Thread 12095057

We can all appreciate good games, and sharp visual, but sound rarely gets discussed on here. What are some good games you've played with Prologic, proper 5.1, surround, etc.

I recently played through Conker's bad fur day, and jet force gemni, It was strange to play them this way. I wonder how common it really was to to play on either your, or your father's hi-fi.

can someone explain how "surround" sound works with these? I get using the displayport on other consoles but with just a left and right channel how do you fale surround sound through actual surround sound speaker setups?

>>12095080
Through sound matrixing. There are sound cues that dolby decoders and the like use to separate audio. Or something like that. Ocarina of time has surround for example but you need to enable dolby decoding.

Fuck Creative, for what they did to Aureal, now and forever.

>>12095080
Rear channel data is matrixed into the stereo signal like >>12095104 says. Then you enable Dolby Surround/Pro Logic decoding on your surround receiver and it splits that data out to your rear speakers.

>>12095057 (OP)
Audio engineer here, you actually don't need any "hardware" for sound. The only thing EAX or any other device did was to perform audio calculation on hardware just like a GPU. And they were shutdown because now you can do all of that + more directly on the CPU.

>>12095348
it is true than true surround is better than virtual surround when we only have 2 ears?
in my opinion, a pair of headphones is all you need for surround.

>>12095348
It probably made sense back when CPUs weren't that strong, but yeah, not anymore, and it just became another thing Creative attempted to monopolize.

>>12095064
What does my father has got to do with it???

>>12095358
>true surround is better than virtual surround
Yes, but only if you have actual physical speakers placed at "correct" distance and orientation from your head, even then you have to manage problems like echo and more. True surround headphones are a gimmick.

Why do some games have a stereo and headphones setting? What's the difference?

Also not retro but fuck it, why do some DS games have a surround sound option?

>>12095387
>Why do some games have a stereo and headphones setting?
Back then, two speaker system was common and they were placed at the left/right side of the display. That's what stereo is for, just two channel sound.

Headphones on the other hand, are placed right in front of your ears. Now you can imagine, how developers can provide different implementation for stereo and headphone.

>why do some DS games have a surround sound option?
That's the "headphone" setting.

>>12095387
like this anon said >>12095394 when you're listening to stereo sound from the TV you get some of the left speaker sound in your right ear and vice versa, but with headphones your left ear only hears the left speaker
usually the headphone setting just mixes the stereo channels together a bit

>>12095387
I was surprised to find games on the psp with surround sound. I've been searching, but so far have only found Monster hunter, Jak and daxter lost frontier and a gundam game.

>>12095436
Metal Gear Peace walker?

>>12095439
It surprisingly doesn't

I've always wondered if modern speakers can decode surround sound of older consoles.

>>12095446
They work well enough. I've had a dolby pro logicIIz receiver and now have a modern atmos one. It's about right. I've tested ps2, gamecube and wii. Pro logic and dolby surround work as they should. The one's that tend to struggle are soundbars.

>>12095446
Both the modern Denon receivers I have decode Pro Logic and OG Dolby Surround via the catch-all Dolby mode just fine. It's remarkable how well even the latter can work even though it's just a single rear channel.

I really want a sound system just so I can experience surround sound in retro games and some new ones as well. But it's just too much space and effort driving around collecting shit from boomers. I'd love to play majoras's mask in dolby surround purely for the autism though

Still waiting for software Pro Logic decoders.

>>12095057 (OP)
I became overly sound autistic thanks to thief series. Still have a dolby decoder and a creative x-fi card.
It also made me realise that you can play the same game years later and graphics may age but sound will carry it (granted gameplay is good)

On ps1, i know only one game that can output surround sound during gameplay and has good audio in general - harry potter

>>12095953
How is it setting up surround on pc these days? Even for retro/older pc games? It used to be a pain.

>>12095436
surround sound just means that the game makes things sounding like they are behind you if appropriate.
you don't even need to be wearing headphones for this. the nds did this with nsmb (intro/opening) and mkds (mk7 on 3ds too) to showcase the capabilities of the system.
it's all done in software, so the psp was also capable of that, but don't know if any game used the trick.
for what i read, some umd movies had dolby headphones, but only a few. and apparently some even had full dolby 5.1.

>>12095460
Yeah, once they added Atmos, they just put all the Surround/Pro Logic/Pro Logic II modes into a single "Surround" mode. Amps before Atmos could do separate Surround, Pro Logic, Pro Logic II, have different music/cinema modes for each, etc.

However the newer amps even can do height virtualization. How the fuck you do that from just 2 channels I don't know.

>>12095080
It's fairly simple, the decoder just detects sounds which are played identically in both channels and mixes them into a Center speaker, it also detects sounds only played on one speaker and puts them in a Surround channel (either one or two). It's a lot of clever math and manipulating the phase of the sounds so they only overlap as much as you need it. See picrel.

>>12096109
>How is it setting up surround on pc these days? Even for retro/older pc games? It used to be a pain.
It's easy today because you just use HDMI and enable bitstreaming in MPC-HC. For games, HDMI can do up to 7 uncompressed channels so everything is done in software.
It used to be that you had to software encode multichannel audio into DTS or Dolby Digital AC3 so you can send it via SPDIF to your amp since it only had two channels worth of uncompressed audio bandwidth. But with HDMI that's no longer an issue.

>>12095057 (OP)
Any good games or recommendations? I plan on putting together a 5.1 system for retro. Any system is fine.

>>12097348
Xbox in general. I think almost every game supports true 5.1 surround. The halo soundtrack feels great with surround. JSRF as well. All the music is properly mixed for 5.1

>>12095376
I have a giant set of Japanese headphones which are 4-channel. It works for surround.

Somes PS2 / GameCubes looks very nice with Pro Logic II.

FF12 and Valkyrie Profile 2 sounds nice.

GTA Vice City have DTS audio on PS2 (only SPDIF)

Funny thing, some PS2 DPL2 games sounds better than ther remaster on PS3 / PS4.

>>12098505
>GTA Vice City have DTS audio on PS2 (only SPDIF)
Woah I didn't know the PS2 did true multi channel surround sound at all. I thought it was all pro logic outside of DVD playback.

>>12098526
That's probably only for video and maybe cutscenes, not gameplay.

>>12098526
If I remember correctly, when I captured the audio in GTA Vice City, it was 4.0 or 4.1, not 5.1, but during gameplay.
SSX3 (and 2) also use DTS, as does Midnight Club 2.

However, yes, some PS2 games also use 5.1, but only for cutscenes. MGS2, for example. FF10 in its Japanese version for FMVs.
FF10-2 is even in 6.1 (Dolby Digital Surround EX), SoulCalibur 3 too for intro cutscenes.

PS2 have also some binaural effect with S-Force sound label. (Silent Hill 2, Siren, KH2)

>>12095104
>>12096982
>play a sound through a center channel
>just play the sound at equal levels through left and right channels
>play a sound through one or two rear channels
>matrices, square roots, and negative imaginary numbers
Magic. Got it.

>>12098765
you're overthinking it, it's just using phase differences
sounds exactly the same to your ears but the receiver can detect the difference and use it to provide surround sound

>>12096109
I can only speak from my setup.
A sound card and a speaker system is necessary. Rest is software.
Sound card solved eax issues so now you only use creative alchemy to restore EAX in older games.
For /vr/ games, my decoder accepts optical present in most consoles that did dolby digital/pro logic like ps2/xbox/ps3/360. If you're emulating, pray that your emulator is capable of surround output. PS2 emulator still isn't capable of that to the best of my recoglection while GC solved that issues years ago, supposedly.

As >>12096982 mentioned HDMI simplified things today so you no longer need a sound card and just need a decoder/system that accepts an HDMI.
HOWEVER
I still hear shit about EAX emulation not being accurate.
As well as older consoles lacking HDMI
And fuckery of splitting HDMI sound from image without adding lag
But as I said I can only speak for my system and have no experience in HDMI surround audio.

>>12098526
PS2 did surround sound through Pro Logic alright, playing Double Agent you can easily test it and hear everything in surround sound.

>>12095615
Same. I know that someone wrote a Foobar plugin that allows you to convert a stereo sound file encoded in PLII into a discrete, multichannel WAV file, but I'd like to see a real time software solution.

My dream real time audio device is one that can pitch correct an overclocked console so the music comes out with all the right notes instead of sounding like Alvin and the chipmunks

>>12095057 (OP)
most original Xbox games support Dolby Digital and sound great due to the onboard sound processor. I bet less than 1% of Xbox owners even experienced it as Microsoft were too retarded to put a toslink on the actual machine. You had to get an expensive "HD pack" scart or component cable with a toslink out to get it. Ironic that the PS2 came with one but something like three games supported discreet DTS, most just used plain old stereo.
Xbox games with good 5.1: panzer dragoon, GTA III, Halo, Phantasy Star online, Conker, Peter Jackson's King Kong. The version of Half-life 2 for Xbox surprisingly sounds far superior to the PC version. It actually has processed reverb.

>>12100405
Wasn't that due to licensing? Same as with the dvd controller?

>>12100174
It's been nice revisiting games this way. Its crazy how little some people value good audio.

>>12100653
i've been slowly improving my audio setup for the past 22 years now, this spring i got a pair of proper tower speakers with 12" subwoofers and good mids and tweeters and i've been going through all my favorite game music amazed at all the little details i can hear now
it's a 7.1 surround setup so it's also fun loading up gzdoom and playing in surround cause you can hear exactly where enemy attacks are coming from

>have a Audigy 2 ZS and surround sound speakers
>see that it supports Dolby Pro Logic buried in the AudioHQ built-in decoder settings
>hook up GameCube's audio to my Soundblaster's line in port and load up the surround sound test in Star Wars Rogue Squadron III
>No sound from the rear speakers
What did I do wrong? Was that Pro Logic support only limited to DVD movie software or something?
OTOH playing Dolby Digital 5.1 stuff from my Xbox via SPDIF actually works somehow.

>>12103227
Maybe your GameCube send only 2.0 signal (wich is ok, Dolby Pro Logic II RAW sound is 2.0 anyway). But for some reason, when you enable surround (?) your Sound Card stay on 2.0

I don't know how your setup look, so I can't help much.

>>12095057 (OP)
rogue leader used to have a surround sound test (it used prologic) that was just a tie fighter doing a big loop around your system.

i used to just veg out and leave that on for quite a long period of time.

>>12095057 (OP)
My TV only supports mono

>>12098578
This. Vice City is 4.0. The rear channels are just the front channels.

Anything really good on older systems? Like snes-64 stuff?

saving from the spammer

I bought a DAC just so I could plug my ps2 and Xbox optical audio into something lol.

Were there any DOS games with surround sound support or did that all emerge during the Win9x era of PC gaming?

>>12106847
DOS barely supported sound blaster and the like.
i'm not really sure, but most sound cards with surround sound (3d audio as it was called) came around 1997. so, windows 95 was the first to have support while windows 98 ironed out all the kinks.

>>12106847
it's a good question, i imagine there was at least some cards that supported a 4.0 setup of some kind

Honestly, one of the biggest upgrades the N64 version of Resident Evil 2 has over the others is the fact that it uses the MUSYX Factor 5 audio driver and has "3D" Doulby audio. It does give the sound effects in game some form of spacial awareness in relation to the camera. Majora's Mask also has some good Doulby audio.