05-14-2013, 02:20 PM
@Misha
I think I felt that CMSS was the best of the three when listening to comparison videos on youtube, although even then I had to concentrate quite hard to tell where a sound was coming from and it wasn't anywhere near as obvious as surround sound speakers, certainly for sounds behind me. Where that's not practical though CMSS is probably the best alternative currently. What I really want is 6 speakers mounted on my recliner close to my head, so I could hear them without having to turn the volume upÂ
I think it's harder to imagine what difference a soundcard could make, when onboard sound is pretty good and the main specs don't look much different, compared to onboard GPU and discrete where you'd be going from maybe 10fps to 50fps (obviously a decent graphics card costs a lot more than a soundcard though) but certainly a lot of people who've done so seem to say the difference is very noticeable.
What it says in this Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster_X-Fi about CMSS-3D Headphone is interesting
"CMSS-3D Headphone: When the Creative Control Panel is set to Headphones, this setting creates virtual 3D positional audio via synthesized binaural cues (see Sound localization and Head-related transfer function). If the application generating the audio uses a hardware-accelerated 3D audio API (i.e. DirectSound3D or OpenAL), the input for the binaural synthesis algorithms consists of up to 128 sound sources positioned arbitrarily in 3D space, this is the most accurate utilisation of CMSS-3D. If the application instead generates multi-channel sound directly (e.g. a media player app or a game with software-based audio processing), the input for the binaural synthesis algorithms consist of the 4 to 7 positional sound sources associated with the application's selected speaker configuration. Such applications may use the Speakers settings defined by Windows in which case it is possible to set the Windows Speakers configuration to a multichannel set-up, e.g 5.1, so that the application will output multi channel audio."
It sounds like if the game uses a DirectSound3D or OpenAL, the positioning will be most accurate, compared to if it doesn't and instead just outputs a 5.1/7.1 signal. I'm not sure which games (including Arma) support the former though or if any of those games can be switched into the latter mode to compare.
I think I felt that CMSS was the best of the three when listening to comparison videos on youtube, although even then I had to concentrate quite hard to tell where a sound was coming from and it wasn't anywhere near as obvious as surround sound speakers, certainly for sounds behind me. Where that's not practical though CMSS is probably the best alternative currently. What I really want is 6 speakers mounted on my recliner close to my head, so I could hear them without having to turn the volume upÂ
I think it's harder to imagine what difference a soundcard could make, when onboard sound is pretty good and the main specs don't look much different, compared to onboard GPU and discrete where you'd be going from maybe 10fps to 50fps (obviously a decent graphics card costs a lot more than a soundcard though) but certainly a lot of people who've done so seem to say the difference is very noticeable.
What it says in this Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster_X-Fi about CMSS-3D Headphone is interesting
"CMSS-3D Headphone: When the Creative Control Panel is set to Headphones, this setting creates virtual 3D positional audio via synthesized binaural cues (see Sound localization and Head-related transfer function). If the application generating the audio uses a hardware-accelerated 3D audio API (i.e. DirectSound3D or OpenAL), the input for the binaural synthesis algorithms consists of up to 128 sound sources positioned arbitrarily in 3D space, this is the most accurate utilisation of CMSS-3D. If the application instead generates multi-channel sound directly (e.g. a media player app or a game with software-based audio processing), the input for the binaural synthesis algorithms consist of the 4 to 7 positional sound sources associated with the application's selected speaker configuration. Such applications may use the Speakers settings defined by Windows in which case it is possible to set the Windows Speakers configuration to a multichannel set-up, e.g 5.1, so that the application will output multi channel audio."
It sounds like if the game uses a DirectSound3D or OpenAL, the positioning will be most accurate, compared to if it doesn't and instead just outputs a 5.1/7.1 signal. I'm not sure which games (including Arma) support the former though or if any of those games can be switched into the latter mode to compare.