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nForce Sound Quality

P

Prince of Persia

Senior member
Could someone fill me in on the sound quality in comparison to some of the more recent chipsets coming out or even some of the old ones?

Like TurtleBeach, the GXP, fortissmo, sb live series

Also on a personal note how well do you think they'll perform on Boston Acoustics 4800
 
I'm interested to hear the answer to this question as well. Ive read that the onboard sound should beat most cards out there now. Cant wait to hear it with my Klipsch ProMedias.
 
I don't think anyone can say for sure, since there aren't even Samples of the nForce out yet, but I would speculate that it will be much better than SB Live and on par or slightly better than the others.
 
Any ideas on if it'll have Linux drivers for it, and if so, whether or not it'll do hardware mixing under Linux?
 
DD encoding/decoding is not a big deal. PowerDVD and WinDVD do it and that's all you really need. DD will not be used in games because EAX and A3D are much better methods of positional audio...

Dolby Digital is for movies...
 
DVD software to my knowledge does not encode AC-3, it only decodes it. I am not sure whether DD5.1 is better/worse than EAX/A3D for games, but it has 6 discrete channels of audio, and *I think* EAX/A3D only has 2 (front and rear) and matrixes channels for positional audio.
 
What would be nice is if it could take a stereo signal (2 channel) and send it out to the rears as well. The new stereos have a chip in them that can do this, whereas before stereo recordings (meaning, most if not all cd music releases) would only play on the front 2 channels.
 
What is the point of DD encoding then? For making your own movies or something?

DD will not be used in games. Why would it be? EAX and A3D are MUCH better. DD just doesn't work the same way EAX and A3D do.
 


<< DD encoding/decoding is not a big deal. PowerDVD and WinDVD do it and that's all you really need. DD will not be used in games because EAX and A3D are much better methods of positional audio...

Dolby Digital is for movies... >>



Thats all hearsay. One of the major things behind the Xbox is the fact that it will have real-time DD decoding in its games. DD has 6 discrete channels as was stated before so developers can send a ricochet or explosion to the rear left or front right without sending it to any other channels. A3D is and always has been a 2-channel format and EAX only projects the front channels to the rear with a slight reverb. The rear channels are not discrete.

DD has been around a long time by tech standards. The first DVDs had it almost 4-5 years ago. The only reason DD hasn't come to games yet is because of the tremendous processing power it would take to produce 6 discrete sound channels while they are changing. In movies the soundtrack always stays the same, so you can buffer part of the signal and start decoding before the sound needs to be played. In a game, if someone decides to move left instead of right, the signal has to change. So there can't be any buffering without screwing up the sound accuracy. Without any kind of buffer, you'd need extremely fast decoding.

Thats why Nvidia's sound chip is supposed to be so groundbreaking. If it can effectively pull off DD decoding in real time for games where it is implemented, it will blow away any other cards on the market.

However, as far as straight sound quality (signal/noise ratio) goes, your guess is as good as mine. We'll have to wait and see.
 


<< One of the major things behind the Xbox is the fact that it will have real-time DD decoding in its games >>



you mean realtime DD encoding which is a very big deal. there has never been a consumer device that could encode DD on the fly. . all the consoles do decoding which is no big deal. the effects will be same as A3d (with enconding) etc, the difference is that we can use our home theaters without much BS. also the signal stays digital and isn't converted to analog until outside the unit so it will have better clarity 😀.
 


<< also the signal stays digital and isn't converted to analog until outside the unit so it will have better clarity 😀. >>



Nvidia hasn't been descriptive enough with the press releases I guess. No one really knows how effective their DD will be. You're right that there's no consumer device that can decode DD on the fly. Its quite possible that Nforce will only decode DD that can be buffered (ie FMV cutscenes) and will just use existing forms of positional audio for everything else.

I'm a little unclear on exactly where the signal gets decoded and what kind of connection the Nforce will use. Maybe someone else knows?

Take the SBL 5.1 and Herc GXP for example. Both cards have 6 channel analog outs (which implies they can decode) AND they have optical/coax outs (which implies they can send an encoded signal). Which one will Nforce use?

If it uses an optical/coax output...then they shouldn't have claimed their chip can do &quot;real time DD decoding) because technically you need a DD receiver/decoder to decode the digital signal to your speakers.

Maybe their claim of &quot;real time DD decoding&quot; means it can change the digital PCM stream sent to the receiver but it can't technical decode the sound to analog speakers...who knows.

I wish there were some pics of the connectors on the board.

 
From a diagram on one of the AT previews, it looks like the nForce only does the encoding, and you need an external decoder (just like the XBox). So it'll probably come with two line outs and either/both coaxial/optical S/PDIF.
 
ok thanks for the info. That makes more sense. So then its not &quot;real time DD decoding&quot; in the same way as DD decoding exists today. Its more like real time encoding.
 
This feature is overhyped IMO. Dolby Digital will not be used in games. Whenever you turned your head in a game, the audio would have to be changed...

EAX and A3D take a sound an change it according to where it's position is.

DD is used for Movies, and not for games... or maybe FMV, but not for games. If you moved the sound would have to be different, changed... DD is kinda positional, but it can't be changed. I don't know if you understand what I'm saying, but bascially DD is AWESOME for movies, but terrible for games.
 
Redshirt: as I understand it, DD encoding will be used on top of EAX or A3D. The 3D sound API will calculate the 3D positional information, then the sound will be encoded into 5.1 DD channels and sent out the S/PDIF port. Personally I'd rather use analog outputs (since the sound isn't compressed), but DD encoding will be useful for people who have 5.1 DD speaker systems that only have stereo analog inputs.
 
dd encodign will not be supported by software.
the sound quality will be on a par w/ modern sound cards

nothing exciting here...
 
The only very best thing about nFORCE's sound system I expected from, is direct support of crossbar hardware feature, just as an AMD CPU with the same direct crossbar support, same is true for the integrated video crossbar support, or an external plug-in GF3 video card.

At last no more worry of fancy sound system suffering freeze, snaps, crackles, and pops... due to insufficient bandwidth or too much I/O latency.
 
DD on top of EAX and A3D is a different matter. But if the game ONLY used DD... it would be chaotic... no way to control the sounds...

I hear the next version of EAX will support 5 channels without DD...

Again, I say, DD is good for movies... And that's about it.
 


<< DD on top of EAX and A3D is a different matter >>


It won't matter none, crossbar is a hardware feature not software, it meant a minimum bandwidth of 800MB/s for PCI devices at all times, under heavy workloads or not. But smart devices with built-in support for crossbar will be more readily to take advantage of it than devices without awareness of such features. IE, pre-fetched feature of Palomino 🙂
 
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