Schadenfroh
Elite Member
- Mar 8, 2003
- 38,416
- 4
- 0
are you talking about the nforce2 mcp-t or the analog realtek chip that comes on most nforce2 mobos, that is not nvidias fault if you are using the analog and not the digital, it is realteks
are you talking about the nforce2 mcp-t or the analog realtek chip that comes on most nforce2 mobos, that is not nvidias fault if you are using the analog and not the digital, it is realteks
I agree that having a standard surround wire/jack would be nice, but using AC-3 would be rather limiting. If implemented, soundcard manufacturers would have to include the multiple analog ports anyway for DVD-audio or future SACD playback. And I would think if someone was building a multimedia PC, with a soundcard equal to or better than the Audigy 2, that they'll try listening to the better quality sound from DVD-audio. In terms of movie watching, most cards can passthrough the AC-3 or DTS signal to the receiver and let the receiver decode it. That really only leaves games, and if the person already listens to DVD-audio, why not just use the analog then? Placing AC-3 as a standard would probably halt any attempts at higher audio fidelity in games. It also won't help game developers, as was said in a previous post.
And then what happens to budget surround speakers? Forcing companies to add AC-3 decoders into even budget surround systems would increase costs, which would get passed down to the consumer. Also, speakers will then need to include DACs, which for quality ones will just jack up the price.
I personnally don't see the need for digital. If a single standard for sending multiple channels through digital is needed, I'd rather have all the companies sit down to decide on something that does not use compression (or at least not something lossy); most likely workable example would be based on something like the current proprietary Creative Digital DIN which is good for up to 5.1 sound, but unfortunately no DVD-audio. It may be proprietary, but it's the only solution of its kind that I know of for computers, not as if there were other competing standards (optical and coaxial don't count, as they can only do stereo, or AC-3 and DTS).
I also don't see how the current 3 wires for surround using analog is all that disruptive for people. Most PC speakers come with the wires stuck together, you just have to plug them in. Or even if all the wires were separate, it's not as if the input and output jacks are 3 meters apart on the soundcard or receiver. Just use some twist ties to bundle them together.
No, Im most definintely talking about the nforce audio. Ive used it on two nforces, and one nforce 2. For some reason I thought people would say that, but believe me, the nforce's 3d audio is really that bad. Ive also tried reinstalls, reformats, new drivers etc for each of them. Nothing changed it, that is just the way it sounds.
The 2d and windows sound was perfectly fine, and like I said, there was practically no drop in performance when I enabled 3d audio. But whats the point if it doesnt work properly?
In vietcong and dungeon siege, going into a cave sounded like going into a metal pipe. It was absolutely overwhelming. On the audigy, it was just right.
Not that 3d audio is really any use in warcraft III, but if you enable it the audio will crackle and stutter every now and then.
Not to mention this really irritating problem I had within windows. On my speakers, when I put it into 4 speaker mode, there was no bass. I had to use the reverse phase on rear speakers to get it back, but then it just didnt sound right. Again, this was the same for all the nforces Ive used. No problems with the audigy.
BF1942 is kinda muffled as well, but thats just the 3d algorithm they must be using, cause when a game works, thats the way it sounds.
I cant stand creatives drivers like the next man, but they still put nvidias sound drivers to shame.
I would never buy an nforce soundstorm card unless it was under 40 or they pumped it up to audigy2 level
So you are talking about issues with the Realtek chip. If you do not have it hooked up to an external Dolby Digital receiver you are hearing the Realtek's ouput. NForce does not have a built in DAC, nor does NForce2. The NForce can not be better then the DAC used for it. Actually, even hooked up to a DD receiver, the receiver itself could very easily be the limiting factor, I've just never heard a DD receiver no matter how cheap as poor as the Realtek chip.
ViRGE
Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
- Oct 9, 1999
- 31,516
- 167
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No, he's having issues with the nForce; I am too. The DAC is just that, a digital to analog converter, it's responsible for poor frequency response, popping, etc; the nForce itself is solely responsible for the screwed up 3D sounds it creates.
Exactly. This has nothing to do with the DAC, I know exactly what the DAC is and what it does, Im not stupid. This is the 3D SOUND output only Im talking about. Its really, really bad. Its bad enough to the point where practically every single game Ive tried sound better without it than with it, and Im a big fan of 3D sound.
I know its based off the sensaura algorithms that the santa cruz uses as well, but the santa cruz was never that bad.
For what its worth though, Ive hooked it up to a dolby digital receiver in the past, and it worked great. Sound quality was only slightly lessened (as to be expected with compression), and there was little noticible delay, and no slowdown whatsoever. That being said, the only advantage is provides is the use of one cable over 3, and thats not worth it for the reduction in sound quality as far as Im concerned.
To anyone whos only used the nforces 3d audio, please, do yourself a favor and get a sound card, any other sound card, because you dont know what youre missing.
When you move a sound signal from digital to analog it has to be combined from the discreet channels utilized by the sound chip to a meshed analog signal. If the DAC is not properly converting the digital stream to analog it will hose positional effects. Hook it up to an external DD receiver and see if you still have the same problems.
One cable over three? I'm not following that. You don't have a six speaker setup(apologies if you have mentioned that and I missed it)? I have seen issues with the 3D sound on Mafia, but that was fixed with a patch. The only other boards I've compared it to are an Audigy, PSE, SC and Vortex2 and it was better then any of those when it was hooked up to an external receiver, although with either headphones or a three speaker setup I still think the Vortex2 with A3D 2.0 had the best positional sound. Haven't had any worth while hands on time with an Audigy2, not sure how much better it is.
I might get this anyways - my 8rda+'s southbridge is overheating as a result of my 9700pro being in close vicinity, so I'm getting crackling noise and stuff. =/
3d sound is great on my xbox. I've also got a Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum in my main computer.
I dont understand why you are having trouble following the simple logic. I have used the nforce on several different speaker sets, including the z560s, the BA7800s, Videologic Digitheater 5.1s and a full Dolby Digital surround setup with a sherwood receiver, and paradigm speakers, along with a sony sub.
Since the paradigm setup was clearly the most powerful, Ill try and use that to illustrate what Im saying. Ive hooked it up three ways, using all 6 speakers connected analog with 3 y cables, using only the dolby digital output on the spdif, and raw PCM on the spdif. The raw PCM only came out stereo of course. The raw PCM had the cleanest sound, being purely digital. The 6 analog sounded great as well, but of course not as good as the PCM because of the DAC. The dolby digital sounded the worst, due to compression. But when it comes down to it, the difference between them was entirely negligible when compared to the distortion and crap that the nforce 3d algorithms added in.
Positioning was just fine. I could tell perfectly where the sounds where coming from, that is not at all the issue. The issue is the screwed up eax, the crackling, the muffling, and the bugs in just about every game Ive tried.
The most recent example I can use to illustrate this is the call of duty demo. When I first started playing it, of course I turned on 3d sound. I played it, and while it was perfect surround, I couldnt imagine why the sound effects were so terrible. I would have figured it was just the game had I not turned the positional audio off and just went with the standard sound, and the sound effects werent muffled anymore. Threw my audigy in, and 3d audio sounded great, as good as the 2d, but positional.
Ive said it before, and Ill say it again. I know what the dac does, I know how it works, it is the nforces audio drivers and 3d algorithms that are total crap. I'm not saying this cause Im a bitter audigy user or anything, Im still using my nforce but I refuse to use the 3d audio on it because its so bad. Try it for yourself in call to duty, and pay specific attention to the sound of your own gun, and youll see what Im saying.
And yes, the 3d sound is great on the xbox, because its a console. Im sure the nforce can produce perfect 3d audio when its the only sound card that needed to be programmed for, but its all out of wack in the pc realm.
The on-board Nforce sound has always been limited by the crappy DAC's that come paired with it (out of cost concerns of course). Digital out is no problem since it doesn't have to go through the DAC's but hopefully seperate SoundStorm cards would use better ones.
yhelothar
Lifer
- Dec 11, 2002
- 18,409
- 39
- 91
Why do you use 3d sound when you have a 5.1 system? Wouldn't you want to use 5.1 surround speaker mode?
Well I personally own the soundstorm.. it was actually my sole factor in buying an nforce2 mobo, because I have the Altec Lansing ADA880 speakers, it has dolby digital, but it has no connections for surround, so the only way I can get surround is through Dolby Digital. In games, the Dolby Digital is absolutely great, I can hear sounds all around me... I absolutely love my soundstorm. I did have the echoing problem in my rev 1.1 abit nf7-s... but then I rma'ed that board and got a rev 1.2, and all my echo problems were gone. For music, the bass is a lot richer and punchy in PCM/2speaker mode. So I always have to switch between DD/5.1 mode and the PCM/2speaker mode when I play games and listen to music.
I also use Sennheiser HD497 headphones. For games I use dolby surround/5.1 speaker mode(3d sound). I think the 3d sound works pretty good, I can actually hear people all around me with just 2 channel headphones. For music, it doesn't sound that great with music because of the crappy cheapo realtek DAC, like the high notes were really bright, but I guess it was still better than my sb live!
What board do you have? ABIT NF7-S is one of the few boards that received the dolby labs certification.
OVERALL i'm really satisfied with my soundstorm and I would recommend it to everyone.
Well I personally own the soundstorm.. it was actually my sole factor in buying an nforce2 mobo, because I have the Altec Lansing ADA880 speakers, it has dolby digital, but it has no connections for surround, so the only way I can get surround is through Dolby Digital. In games, the Dolby Digital is absolutely great, I can hear sounds all around me... I absolutely love my soundstorm. I did have the echoing problem in my rev 1.1 abit nf7-s... but then I rma'ed that board and got a rev 1.2, and all my echo problems were gone. For music, the bass is a lot richer and punchy in PCM/2speaker mode. So I always have to switch between DD/5.1 mode and the PCM/2speaker mode when I play games and listen to music.
I also use Sennheiser HD497 headphones. For games I use dolby surround/5.1 speaker mode(3d sound). I think the 3d sound works pretty good, I can actually hear people all around me with just 2 channel headphones. For music, it doesn't sound that great with music because of the crappy cheapo realtek DAC, like the high notes were really bright, but I guess it was still better than my sb live!
What board do you have? ABIT NF7-S is one of the few boards that received the dolby labs certification.
OVERALL i'm really satisfied with my soundstorm and I would recommend it to everyone.
Now I see what you are saying- You are forcing one of the basic 3D sound APIs instead of using the nForce's capabilities. Never tried that, the thought actually never even crossed my mind.
You don't need to program anything for it, the audio chip can handle it all by itself. That is the reason most people like the nForce so much, you can run with surround sound without any game support.
The nForce's 3D sound is hands down the best on the market, it sounds like you are upset that the EAX support isn't that great. That isn't the SoundStorm's strength. It takes a 2D audio stream and converts it to 3D itself, that is why the chip is thought of so highly.
What are you talking about? The nforce takes 2d streams and converts them to 3d? And this is somehow better than a 3d sound API? Please link me to the crack you are smoking, because I have no idea what youre talking about.
When I talk about 3d sound, I am only takling about directsound3d/a3d/eax/whatever. Not surround sound or anything like that. You are not going to get true positional audio from a game unless youre using one of them. If you think you can somehow magically get better 3d audio from running a algorithm on a 2d stream rather that true 3d audio youre high on something.
And on top of that, the nforce possess absolutely no such algorithm to begin with. What are you talking about?
Yes, the Nforce does take 2d streams and convert them to Dolby Digital. It's called Dobly Digital encoding and its the only chip on the market that can do it. It is completely positional and is exactely what the Xbox does. You must be the one that is high on something, because I have never heard of any complaints using DD.
Sending an eax signal out and having it converted to DD will cause exactely what you are describing. Crap. Don't send out a 3d sound signal, send out a 2 channel stereo signal. You must either have speakers that can decode DD or a DD receiver that can do the decoding.
I for one find it the absolute best solution for games. I have gone through every card on the market and always prefer the Nforce2 encoded stream over any eax or in game 3d sound. 5.1 speakers sounds so much better than 4.1.
ViRGE
Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
- Oct 9, 1999
- 31,516
- 167
- 106
And that still makes absolutely no sense. Dolby Digital is a sound encoding and delivery system, using 5.1 discrete channels to create a 3D experience by sending the right amount of sound to each channel, this being pre-determined in something like a DVD, and calculated on the fly with the nForce2 and DICE. EAX is a 3D sound generation technology, designed to allow games to tell the sound card where a sound is coming from, and what specific properties it has, so that the sound card may run the correct algorithms(head-related transfer algoritms based on what speaker mode is being used) on the sound so that it may sound like it's coming from a point in 3D space. Without EAX(or DS3D), your sound card is recieving just the sounds, without any sort of position data, so you do not have 3D sounds, although technologies such as SRSS try to use techniques such as stereo expansion to make the sounds sound fuller.
DD and EAX are compliment technologies, not exclusive technologies. You can currently use EAX with a 5.1 speaker setup, using all analog outputs, and the sound card will send out the proper modified sounds so that the illusion of 3D sounds are created in that 5.1 setup. All DD changes is that instead of going out via analog outputs, this is instead send via the S/PDIF first, by having DICE convert the audio streams for each speaker in to the appropiate format for a DD reciever. No changes are made to the actual sound(as opposed to the data used to represent the sound, as compression is used), so in a DD setup, you should hear the same things as in an analog 5.1 setup.
Now, what's probably going on with you is that with your 2-channel signal, the game does have EAX on and is only expecting 2 speakers, so when it has the sound card do the 3D position computations, that's also done with those assumptions, meaning when you actually hear the sound, it's comming out of only the front 2 speakers, but does sound 3D. Otherwise, if you're hearing it out of all 5.1 speakers, you must have something else going on, such as speaker mirroring, or some other technology, none of which generate true 3D sound. The only way to get 3D sound in games currently is via EAX/DS3D, and the nForce has a poor implementation of such.
CZroe
Lifer
- Jun 24, 2001
- 24,195
- 857
- 126
It doesn't convert 2D to 3D just because it's using a digital standard CAPABLE of 3d 5.1 audio. That only works with simulated 3D sound, and even then it's really analog simulated 3d converted to digital simulated 3d. You aren't going to get truely positional sound without some 3d positional output that is aware of your speaker setup (EAX will do simulated 3D in a 2 speaker setup, and real positional audio in a 4+ speaker setup).
No they are not.
That's fine, didn't know EAX knew what the center channel was.
No. You can send DD over analog if the equipment supports it. Nforce doesn't. Yes sound is changed, its encoded.
Again NO! 2 channel sound is ENCODED to Dolby Digital and then passed to the receiver so it can decode it. It provides descrete sound to each speaker. When you turn around in a game, you can hear the voices go around the speakers. This has NOTHING to do with EAX or any other 3d positiong sound. It is done one the fly which no other manufacturer has done before. Games with no 3d sound whatsoever get encoded.
What do you think the Xbox is doing? It's not using eax and then encoding to DD.
Now encoding an EAX signal sounds like crap because the signal is already set to go to certain speakers. If you DD encode it, it's getting processed twice and sounds like crap.
The Nforce isn't just taking sound from a game and sending the same signal to each speaker. That would be like circle surround or stereo surround. This is encoded on the fly!
ViRGE
Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
- Oct 9, 1999
- 31,516
- 167
- 106
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