Virtual Surround sound for headphones

Virtual Surround sound for headphones - Printable Version

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Re: Virtual Surround sound for headphones - Variable - 05-31-2013

ok, the headset and the card have arrived! Had some troubles though.
When I installed the driver from the disc the installation never ended. I downloaded the latest driver and it installed successfully.

Now the problems are:
1. I have to use mic boost or else I can't be heard over teamspeak (mic volume set to 100%)
2. When trying to record, Bandicam says my audio driver is not installed properly.
3. What do I need to set here? This is what I have set now:

[Image: xvV6kf9.png]

Audio channel options:
2/4/6/8 channels.

Sample rate options:
PCM 44.1 KHz
PCM 48 KHz
PCM 96 KHz
PCM 192 KHz

Do I need that SPDIF Out checkbox?

Any help with the above issues will be most appreciated.

Re: Virtual Surround sound for headphones - doveman - 05-31-2013

You need to set Audio Channel to 5.1 or 7.1 and then with the Analog Out on Headphone and Dolby Headphone ticked, you'll get the Virtual Surround sound. If you click the Speaker Test button (to the right of Analog Out) you can test it first with Dolby Headphone enabled and then disabled to see whether you like it. You may also want to try with the GX DSP mode disabled to see whether ArmA sounds better like that and also with the Game DSP mode turned off. Hi-Fi DSP mode is the cleanest, most effects-free but it might disable Dolby Headphone so check that with the Speaker Test before deciding whether to use it.

PCM 48Khz is probably the best choice (I can't recall exactly why but I remember reading something and setting mine to that!) SPDIF Out is only for using the digital output so you don't want to tick that.

It's not unusual to have to set mic boost on (I have to use +20db and turn the volume down a bit). If the Xonar control panel doesn't let you tweak the boost, you could look at the Windows settings (right-click on the speaker icon in the notification tray and select Recording Devices, then the mic input on the Xonar, click Properties and look under the levels tab). On the Listen tab, you can tick "Listen to this device" which will send the mic input to the headphones for testing, so that you can monitor the level without using Teamspeak.

Also, make sure that on both the Playback and Recording tabs that the Xonar is set as Default Device and Default Communication Device. You'll probably want to disable the onboard soundcard as well, which you can do by going to Device Manager (you can open it by going Start Menu - Run and typing devmgmt.msc), then under "Sound, Video and game controllers", find the onboard sound, right-click and select Disable. Later, you should probably disable it from the BIOS but I'm not sure if it really matters.

For Bandicam, all I can suggest is check under Video - Settings that you've got the Sound Device settings correct. If you still have problems, you could try these Unified drivers http://maxedtech.com/asus-xonar-unified-drivers/ but I wouldn't think that would be necessary.

EDIT: Oh, you probably want to disable SVN (Smart Volume Normalisation) as well, as that will compress the sound, eliminating much of the dynamic range (difference between quiet and loud sounds).

And I forgot to say, congratulations and enjoy your new sound Wink

Re: Virtual Surround sound for headphones - Variable - 06-01-2013

(05-31-2013, 02:27 PM)doveman link Wrote: You need to set Audio Channel to 5.1 or 7.1

I have only that-
Audio channel options: 2/4/6/8 channels.
(see bottom of my previous post).

I currently have this on 2 Channels, becuase I supposed that since I have a stereo headphones, I get only two channels.

(05-31-2013, 02:27 PM)doveman link Wrote: And I forgot to say, congratulations and enjoy your new sound

Thanks!

Re: Virtual Surround sound for headphones - doveman - 06-02-2013

(06-01-2013, 10:57 PM)Variable link Wrote: I have only that-
Audio channel options: 2/4/6/8 channels.
(see bottom of my previous post).

I currently have this on 2 Channels, becuase I supposed that since I have a stereo headphones, I get only two channels.

OK, so 5.1 would be 6 channels and 7.1 would be 8 channels. I don't know if any games, including ArmA, use 7.1 or only 5.1 but I don't think it will do any harm to leave it on 8 channels.

Think of this setting as the amount of channels the game sees that it can output and then the other setting, Analogue Out, which you have set to headphones, controls the actual output from the card. So you need a multi-channel signal going from the game to the card and then it mixes that down into stereo/virtual surround sound to send to your headphones.

ArmA doesn't have a setting to control whether it outputs in stereo or multi-channel and will automatically detect what the soundcard is set to but some games do and with those you need to set them to 5.1/7.1 for the virtual surround sound to work.

Re: Virtual Surround sound for headphones - Variable - 06-06-2013

I've set it to 6 channels and it sounds good. Thanks doveman.

ok next problem. Mike's great whisper plugin is bugged with my new card. Whenever someone whispers there's a strong static noise alongside the transmission. Any ideas?

Re: Virtual Surround sound for headphones - doveman - 06-06-2013

(06-06-2013, 02:37 PM)Variable link Wrote: I've set it to 6 channels and it sounds good. Thanks doveman.

ok next problem. Mike's great whisper plugin is bugged with my new card. Whenever someone whispers there's a strong static noise alongside the transmission. Any ideas?

Hmm, that's a weird one! The only thing I can suggest is in Teamspeak, go to Options - Playback and try the different playback modes (Direct Sound and Windows Audio) to see if one works better. You could also try changing the Mono Sound Expansion setting (I have mine on Mono to Stereo).

On the Whisper settings it has a "Play notify sound when receiving a whisper" so check that's disabled.

In the soundcard control panel, try turning off the Game and GX DSP modes if you haven't already. Last thing I can think of is to try unticking the Dolby Headphone.

If none of that helps, then I really don't know I'm afraid.

Re: Virtual Surround sound for headphones - Variable - 06-08-2013

Setting Teamspeak's to "mono to surround" fixed the problem Smile

Thanks.
How do you switch easily between headphones and your speakers without digging the back of your pc?

Re: Virtual Surround sound for headphones - doveman - 06-08-2013

(06-08-2013, 09:04 PM)Variable link Wrote: Setting Teamspeak's to "mono to surround" fixed the problem Thanks.
How do you switch easily between headphones and your speakers without digging the back of your pc?

Cool.

To switch to speakers, just change the Analog Out setting from Headphone to Stereo (if you have two speakers) or whatever you have and untick Dolby Headphone as that will make it sound strange over speakers.

I think the DX has four output sockets, assigned to Front/Side/Center-Subwoofer/Back, plus the Mic-in, and the Front doubles up as the Headphone out, so the easiest way is to plug your speakers into the card's Front output and then connect the Front Panel header on the card to the headphone socket on your PC case and plug your headphones into that. If you don't have such a socket, the only thing you can do is connect an extension lead from the card's Front socket so that it's easily accessible and then plug your headphones or speakers into that depending on which you want to use, or you could buy a cheap switch to let you switch between the two without having to unplug the leads.

Re: Virtual Surround sound for headphones - Rund - 06-09-2013

I just plug both my amplifier, and headphones, and I switch off the amplifier when I'm gaming. So the headphones are always on.
My soundcard has plug-in detection, and can output/input anything to any plug, so I could connect 7 headphones if I wanted, mybe yours has something similar?

Re: Virtual Surround sound for headphones - Variable - 06-11-2013

I need to try. Until I get to the computer it's already coop night so I don't get the chance to, though...

Re: Virtual Surround sound for headphones - GG-Viktor Reznov - 06-11-2013

(06-08-2013, 09:04 PM)Variable link Wrote: Setting Teamspeak's to "mono to surround" fixed the problem Thanks.
How do you switch easily between headphones and your speakers without digging the back of your pc?

Set as default under windows sound options is what I do. Have to restart the sound program though.

e.g. Have to restart Arma if I originally started on speakers. Have to restart song in WMP if I originally started on headphones. Restart browser etc. etc.

There is also a option somewhere to give certain programs exclusive control over a sound device. Ill look for it a bit later.

Re: Virtual Surround sound for headphones - doveman - 06-11-2013

(06-09-2013, 10:26 AM)rundll.exe link Wrote: I just plug both my amplifier, and headphones, and I switch off the amplifier when I'm gaming. So the headphones are always on.
My soundcard has plug-in detection, and can output/input anything to any plug, so I could connect 7 headphones if I wanted, mybe yours has something similar?

I'm not sure you can do that with the Xonar though, as the Analog Output has to be set to either Headphone or Stereo speakers (or 5.1, etc) and Dolby Headphone has to be enabled/disabled as well. It's worth trying to plug the speakers/amp into one of the other sockets and see if you get some option to assign that socket to Stereo out but if not, the easiest way is to use the Front panel header to use the sockets on the front of the case for headphone and the Stereo Out/Headphone socket on the rear for the amp/speakers.

I'm pretty sure you'd still have to switch the Analog Output and Dolby Headphone settings to switch between headphones and speakers whichever method you use and I guess you might have to be careful that when Analog Output is set to Headphones that it doesn't output headphone level signals from both the Front panel header and the rear Stereo Out/Headphone socket, as that could potentially damage the amp/speakers if accidentally switched on.

If it is the case that even with the Analog Output set to Headphone, it still also outputs line-level signal to another socket assigned to Stereo out, then I guess you could leave Dolby Headphone disabled all the time and then you could just switch the amp on when required, as you're doing.

Actually, thinking about it you still have the onboard soundcard that you could use as well, so if you just wanted to use the amp/speakers to play music or movies for example, you could just set the output in the program you're using (Winamp, Media Player Classic, etc) to the onboard soundcard. Obviously the onboard isn't as good quality as the Xonar but if you're only playing compressed MP3 (or movies with highly compressed audio, as opposed to Blu-Ray with high quality audio) then you probably wouldn't notice. You could even use this method to play music on your speakers whilst playing games on your headphones Smile

Re: Virtual Surround sound for headphones - doveman - 06-18-2013

If you're still using the Asus drivers I highly recommend trying these ones http://maxedtech.com/asus-xonar-unified-drivers/ as the Asus ones were last updated in 2011 and these are kept updated. I'd suggest selecting the "C-Media Audio Panel" option when installing.

I also read that they might increase the volume and quality of the mic and perhaps the output as well.

Another advantage they have is avoiding loading the Xonar Control Panel which causes high DPC latency. There's a fairly decent explanation here http://maxedtech.com/the-case-of-dpc-latency/ but basically, high latency can cause not just audio stuttering/drop-outs but video/game stuttering as well. It's somewhat explained here http://maxedtech.com/the-case-of-dpc-latency/ but I suggest you run LatencyMon, which will show you if there's anything causing high latency and then you can deal with it http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

I found that having my mouse plugged into my USB hub was causing high latency but fixed that by plugging it directly into the PC, so some causes are quite easy to fix Smile

Virtual Surround sound for headphones - Variable - 07-03-2013

Thanks doveman!
I'm now using razer's surround plugin (since I'm using razer synaps anyway for my mouse) and for the first time I can really experience the surround sound. I've also connected my stereo speakers to my motherboard and just switch between the headset and the speakers via windows.
If I'm using the razer surround (it creates another sound source for windows) does the Asus control panel have any effect at all?

Re: Virtual Surround sound for headphones - doveman - 07-03-2013

(07-03-2013, 12:29 PM)Variable link Wrote: Thanks doveman!
I'm now using razer's surround plugin (since I'm using razer synaps anyway for my mouse) and for the first time I can really experience the surround sound. I've also connected my stereo speakers to my motherboard and just switch between the headset and the speakers via windows.
If I'm using the razer surround (it creates another sound source for windows) does the Asus control panel have any effect at all?

I'm using Razer surround myself now. I'm not entirely sure how it works but I think it goes between the game and the sound card so in theory the control panel should still have effect. You should probably disable the Dolby Headphone at least. I guess you can test whether the control panel is doing anything by adjusting the volume and EQ in it whilst some music is playing.