04-10-2013, 12:14 AM
I've been looking at using Virtual Surround sound for when I use headphones to game. My motherboard actually has THX ProStudio Pro which is meant to do this but it doesn't work and is generally regarded as useless.
So I'm just sharing what I've learnt, for anyone else considering doing this.
The best device is widely accepted to be the Turtle Beach DSS (not the DSS2 as that's rubbish because apparently they couldn't be bothered to buy the Dolby licence necessary to decode the signal!). It needs a Dolby Digital signal over optical SPDIF, which is fine for consoles like the Xbox360 as they output a suitable stream but for PCs it's not so simple, as games don't provide a Dolby Digital stream and so the soundcard needs to be able to encode the multi-channel audio using a feature called Dolby Digital Live (DDL). The DSS generally sells for around £40-50 but they're on ebay at the moment for £25 which is a fantastic deal.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Turtle-Beach-D...1083925296?
I believe the Realtek ALC889 chipset can do DDL, although it might not be enabled on all motherboards with this chip. Unfortunately my motherboard has the ALC892, which despite the higher number has less features! So I'm looking at getting a Creative X-Fi Titanium PCI-E card which does feature DDL for about £35-40.
Alternatives are the Xonar DX, which does DDL and Dolby Headphone but doesn't have a dedicated Optical out and shares the line in/mic in using an adapter, so that's no good as I wouldn't be able to use my mic whilst using the Optical out. I guess I could probably continue using the onboard Realtek soundcard just for the mic but I suspect it could cause issues having two soundcards enabled (I have no basis for this feeling other than knowing PCs tend to throw wobblies at the slightest thing!). This is a bit more expensive than the X-Fi at around £55 but reviews suggest it uses higher quality components and gives a somewhat cleaner sound http://uk.asus.com/Multimedia/Audio_Card...ifications
There's also the Xonar DG but that doesn't support DDL, only Dolby Headphone but is only around £25 http://uk.asus.com/Multimedia/Audio_Card.../#overview
Which brings me onto Dolby Headphone and CMSS-3D. These are both Virtual Surround sound technologies that some soundcards have, which don't require an external processor like the DSS, you just plug your headphones into the soundcard. CMSS seems to be considered superior to Dolby Headphone, which is said to sound a bit reverby. You can find plenty of comparison videos on youtube by searching for Dolby Headphone vs CMSS, which should be listened to with your soundcard set to plain stereo (with my Realtek I actually have to set it to 7.1 and then untick all the extra speakers to get proper downmixed stereo) with any virtualisation features switched off. This demo of Dolby Headphone is very good and will let you check that you're setup properly to listen to the other videos. Of course, just because this particular demo gives great positional sound it doesn't mean that Dolby Headphone will necessarily sound that good when gaming
So I'm just sharing what I've learnt, for anyone else considering doing this.
The best device is widely accepted to be the Turtle Beach DSS (not the DSS2 as that's rubbish because apparently they couldn't be bothered to buy the Dolby licence necessary to decode the signal!). It needs a Dolby Digital signal over optical SPDIF, which is fine for consoles like the Xbox360 as they output a suitable stream but for PCs it's not so simple, as games don't provide a Dolby Digital stream and so the soundcard needs to be able to encode the multi-channel audio using a feature called Dolby Digital Live (DDL). The DSS generally sells for around £40-50 but they're on ebay at the moment for £25 which is a fantastic deal.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Turtle-Beach-D...1083925296?
I believe the Realtek ALC889 chipset can do DDL, although it might not be enabled on all motherboards with this chip. Unfortunately my motherboard has the ALC892, which despite the higher number has less features! So I'm looking at getting a Creative X-Fi Titanium PCI-E card which does feature DDL for about £35-40.
Alternatives are the Xonar DX, which does DDL and Dolby Headphone but doesn't have a dedicated Optical out and shares the line in/mic in using an adapter, so that's no good as I wouldn't be able to use my mic whilst using the Optical out. I guess I could probably continue using the onboard Realtek soundcard just for the mic but I suspect it could cause issues having two soundcards enabled (I have no basis for this feeling other than knowing PCs tend to throw wobblies at the slightest thing!). This is a bit more expensive than the X-Fi at around £55 but reviews suggest it uses higher quality components and gives a somewhat cleaner sound http://uk.asus.com/Multimedia/Audio_Card...ifications
There's also the Xonar DG but that doesn't support DDL, only Dolby Headphone but is only around £25 http://uk.asus.com/Multimedia/Audio_Card.../#overview
Which brings me onto Dolby Headphone and CMSS-3D. These are both Virtual Surround sound technologies that some soundcards have, which don't require an external processor like the DSS, you just plug your headphones into the soundcard. CMSS seems to be considered superior to Dolby Headphone, which is said to sound a bit reverby. You can find plenty of comparison videos on youtube by searching for Dolby Headphone vs CMSS, which should be listened to with your soundcard set to plain stereo (with my Realtek I actually have to set it to 7.1 and then untick all the extra speakers to get proper downmixed stereo) with any virtualisation features switched off. This demo of Dolby Headphone is very good and will let you check that you're setup properly to listen to the other videos. Of course, just because this particular demo gives great positional sound it doesn't mean that Dolby Headphone will necessarily sound that good when gaming