PC Gaming Audio

Balfa

Let me start by saying I'm not looking for people's opinion on what the best way to experience game audio is.

I'm curious as to what developers use when they're creating and testing in-game sound. I'd like to recreate the audio as close to how the developers intended as possible, without going overboard on the cost.

I started thinking about this recently when I replaced my old headset with a new USB one, and the sound quality is kinda muffled and meh.

In this day and age is EAX even considered useful any more? I believe most programming APIs do good reverb effects regardless of hardware support for EAX. Does a hardware DSP add significantly to the sound experience, or merely offload a fraction of the CPU's job and give you an extra frame or two per second?

Like I said, I'm not looking for opinions on what sounds great, because that's so subjective, but if anyone has any experience or insight into how developers approach this, and if they test their positional audio with 6 speakers, 8 speakers, plain old headphones and these new 5.1 channel expensive headphones?

ScumLord

Balfa wrote: »

Let me start by saying I'm not looking for people's opinion on what the best way to experience game audio is.

I'm curious as to what developers use when they're creating and testing in-game sound. I'd like to recreate the audio as close to how the developers intended as possible, without going overboard on the cost.

I started thinking about this recently when I replaced my old headset with a new USB one, and the sound quality is kinda muffled and meh.

In this day and age is EAX even considered useful any more? I believe most programming APIs do good reverb effects regardless of hardware support for EAX. Does a hardware DSP add significantly to the sound experience, or merely offload a fraction of the CPU's job and give you an extra frame or two per second?

Like I said, I'm not looking for opinions on what sounds great, because that's so subjective, but if anyone has any experience or insight into how developers approach this, and if they test their positional audio with 6 speakers, 8 speakers, plain old headphones and these new 5.1 channel expensive headphones?

I'd say it starts in a dedicated sound lab but after that given that these people would work in an office space it's all headphones more than likely top quality 5.1 headphones.

Overheal

headphones, surround systems. its all the same. they design games to be enjoyed universally. im happy with a decent pair of 2.0 headphones.

Having said that, my roommate had an xfi card and 5.1 surround setup: CnC3 sounded ****ing glorious... and I mean absolutely glorious. Not just Oh Look 5 and a bit - Directions of sound glorious, I mean lost for words excellent.

PogMoThoin

I have 5.1, Yes it is glorious, I've an X-fi and my rear speakers are 12" from my head, to me the sound of headphones are just meh.
That being said, most of the games I play have good positional audio so surround is a must. Eax effects aren't really supported by many games anymore, FEAR was the last that I can remember, there was a time though that all games used it (Doom 3, Quake 4).

My next soundcard won't be a Creative though, not that they're no good, the opposite actually, they're amazing, I was disugsted at the way Creative behaved over the Daniel_K issue, I've a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 here which they refused to get working under Vista only for him.
Motherboards nowadays ship with very good 7.1 riser soundcards so there's no need for an add in card like an X-fi