windows 8 audio

sajibjoarder · **windows 8 audio -** 06-13-2012, 00:49 | posts: 330 | Location: Dhaka,BD

are we gonna get back hardware audio in windows 8 with the xaudio 2 ? and which one will be the best choice for now as a sound card.

GenClaymore · 06-13-2012, 08:22 | posts: 5,082 | Location: Michigan,usa

There were rumors about it, but i wouldn't rely on those rumors. Your Cpu is fast enough so you shouldn't worry about hardware audio. Its not like your running a old school cpu or a intel celeron.

I had none hardware based sound cards and I didn't notice any performance issues that people tend to say happen on software based audio cards. But all those times I had fast components in my comp.

What is your budget? Because you can get a Xonar DG cheap which has a decent headphone amp. It not a strong IC design but it decent enough for headphones that not power picky. Then Xonar DS is another cheap card which has a op-amp socket. There are other sound cards. Then External dacs. But it all depends on your budget.

Then if your just gonna use Speakers or 5.1 speakers then either xonar DG and Xonar DS or another cheap good sound card will work.

also your Gear is also important, if you have cheap dollar store/walmart speakers or headphones then don't bother as you will not notice a difference until you have the gear.

sajibjoarder · 06-13-2012, 19:37 | posts: 330 | Location: Dhaka,BD

thanks for the reply

um not thinking about the frame rate.. at the time of live, audigy, xfi i used to get osum surround sound quality... but after windows xp creative gone all those magic are also gone. i bought a Recon3D Fatal1ty last month. its a bull**** ( caz its same as my onboard ).. i want that 360' sound gone with direct sound.. alcemy only supports old school games, in new games i cant feel that the bullet has just gone by my ear. i mean the old effects which cant be produced by these on board sound cards..

and about the 2nd query.. budget doesn't matter.. i want very good quality.. for a 7.1 sound system...

Meocene · 06-13-2012, 23:02 | posts: 203

there are other benefits to hardware sound besides performance - which as you say isn't an issue any more.
RE:gaming, positional data is the main one i'd say (great for HRTF's) - something that gets lost when all your soundcard's receiving is n streams of premixed audio.

i'm pretty certain CL's kept the XFI dsp and made it their top of the line soundcard after the core3d refresh for a reason. MS does talk to the big OEMs regarding development their audio stack.

there's so many DSPs using algorithms like SRS, Dolby etc being bundled into smartphones and touchpads these days, hardware audio's gained many new uses beyond gaming. when i asked CLs on their forums they basically said no comment.

as far as i understand it, the hardware audio offloading functions in Win8 only work through the wasapi api. so i'm guessing whether or not it becomes useful for gaming again largely depends upon what api MS uses in their next console, which may explain CL's response.

software audio's great because you can plays 100's and 100's of sounds and not have to worry about it, but what was lost was clever stuff like binuaral and hrtf processing which does require a fair bit of CPU time - more than the xbox360 can handle i suspect.

blame consoles basically.

also, do you really want to upgrade to win8? looks like a mess on desktop to me.

analogic · 06-14-2012, 00:17 | posts: 63 | Location: Holden Beach, North Carolina

Quote:

Originally Posted by Meocene

there are other benefits to hardware sound besides performance - which as you say isn't an issue any more.
RE:gaming, positional data is the main one i'd say (great for HRTF's) - something that gets lost when all your soundcard's receiving is n streams of premixed audio.

i'm pretty certain CL's kept the XFI dsp and made it their top of the line soundcard after the core3d refresh for a reason. MS does talk to the big OEMs regarding development their audio stack.

there's so many DSPs using algorithms like SRS, Dolby etc being bundled into smartphones and touchpads these days, hardware audio's gained many new uses beyond gaming. when i asked CLs on their forums they basically said no comment.

as far as i understand it, the hardware audio offloading functions in Win8 only work through the wasapi api. so i'm guessing whether or not it becomes useful for gaming again largely depends upon what api MS uses in their next console, which may explain CL's response.

software audio's great because you can plays 100's and 100's of sounds and not have to worry about it, but what was lost was clever stuff like binuaral and hrtf processing which does require a fair bit of CPU time - more than the xbox360 can handle i suspect.

blame consoles basically.

also, do you really want to upgrade to win8? looks like a mess on desktop to me.

Very true, especially the Windows 8 observation.

umeng2002 · **Memory**: DDR3 8GB @ 1600 8-9-8-28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Meocene

there are other benefits to hardware sound besides performance - which as you say isn't an issue any more.
RE:gaming, positional data is the main one i'd say (great for HRTF's) - something that gets lost when all your soundcard's receiving is n streams of premixed audio.

i'm pretty certain CL's kept the XFI dsp and made it their top of the line soundcard after the core3d refresh for a reason. MS does talk to the big OEMs regarding development their audio stack.

there's so many DSPs using algorithms like SRS, Dolby etc being bundled into smartphones and touchpads these days, hardware audio's gained many new uses beyond gaming. when i asked CLs on their forums they basically said no comment.

as far as i understand it, the hardware audio offloading functions in Win8 only work through the wasapi api. so i'm guessing whether or not it becomes useful for gaming again largely depends upon what api MS uses in their next console, which may explain CL's response.

software audio's great because you can plays 100's and 100's of sounds and not have to worry about it, but what was lost was clever stuff like binuaral and hrtf processing which does require a fair bit of CPU time - more than the xbox360 can handle i suspect.

blame consoles basically.

also, do you really want to upgrade to win8? looks like a mess on desktop to me.

Well said. I'm still using an X-Fi for the CMSS Headphone (games and movies)... although the X-Fi chip does sample rate coversion extremely well too. No if I can just get the damn scp to stop...

ROBSCIX · 06-26-2012, 21:28 | posts: 16,079 | Location: Guru3D Audio Lab

Quote:

Originally Posted by umeng2002

Well said. I'm still using an X-Fi for the CMSS Headphone (games and movies)... although the X-Fi chip does sample rate coversion extremely well too. No if I can just get the damn scp to stop...

A couple things to check out, try another slot. Mute all unused inputs.

Meocene · 06-27-2012, 11:16 | posts: 203

Quote:

Originally Posted by ROBSCIX

A couple things to check out, try another slot. Mute all unused inputs.

also, are you using mismatched ram by any chance?

umeng2002 · **Memory**: DDR3 8GB @ 1600 8-9-8-28

I've changed slots, my ram came in a dual channel kit. This happened on my 790FX based mobo and now on my 990FX mobo. It doesn't happen in Creation mode. Just Game and Entertainment. Usually bad with voice-overs or explosion audio in games or some flash videos online. I've gone through Creative, PAX, and DanielK drivers... all the same pretty much. I'm running Windows 8 Release Preview for the first time tonight. and I don't think I hear it. I'm still testing.

The only difference (software wise - other than W8) is that I haven't loaded AMD's 990FX drivers. If anything, I'll dump those on W7 and see if it makes a difference...

It's sort of a shame because, as I've said before, I mainly use this card for CMSS Headphone when gaming or watching a movie.

Meocene · 08-30-2012, 16:35 | posts: 203

you could try this latency monitoring thing - might help you narrow things down.

umeng2002 · **Memory**: DDR3 8GB @ 1600 8-9-8-28

latency checks out good too

Meocene · 08-31-2012, 13:06 | posts: 203

which model XFi are you using? is it PCIe or PCI?

stab in the dark here, but try running the checker while in game mode, then creation mode... etc.

umeng2002 · **Memory**: DDR3 8GB @ 1600 8-9-8-28

PCI-express Fatal!ty or what ever. I ran Doom3 and a few other games in Windowed mode with the checker running next to it. It was always green. Like I said before, the scp in games usually happens when there's a loud explosion or from a voice source in the game. Like I can turn and the scp will go from one channel to the other.

This also happens in Entertainment mode in some flash videos.

It's funny, I never had this problem with the PCI Auzentech Prelude. I thought Creative moved to PCI-express to get rid of the problem... oh well.

ROBSCIX · 08-31-2012, 19:00 | posts: 16,079 | Location: Guru3D Audio Lab

The trouble is, some of the issues with soundcards are not because of the soundcard. That is just the symptom. Sometimes other devices cause issues and because of that, it is hard to troubleshoot the audio issue, because the card itself is not the trouble.

I hope that makes sense.

On the topic, of Window 8 possibly getting hardware audio back.
We never lost hardware based audio, it only changed to use a different API.
You can have fully accelerated audio in Vista, win 7...etc.

I still thin I am going to have to right a sticky on that topic as there is so many misconceptions.

umeng2002 · **Memory**: DDR3 8GB @ 1600 8-9-8-28

Indeed...

As for hardware audio or PC audio in general, imho I don't really care if many PC games use hardware with whatever API or some software solution. From a technology standpoint, I'd like really advanced audio. If it uses hardware acceleration, I guess it would be good from a performance perspective. I've heard games that sound great or poor with hardware acceleration. The same can be said with software. It's up to the designers and programmers.

For instance, I was playing Dirt 2 again recently; and it sound better with Blue Ripple Sound's Rapture audio than Hardware. Rapture is OpenAL; but BRS says it does everything on the CPU (including HRTF for headphones) because they say their solution is better than "hardware" OpenAL.

...Windows 8... let's just say when W7 Preview came out, I used it for like 9 months and liked from the start compared to vista. I installed windows 8 preview a few days ago and really haven't used it since... they really screwed up the UI... is it a tablet or desktop/ work station system?

GenClaymore · 09-04-2012, 14:37 | posts: 5,082 | Location: Michigan,usa

hitting ctrl+D takes you to the desktop. it takes secs. I been using windows 8 beta as well but i decided to wait til RTM comes to the stores before i use it permanently

Meocene · 09-04-2012, 16:40 | posts: 203

@ umeng2002

last thing to try is the bios - make sure you've got things like': intel's speed step (or any similar power saving/throttling options) is turned off, ram timings are properly set, etc - i cleared up SCP on an audigy by taking the time to learn what all the settings in my bios did.

umeng2002 · **Memory**: DDR3 8GB @ 1600 8-9-8-28

It's def an audio level/ clipping issue (software)