way. On-board sound chips cannot accomplish that, nor can a USB based sound solution.
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First off, a USB bus connected sound system suffers enormous interrupt overhead, as each byte traversing the USB bus requires an interrupt to be serviced. No way around that one. Each time an IRQ happens, it invalidates the CPU cache as well. It also causes all cores to suspend until the IRQ is serviced.
USB doesn't use the interrupt system at all, USB is a polled protocol (unlike PS/2 and AT) and this means that rely the CPU if it wanted never could check the USB buffer. The standard update rate for USB is 125hz and for each packet sent for USB 1.0 there can be a max of 8 bytes of data sent along. With USB 2.0 this was brought up to 1023 bytes and USB 3.0/3.1 this is 1024 bytes.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4813368/usb-polling-mechanism
Next, FFT code running on a CPU is going to be orders of magnitude slower than a dedicated hardware FFT chip. Those high end audio cards can parallel process up to 256 FFT instructions per cycle, versus the 4 a high end quad core CPU can and those hardware FFT chips can process those instructions with fewer cycles as well.
As far as the 3D positioning of sound, in a game, goes. That is actually done on the graphics card, not the CPU. When you use 3D positioning in a game, you set a vertex point as the source and a vector for the direction. It is translated by the GPU, not the CPU and you use the translation for the 3D positioning. Virtually no overhead at all. What overhead there is, is the same for a high end audio card, versus a dumb motherboard chip.
Yes those DSPs can process instructions in a wide issue format but have a painfully slow clockspeed in return which destroys latency compared to the CPU.
Secondly you say the 3D positioning is done on the graphics card (which makes sense) and if so why not leverage the extreme parallelism of the graphics card to execute those FFT instructions?
One other thing. A good quality sound card moves the data for the CPU. The CPU just provides the address and the count, and sends it on its merry way. On-board sound chips cannot accomplish that, nor can a USB based sound solution.
And during this DMA the CPU can not access the RAM bus at all and because this operation is preformed atomicly, can't until the DMA has completed. So if the CPU is running a process and it gets a 3rd level cache miss it has to stall which is very bad.
However, only a moron would use Dolby positioning in a game.
New sig :D
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USB interrupts: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn303348%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
As to 3D positioning, when I use my X-Fi card I get very precise indications where audio of vehicles on the ground are located (never have used Dolby). My "DAC" (audio interface that is actually a DAC/ADC and uses an ASIO stream) is much more loose on positions. So if you turn your head the same sound will appear to come from a much broader area when compared to the X-Fi. So, it would seem that the playback device has something to do with how audio is represented, whether the position is calculated on the GPU or not. Reading up on Miles it appears that Miles supports the X-Fi 3D capabilities of EAX. Given that why would anyone stick to USB, onboard, or generic audio cards?
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USB interrupts: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn303348%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
As to 3D positioning, when I use my X-Fi card I get very precise indications where audio of vehicles on the ground are located (never have used Dolby). My "DAC" (audio interface that is actually a DAC/ADC and uses an ASIO stream) is much more loose on positions. So if you turn your head the same sound will appear to come from a much broader area when compared to the X-Fi. So, it would seem that the playback device has something to do with how audio is represented, whether the position is calculated on the GPU or not. Reading up on Miles it appears that Miles supports the X-Fi 3D capabilities of EAX. Given that why would anyone stick to USB, onboard, or generic audio cards?
USB devices send interrupts as per their update rate NOT as asynchronous data transfer requests. For example if the cycle rate is 125hz then you get a USB interrupt 125 times per second. Unlike with PS/2 where you get an interrupt every time the device sends an interrupt request. Hardware interrupts are supported but act as a special value with in the USB buffer in the HOST controller (end point) and not as a special IRQ value. Basically the USB you send data synchronously at a predefined update rate.
Secondly yes if the software doesn't support 3D positioning with software then you won't get any 3D positioning. In aces high and in most games there is a "Stereo headphone" option in the sound settings which allows 3D spacial separation.
Here is something worth watching, turn off all your 3D positioning software and use any headphone you want but make sure its a pure stereo signal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA
Here are some good threads of various forums explaining how the X-Fi "Magic" is just smoke n mirrors.
http://www.overclock.net/t/370851/sounds-cards-getting-pointless-or-atleast-for-me
http://youtu.be/d1rXcJuEsy0?t=16m18s (starting at 16:18 is the talk about the X-Fi and other software)
http://forums.anandtech.com/archive/index.php/t-2331046.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/eax-dead-what-is-openal-better-than-eax.61670/
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USB doesn't use the interrupt system at all, USB is a polled protocol (unlike PS/2 and AT) and this means that rely the CPU if it wanted never could check the USB buffer. The standard update rate for USB is 125hz and for each packet sent for USB 1.0 there can be a max of 8 bytes of data sent along. With USB 2.0 this was brought up to 1023 bytes and USB 3.0/3.1 this is 1024 bytes.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4813368/usb-polling-mechanism
You can poll or use Interrupts. Most drivers use interrupts. It is more efficient to do so. The size of the packet is not determined by the specification. It is determined by the hardware implementation. I have written those drivers and I always used interrupts as polling is far too CPU intensive. It would be stupid to do that.
Yes those DSPs can process instructions in a wide issue format but have a painfully slow clockspeed in return which destroys latency compared to the CPU.
Have you ever actually measured it with a scope? I have and you are completely wrong here. So far from the reality there is no way to have a conversation about it.
Secondly you say the 3D positioning is done on the graphics card (which makes sense) and if so why not leverage the extreme parallelism of the graphics card to execute those FFT instructions?
You missed the point. The GPU processes the vertex data as part of its normal operation. There is nothing extra being done. Processing sound data on the video card would be rather silly. Send the data to the video card, then read it back only to send it to the sound chip. Makes no sense.
And during this DMA the CPU can not access the RAM bus at all and because this operation is preformed atomicly, can't until the DMA has completed. So if the CPU is running a process and it gets a 3rd level cache miss it has to stall which is very bad.
You do not understand how first party DMA works. The device can only hold the bus for a short period of time. During that time it can move data as fast as the bus or memory will allow, which is faster than the CPU can do a PIO transaction. During this time no CPU can access memory. However, the CPU's can act on any cached data they have available to them.
But then again, when one CPU core accesses memory none of the other cores can either.
This is getting into picking nits and not productive. There is no way an onboard sound chip using the CPU for all the processing is going to be more efficient than a proper sound card with its own processor and hardware. The minute you do it all on the motherboard, you lose all parallelism and become single threaded, from a hardware perspective.
Performance of sound card hardware, due to its own massively parallel architectures will always be faster than doing it on the motherboard using a shared CPU. The sound card hardware can also do more per clock tick (up to 128 times more; this is not a wild guess nor an exaggeration) than a CPU as its functionality is very narrow in scope.
Whille all that is going on, within the sound card hardware, the CPU is 100% completely free to continue running its programs. The more parallelism you can bring to the hardware, the more efficient it becomes.
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Here are some good threads of various forums explaining how the X-Fi "Magic" is just smoke n mirrors.
Garbage in, garbage out. You cannot make quality decisions based on bad information. Olds, the problem is you are accepting bloggers as experts.
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Garbage in, garbage out. You cannot make quality decisions based on bad information. Olds, the problem is you are accepting bloggers as experts.
I have yet to see any proof from you that your sound card is increasing your FPS by a noticeable amount and or in a double blind test that one could tell the difference. And no chalenge im not excepting bloggers as experts but if everyone is saying the same thing along with tests that I did myself that prove what I'm saying.
EDIT: Skuzzy because you think I am so wrong about this please show me what chips you're talking about which can execute 128 instructions per cycle and yet use almost no power and not need any sort of heatsink.
Second EDIT: The first blog I linked the user "NwAvGuy" Is infact an expert in the field of audio reproduction and his O2DAC and OAMP are one of the best in the industry so I'm certain he knows slightly more than you.
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An expert in audio reproduction is not a computer designer. I have over 15 years in computer hardware design experience, and more than that in system software development experience. I also hold a masters in electrical engineering.
NOTE: I did not say 128 instructions. I said said 128 times. There is data and there is code. A sound card operates on both, simultaneously with no interruptions from other sources. Any high quality voice sound card can do it. Heck, an ancient Creative AudioPCI 128 can do 128 parallel streams, simultaneously. Slowly, but fast enough to keep the sound streaming. All the while the CPU is free to do other things.
It is a simple matter of logic here. It is more efficient to use a sound card, than to not use one.
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An expert in audio reproduction is not a computer designer. I have over 15 years in computer hardware design experience, and more than that in system software development experience. I also hold a masters in electrical engineering.
NOTE: I did not say 128 instructions. I said said 128 times. There is data and there is code. A sound card operates on both, simultaneously with no interruptions from other sources. Any high quality voice sound card can do it. Heck, an ancient Creative AudioPCI 128 can do 128 parallel streams, simultaneously. Slowly, but fast enough to keep the sound streaming. All the while the CPU is free to do other things.
It is a simple matter of logic here. It is more efficient to use a sound card, than to not use one.
This is what I'm getting at, yes it is more efficient but is it worth the cost of a sound card with these features than to upgrade something else for better FPS. In 2005? sure but today not really.
In short I'm not disputing if what you said is correct but if its worth it in this era of high speed processors. Also note most graphic cards and some APUs have a built in sound chip which almost eliminates these problems.
Also you said earlier its impractical to do sound processing on the GPU because it requires a lot of talking back in forth:
*Send instructions to GPU
*Get results back into memory
*Output to onboard DAC/AMP
But like I said most modern GPUs have built in sound chips which can directly output via HDMI and thus would be the same as a sound card at that point.
Also I'm going to dig around to find some benchmarks or make my own if I can't find any to see what the real difference is.
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If you are strictly talking about a gain in FPS, then the gains of a sound card may not be noticeable in the frame rate alone. The gains are also in the number of simultaneous sounds the system can play, along with reduced CPU overhead which can be applied to other things (I/O, game code, other threads....).
The onboard audio devices of graphics cards sucks for games. NVidia and AMD both, have yet to figure out how to deliver sound drivers which do not create other problems for the computer. You also lose the true 3D sound positioning when you play audio through the HDMI port as the receiving decoder (the television, or receiver) expects decoding information to be sent with the interleaved audio stream.
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If you are strictly talking about a gain in FPS, then the gains of a sound card may not be noticeable in the frame rate alone. The gains are also in the number of simultaneous sounds the system can play, along with reduced CPU overhead which can be applied to other things (I/O, game code, other threads....).
The onboard audio devices of graphics cards sucks for games. NVidia and AMD both, have yet to figure out how to deliver sound drivers which do not create other problems for the computer. You also lose the true 3D sound positioning when you play audio through the HDMI port as the receiving decoder (the television, or receiver) expects decoding information to be sent with the interleaved audio stream.
So, just how inexpensive of a soundcard will provide a benefit over on board sound?
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Generally speaking, the cheaper you go the less efficient the sound card is.
If you are getting the same motherboard sound chip, on a card, you are wasting money and losing efficiency.
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I have yet to see any proof from you that your sound card is increasing your FPS by a noticeable amount and or in a double blind test that one could tell the difference. And no chalenge im not excepting bloggers as experts but if everyone is saying the same thing along with tests that I did myself that prove what I'm saying.
EDIT: Skuzzy because you think I am so wrong about this please show me what chips you're talking about which can execute 128 instructions per cycle and yet use almost no power and not need any sort of heatsink.
Second EDIT: The first blog I linked the user "NwAvGuy" Is infact an expert in the field of audio reproduction and his O2DAC and OAMP are one of the best in the industry so I'm certain he knows slightly more than you.
I do not believe I ever said anything about FPS in this thread. I really doubt any audio is going to affect my FPS. I did mention latency. When I started playing AH I was using Vista, which had terrible problems but it was the audio that was really killing combat fun for me. I would get into heavy traffic areas and I would get freeze ups from the increased audio load. A freeze up is not FPS related, not GPU but CPU. I bought an audio card, but at the time there was a lot of false advertisement coming out about one particular audio card (SoundBlaster Live I believe) and when I bought that card it did not offer any improvement. So, I went out and bought every card I could find and finally settled on an HT Omega, which offered onboard sample conversions but no 3D positioning. I was still using this for a short time after Windows 7, until the SoundBlaster X-Fi Fatality hit the market (and even then I waited because I was still anti-Creative after the Live! situation). After finally buying a top-of-the-line Fatality I discovered that I could pinpoint tanks in AH even with simple headphones.
All of this history is recorded on the BBS here.
Now I use a ZxR. So many people shrug off comments about how their USB audio systems are robbing them that I really just don't care anymore. I told you what I had learned from first hand experience and you told me I was wrong. Pfft. . .
@jimson: Look at the SoundBlaster cards for 3D positioning. I think that right now your choices are Z ($83 Newegg), Zx ($150 Newegg), and ZxR ($209 Newegg). The ZxR is really only needed if you make/edit audio and even then you don't really need it. Right now Newegg has one Z refurb for $60. The Xonar Essence ($180) bears honorable mention, but the one I tested was too noisy to make me happy.
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. . . No, your frame rate won't increase (maybe a little), but you will probably get fewer audio anomalies in heavy traffic. . .
Okay, maybe I did mention frame rates briefly. It is not at the core of the argument and therefore is not important.
More important was olds' suggestion that a CPU alone could process audio. That is just wrong. You have to have an output, and you have to at least have some software. Software does not simply load into memory but must run in order to get audio to a USB port or whatever. It will then take up more CPU time, require a percentage of operating time if you will. A sound card is always better. A sound card with 3D capabilities is ultimately superior.
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Okay, maybe I did mention frame rates briefly. It is not at the core of the argument and therefore is not important.
More important was olds' suggestion that a CPU alone could process audio. That is just wrong. You have to have an output, and you have to at least have some software. Software does not simply load into memory but must run in order to get audio to a USB port or whatever. It will then take up more CPU time, require a percentage of operating time if you will. A sound card is always better. A sound card with 3D capabilities is ultimately superior.
So here is some actual real world numbers for everyone to compare.
The creative x-fi titanium HD uses the CA20k2 processor which runs at 400 mhz
The asus ROG xonar phoebus uses the CM8888 decoder, that's right it really has NO processor what so ever yet there are countless reviews and forum posts about how great this sound card is for "3D surround positioning"
Creative recon3D uses the "Core3D" (ca0132) "processor", creative didn't provide any documentation but as these graphics show the overall sound quality is terrible:
http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/video/pcw/docs/501/874/recon3dlo.pdf
Also note the "core3D" processor in side all new creative cards is marketed as "quad core" but its really just 4 DSPs which do different things
"The "quad-core" moniker doesn't refer to there being four processing cores on the sound card, but a set of four DSPs, not necessarily hardware-accelerated, that work to give out the best audio. Two main DSP sets include Creative CrystalVoice and THX TruStudio Pro. THX TruStudio Pro is a DSP set that we're familiar with, some modern sound cards feature it, some motherboard vendors even pack it with their onboard HD audio solutions. THX TruStudio Pro provides THX TruStudio Pro Crystalizer, which works to improve clarity of lossy compressed audio, TruStudio Pro Surround creates a virtual 360 degree surround space that is touted to be better than the countless earlier attempts by various companies, at virtual surround. Smart Volume is a volume stabilizer that keeps in check abrupt volume spikes in games. Dialog Plus controls the mid frequencies to ensure the clearest voice dialog in games (cut-scenes or multiplayer voice chat). Lastly, Pro Bass is a bass compensation feature that works to restore lossy bass."
Notice how everything said there is to make bad audio sound better, again fancy words for basic EQs.
"The CrystalVoice DSP is another DSP that improves in-game voice chatter. Acoustic Echo Cancellation eliminates echos and talkback. Noise Reduction works to suppress background noise, sending through only the player's voice. Smart Volume stabilizes volume. FX allows users to morph their voice to remain anonymous."
In layman terms a DSP that does voice changing
"Microsoft Windows NT 6 kernel, used in operating systems since Windows Vista and Server 2008, saw a relocation of the audio stack, that effectively made hardware audio processing useless, because there's no direct access to hardware using DirectSound. There still is the third-party OpenAL API, but it is greatly limited and doesn't keep up with the latest sound resolutions. For Creative to stay competitive in the sound card industry, it has to do what its younger competitors such as ASUS, Auzentech (to an extant), and HT Omega realized long back, which is focusing on high signal-to-noise ratio (sound fidelity), and DSPs. Today's system processors by Intel and AMD are fast enough to process several DSP layers without impacting on system performance."
So the "Core3D quad core processor" actually is just 4 DSPs which do some nifty EQ settings and push the hard work to the CPU.
Here is link to article: http://www.techpowerup.com/151477/creative-rolls-out-sound-blaster-soundcore-3d-quad-core-pcie-sound-cards.html
So the last real creative sound card that used a real processor and RAM was the X-FI series (Now out of date and no longer being made) which ran at 400 mhz. Compared that to the 3 ghz + modern processors of today and it looses out. Creative is smart and not stating the FLOPS (Floating Point Operations Per Second) and simply stating the clock speed.
So riddle me this, if on board RAM and dedicated processor on a sound card so important then why did creative NOT do this on their new flagship "core3D" sound cards which include recon3D all the way up to sound blaster Z. I think you know why...
EDIT: And please don't start that "he is just a STUPID blogger!" BS because I can bring u creative documentation and microsoft documentation on audio processes.
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You also lose the true 3D sound positioning when you play audio through the HDMI port as the receiving decoder (the television, or receiver) expects decoding information to be sent with the interleaved audio stream.
Also this is incorrect with HDMI you can send 8 channels uncompressed directly to the receiver (7.1).
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Okay, now I'm laughing. Thanks for proving my point.
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Okay, now I'm laughing. Thanks for proving my point.
Um? ok by prove you mean disprove?
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Also this is incorrect with HDMI you can send 8 channels uncompressed directly to the receiver (7.1).
That is incorrect and quite physically impossible.
There are only six physical outbound data lanes available in the HDMI audio/video cable/connector. Both video and audio are sent over those lanes in an interleaved manner with the decoding information a receiver needs in order to play it.
Yes, the audio can be uncompressed, but typically is not to save overhead on the cable.
Audio is not decoded before it is sent over the HDMI connection. It is decoded by the receiving device. Dolby 7.1 is interleaved in a single stream with the decoding data sent to the receiver. This technique allows the audio to be sent over a digital link (single stream) or the HDMI cable without any further overhead to the sender.
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That is incorrect and quite physically impossible.
There are only six physical outbound data lanes available in the HDMI audio/video cable/connector. Both video and audio are sent over those lanes in an interleaved manner with the decoding information a receiver needs in order to play it.
Yes, the audio can be uncompressed, but typically is not to save overhead on the cable.
Audio is not decoded before it is sent over the HDMI connection. It is decoded by the receiving device. Dolby 7.1 is interleaved in a single stream with the decoding data sent to the receiver. This technique allows the audio to be sent over a digital link (single stream) or the HDMI cable without any further overhead to the sender.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Audio.2Fvideo
Quote from Audio/Video section "stereo (uncompressed) PCM. Other formats are optional, with HDMI allowing up to 8 channels of uncompressed audio at sample sizes of 16-bit, 20-bit and 24-bit, with sample rates of 32 kHz, 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 88.2 kHz, 96 kHz, 176.4 kHz and 192 kHz."
I myself run full 1920x1080p and 7.1 surround through my HDMI cable coming from my 660ti.
EDIT: Also, how can it be quite physically impossible.
and Yes, the audio can be uncompressed
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Okay, let's try this again.
You lose the ability to play surround sound on an HDMI audio stream if you do not encode that stream with Dolby or DTS encoding.
Games do not encode true 3D with Dolby or DTS, thus when a game plays its true 3D audio over HDMI, it all comes out as either mono or stereo.
Windows does not need Dolby nor DTS encoding for applications to play sounds on any channel, as long as the channel is being played through a Windows based sound card, and not the HDMI output of a video card.
Maybe that is clearer.
The part I was talking about being impossible was simultaneously sending decoded Dolby channels over the HDMI connector. You cannot do it.
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Okay, let's try this again.
You lose the ability to play surround sound on an HDMI audio stream if you do not encode that stream with Dolby or DTS encoding.
Games do not encode true 3D with Dolby or DTS, thus when a game plays its true 3D audio over HDMI, it all comes out as either mono or stereo.
Windows does not need Dolby nor DTS encoding for applications to play sounds on any channel, as long as the channel is being played through a Windows based sound card, and not the HDMI output of a video card.
Maybe that is clearer.
The part I was talking about being impossible was simultaneously sending decoded Dolby channels over the HDMI connector. You cannot do it.
Every game I play (aces high included)I used 7.1 channel surround in game and the individual speakers will infact play. I can play SACD 8 channel sources with out using a lossy format for audio transmission. I run 24 bit 192khz 8 channel uncompressed audio and NOT using dolby or DTS.
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Every game I play (aces high included)I used 7.1 channel surround in game and the individual speakers will infact play. I can play SACD 8 channel sources with out using a lossy format for audio transmission. I run 24 bit 192khz 8 channel uncompressed audio and NOT using dolby or DTS.
Through the HDMI cable? Aces High sounds will play on all the speakers, without regard to position. There is no position information, in the audio stream, for HDMI data coming from Aces High.
Through a sound card, the sounds will be played in the correct place as there is no decoding needed for positional placement.
Uh, you mean you set the maximum stream rate to 24 bit 192 khz. If the source audio is less than that, that is what you will get, unless something is doing a conversion on the data, which does not do anything but add more overhead to the audio stream. It certainly cannot improve the sound.
You can play a billion channel audio source through 1 wire, without it being lossy. It is interleaved over HDMI, regardless of the compression or the encoding. That is how they can cram more channels than there are physically available wires/paths through the cable.
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Through the HDMI cable? Aces High sounds will play on all the speakers, without regard to position. There is no position information, in the audio stream, for HDMI data coming from Aces High.
Through a sound card, the sounds will be played in the correct place as there is no decoding needed for positional placement.
Uh, you mean you set the maximum stream rate to 24 bit 192 khz. If the source audio is less than that, that is what you will get, unless something is doing a conversion on the data, which does not do anything but add more overhead to the audio stream. It certainly cannot improve the sound.
You can play a billion channel audio source through 1 wire, without it being lossy. It is interleaved over HDMI, regardless of the compression or the encoding. That is how they can cram more channels than there are physically available wires/paths through the cable.
No what I mean is that it has the ability to run 24 bit 192 khz (My AVR doesn't play 192 khz well). I run 24 bit 48khz because most of my sources are that.
Also here:
(http://i.imgur.com/go8oSgn.png)
Hardware implementation is irrelevant point was that HDMI with the sound through the video card is a perfectly normal and acceptable means of audio transmission
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Except for the fact you lost positional information going through the HDMI connection for any Windows application using true 3D positioning.
You see the "Speakers" icon? Windows knows about the ones connected to the Xonar audio device. You do not see that icon for the HDMI device, as there is no mechanism for Windows to know the speaker arrangement connected to the HDMI device. So it cannot supply positional audio streams.
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Except for the fact you lost positional information going through the HDMI connection for any Windows application using true 3D positioning.
You see the "Speakers" icon? Windows knows about the ones connected to the Xonar audio device. You do not see that icon for the HDMI device, as there is no mechanism for Windows to know the speaker arrangement connected to the HDMI device. So it cannot supply positional audio streams.
(http://i.imgur.com/J20hgU5.png)
When playing Aces High I can hear exactly where someone is and also the AVR updates its status as "5 channel pure direct". Playing dolby/DTS sources it will stay in this "5 channel pure direct" mode. Windows speaker tests also play all of the speakers and LFE correctly.
EDIT: And that icon is just a GUI feature which is user defined, for example look now:
(http://i.imgur.com/ypC0YB4.png)
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All they did for the speakers was to add a list to choose from, as they have no idea what is really connected. Not bad, actually.
But, if you are actually hearing positional sounds through HDMI and not through the other connection, then NVidia is encoding the sound for it to be decoded by the receiver. As they do not have a Dolby nor DTS hardware on their video card, they are doing it through software. Very possible to do. Just a lot of overhead.
How well does the audio match the actual video? There has to be sync issues due to the latency inherent with HDMI encoding and decoding for both the audio and video.
Still not as efficient as a dedicated sound card could do.
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All they did for the speakers was to add a list to choose from, as they have no idea what is really connected. Not bad, actually.
But, if you are actually hearing positional sounds through HDMI and not through the other connection, then NVidia is encoding the sound for it to be decoded by the receiver. As they do not have a Dolby nor DTS hardware on their video card, they are doing it through software. Very possible to do. Just a lot of overhead.
How well does the audio match the actual video? There has to be sync issues due to the latency inherent with HDMI encoding and decoding for both the audio and video.
Still not as efficient as a dedicated sound card could do.
It is 8 channel PCM being output from the video card. There is no sync issues at all and if you really want I can take measurements of from time mouse click "play" till time it gets to the speakers.
When doing the standard windows speaker check it still is 8 channel PCM over the HDMI cable and the AVR still has the display read out of "5 channel pure direct". By contrast when using TOSLINK it will clearly come up as Dolby digital or DTS connect.
Not only will my video card send 8 channels over HDMI my AT&T cable box does, my laptop (with intel HD 3000 graphics), my bluray player, and a whole host of other devices also play 8 channels through HDMI in the same fashion.
Here is a good link:
http://www.avtruths.com/uncompressed.html
From the software side of things the HDMI connection is the same as the 8 wire analog connection.
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No, it is not the same as a physical link for all the channels.
When they are interleaved, there has to be some type of decoding to put them streams back together again and then direct them to the correct speaker. That information has to be provided to the receiver.
They have no choice but to interleave the audio streams together. There will be latency with this. How much will depend on all the hardware involved.
Bottomline is the computer sound card is still the most efficient means of outputting sound from a computer.
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No, it is not the same as a physical link for all the channels.
When they are interleaved, there has to be some type of decoding to put them streams back together again and then direct them to the correct speaker. That information has to be provided to the receiver.
They have no choice but to interleave the audio streams together. There will be latency with this. How much will depend on all the hardware involved.
Bottomline is the computer sound card is still the most efficient means of outputting sound from a computer.
Yes it is interleaved but that is a hardware encoder/decoder. Its still LPCM and NOT a dolby trueHD or DTS HD format. Yes of course its hardware implementation is different.
Also who is to say the encoder on the video card is not a hardware decoder? NVidia has a built in H.264 encoder and who is to say the HDMI encoder is not in hardware?
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Just to follow up:
"3) Finally, newer NVIDIA GPUs such as the GeForce G210, GeForce GT220 or GeForce GTX 480 have added an internal HD audio codec. This is like having an internal sound controller built right into the graphics card. The NVIDIA internal HD audio codec can only be used to output to an HDMI (or DisplayPort) display. It does not support analog audio. If you require analog audio (i.e. for headphones or PC speakers), you must continue to use your PC's sound controller. The NVIDIA internal HD audio codec is superior to analog audio or S/PDIF signal. While S/PDIF is limited to compressed 5.1 multi-channel, the NVIDIA HD audio codec can support additional audio channels and also support more advanced audio formats used with Blu-ray movies. If you have a graphics card with internal NVIDIA HD audio codec, simply plug the HDMI audio cable from your graphics card to your HDTV and it will carry both video and audio. No other internal or external cables are needed from your sound card for audio."
Link: http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2593/~/how-do-i-setup-my-nvidia-based-graphics-card-to-work-with-my-hdtv%3F
Also the windows knows EXACTLY what is connected to the HDMI because it lists my AVR on the HDMI output settings:
(http://i.imgur.com/6S34Pta.png)
So what can we conclude from this:
1: You can send 8 channel LPCM (Linear Pulse Code Modulation) signals over HDMI and keep all positional audio.
2: NVidia has a actual hardware codec just like a sound card would have for sending sound over HDMI
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The one second delay in audio doesn't bother you?
Not an ideal solution, sorry.
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The one second delay in audio doesn't bother you?
Not an ideal solution, sorry.
Already set there is no delay in the audio that is noticeable. Where did you pull that 1 second number from :lol
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From the latency profile inherent in every video card that uses HDMI audio. It's an established fact. The audio quality may be better than an audio card (not likely) but the worst thing you could do is use the video cards audio stream while also using the onboard audio chip for voice input. It will certainly cause audio anomalies, stuttering, and freeze ups.
Sorry olds, you have not sold me on a single thing throughout the entire thread.
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From the latency profile inherent in every video card that uses HDMI audio. It's an established fact. The audio quality may be better than an audio card (not likely) but the worst thing you could do is use the video cards audio stream while also using the onboard audio chip for voice input. It will certainly cause audio anomalies, stuttering, and freeze ups.
Sorry olds, you have not sold me on a single thing throughout the entire thread.
Provide one link that supports your views, I have provided 7 so far.
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All I have is practical experience with thousands of users.
You will never find me telling anyone to allow the HDMI sound device to remain enabled on a video card. They can and do cause problems when used with other sound devices, at the same time.
I have hundreds of problem reports ranging from stutters to full system lockups all traceable back to the enabled HDMI sound device.
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All I have is practical experience with thousands of users.
You will never find me telling anyone to allow the HDMI sound device to remain enabled on a video card. They can and do cause problems when used with other sound devices, at the same time.
I have hundreds of problem reports ranging from stutters to full system lockups all traceable back to the enabled HDMI sound device.
And I'm not debating this, but how long ago did this happen? Sound over HDMI for GPUs used to be really bad (Especially AMD) but driver updates have almost completely fixed it. It also works on the Linux distributions I Have perfectly fine. I for one have had blue screens and lock ups with creative and ASUS sound cards (The xonar I have in my system right now is running community made drivers and not ASUS drivers). Mater of fact look up on google "Sound card driver problems" and the list goes on and on for pages of results.
Also in every game the supports it (Arma 2 and DayZ for example) I have the audio settings set for 128 sound sources and never have an issue with the audio getting garbled or anything with the GPU's audio codec.
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And yet I have a Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatality running along with an external audio interface and a system reliability factor of 10/10.
If you look hard enough on the net (sometimes not so hard) you can find verification of anything you are looking for. The problem is you do not know the details of the individual systems reporting issues. How many times have we diagnosed systems here and found out it was a defective PSU? Your typical computer user will spend hundreds on CPU, RAM and motherboard, and then slap in a $30 PSU and then complain that the sound card is causing blue screens!
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Did it occur to you (olds442) the problems you are having with other sound devices is due to the HDMI sound device? I bring this up as I have a Xonar in my computer and have never had a problem with the ASUS supplied drivers.
Yes, the problems with the HDMI sound devices continues.
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Did it occur to you (olds442) the problems you are having with other sound devices is due to the HDMI sound device? I bring this up as I have a Xonar in my computer and have never had a problem with the ASUS supplied drivers.
Yes, the problems with the HDMI sound devices continues.
There was no HDMI set up during the problems with the creative drivers and the HDMI was only for video with my xonar.
And yet I have a Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatality running along with an external audio interface and a system reliability factor of 10/10.
If you look hard enough on the net (sometimes not so hard) you can find verification of anything you are looking for. The problem is you do not know the details of the individual systems reporting issues. How many times have we diagnosed systems here and found out it was a defective PSU? Your typical computer user will spend hundreds on CPU, RAM and motherboard, and then slap in a $30 PSU and then complain that the sound card is causing blue screens!
Actually its quite simple.
*System runs fine with out sound card
*System crashes with sound card
Perhaps this will shed some light:
(http://i.imgur.com/sBVcd39.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/6QHIvOk.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/uWmwzEr.png)
Also my system isn't exactly unstable and it has months of up time (besides windows updates).
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You just proved my point olds. You can get the same list by searching for "HDMI audio causing BSOD."
People tend to buy computers off the shelf of their local Walmart, Best Buy, Office Depot, etc. and do not understand how to work on them. They will hire the kids across the street to add a hard drive, or audio card. Most standard PSUs are designed to work with one setup, and adding an extra *anything* will go over the PSUs maximum rating. So, they add a hard drive. Their game runs sluggish and people tell them they need more video horsepower, so they add a bigger video card. Now the PSU is seriously strained and even the CPU is running hot because the PSU is dropping voltage to the cooling fans. So, they add another cooling fan and meltdown occurs.
Anyway, as to Skuzzy's point. If you add a sound card to your system. . . you will need to disable the video card audio in device manager. Otherwise you will have problems of one type or another.
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You just proved my point olds. You can get the same list by searching for "HDMI audio causing BSOD."
People tend to buy computers off the shelf of their local Walmart, Best Buy, Office Depot, etc. and do not understand how to work on them. They will hire the kids across the street to add a hard drive, or audio card. Most standard PSUs are designed to work with one setup, and adding an extra *anything* will go over the PSUs maximum rating. So, they add a hard drive. Their game runs sluggish and people tell them they need more video horsepower, so they add a bigger video card. Now the PSU is seriously strained and even the CPU is running hot because the PSU is dropping voltage to the cooling fans. So, they add another cooling fan and meltdown occurs.
Anyway, as to Skuzzy's point. If you add a sound card to your system. . . you will need to disable the video card audio in device manager. Otherwise you will have problems of one type or another.
(http://i.imgur.com/UwuM0Y0.png)
All results there say nothing about audio but HDMI in general, so you're saying the HDMI is bad and no one should use it for anything?
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No, what I am saying is you can get BSOD from many different things and what you decide is the problem may not be the problem. In other words you got the result you wanted.
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No, what I am saying is you can get BSOD from many different things and what you decide is the problem may not be the problem. In other words you got the result you wanted.
And what I'm saying is you can isolate it.
IF:
*Many people have the same issue
*The system is 100% stable before hand
*Other factors have been ruled out
THEN:
*Its the sound card
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Olds, there are a lot of open ended statements embedded in your "other factors."
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Olds, there are a lot of open ended statements embedded in your "other factors."
So chalenge in your world its impossible to see what is causing a system to crash and one should just always buy a new hardware in hopes of it will fix the issue? :headscratch:
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That is an absolutely brilliant assessment of what I have reported olds.