What is the state of audio in computer games? Plus other questions

[AndyKH]

Hi

I started gaming when a sound blaster 16 was the best, and my "current" desktop is equipped with an old sound blaster live!

I will soon be building a new PC, and I've got everything but the sound card (if I need one) figured out. Therefore I'm asking:

What is the state of audio in computer games, especially with regards to positional audio?

When reading other threads about sound cards, people tend to focus almost exclusively on audio quality rather than acceleration of positional audio.
So why is that?

Are modern games almost exclusively handling audio in software?
OR
Do people simply not care for positional audio anymore?

I’m playing some old games that use EAX for positional sound, so I might get an X-fi card and use alchemy to still get hardware acceleration – probably an Auzentech and not a Creative, since everybody seems to be complaining about horrendous driver support from Creative. And then… I could also get an Asus card – btw how does Asus achieve EAX support without using something like Alchemy?
I might just make do with onboard sound, but I won’t stand really bad audio quality with lots of hissing or crackling like some onboard solutions will give you, so do any of you know of a good mATX LGA1156 board with decent onboard audio?

However where does this leave me when moving the computer to the living room and hooking it up to my surround receiver via HDMI (I’m getting either a AMD/ATI 5870 or 5850 graphics card)? Is it possible to route the audio from the sound card to the graphics card either through an internal SPDIF connection or through PCI express? Or does the graphics card actually implement an audio device that renders the dedicated sound card useless when outputting audio through HDMI?
Are ATI graphic cards even able to output multi channel audio from games over HDMI? Previously you needed some kind of real-time dolby digital or DTS encoding to get audio to a surround receiver, but with multichannel LPCM being possible over HDMI, I imagine that outputting that should be quite possible without specialized hardware.
I’m aware of sound cards with HDMI pass through that will patch in audio on the video signal, but these cards seem rather expensive.

I realize that this is not exactly the most coherent post, but I’m too tired to do anything about it now

Thanks in advance

 

[jdjbuffalo]

Most everyone uses the onboard sound built-in to their motherboards. I game. listen to music and watch videos on my PC and for the most part it just isn't worth paying for a separate sound card.

I've got a great set of speakers, a sub and a receiver. I output everything via an SPDIF optical connection. I get great positional sounds.

HDMI is a completely different animal. HDMI bitstreaming or LPCM is done via the graphics card. You don't need a separate sound card. All the video and audio are output via the 1 HDMI cable to a receiver or directly to your TV.

 

[zagood]

I've got some conflicting opinions on this. Sound is much better with my x-fi than with onboard, but I purchased my x-fi when I still had XP. If I were to build a machine from scratch I'm not sure I would spend the extra money on it. Onboard audio quality has increased, and CPU utilization of onboard has decreased. Also, from Vista on, EAX is a completely moot point with DirectSound 3d being killed off.

But, again, sound quality, especially with good speakers and/or headphones, is much better with most sound cards.

edit: For EAX enabled games, it can be emulated through Alchemy.

 

[0roo0roo]

source engine games use software sound.

 

[WildW]

I've been an X-Fi lover since I was a Battlefield 2 addict - improved sound quality aside, the positional audio was a real boost, particularly the X-Fi's ability to somehow do surround sound through normal 2-channel headphones. (I suppose its reasonable, I do only have two ears, but it still seems magic.)

Trying to play first person shooters with on-board sound was very difficult without an X-Fi - I was spinning around to try and figure out which direction I was getting shot from when I was playing Borderlands. With an X-Fi I just know without thinking, so there still is a difference, even with modern games and Windows 7.

These days I use the on-board sound for most things and I bought a USB X-Fi dongle that I just plug in if I'm going to play those sort of games.

 

[WinGeek]

I am not sure about every other person but to me my pc sound card is enough for gmaing at least

 

[CKent]

If you have decent entry level headphones ($75+ range) you'll notice the shortcomings of onboard sound with music. Most people don't have a receiver and loudspeakers of high enough quality to care either way.

In short I'd go with onboard for gaming. Only look into dedicated sound solutions if you have quality gear and are at least a little bit anal about quality music reproduction.