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Stiletto
God Emperor
Joined: 06 Jul 2001
Posts: 312
Location: Orlando, Florida |
Do most new games take full advantage of surround sound? I was thinking about getting a set of Klipsch to get the surround sound experience, but I was wondering if new games are really using it. Running through these various worlds, do you hear things all around you or is it still mostly a front speaker thing? Not much point in buying a new speaker set and running wires through my attic if they are not going to be fully taken advantage of!
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Stiletto
God Emperor |
Wed Aug 22, 2001 1:12 pm |
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Rendelius
Critical Error
Joined: 06 Jul 2001
Posts: 16
Location: Austria |
I wish I knew. I know that EAX is fun with most games, but I don't know much about Surround...
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Rendelius
former Senior Editor RPGDot
now at http://www.theastronomers.com |
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Wed Aug 22, 2001 4:24 pm |
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Moriendor
Black Ring Leader
Joined: 19 Jul 2001
Posts: 1306
Location: Germany |
Most new games support EAX. EAX addresses 4-speaker systems (4.1 = 4 speakers + 1 subwoofer) and will therefore give you 4-point-surround sound. I bought a Creative Sound Blaster Live! Player 1024 and a Creative FPS 2000 speaker set back when Creative was offering a special rebate deal. I really don't want to miss it anymore. It's really great to hear sounds from behind you. It all depends on the implementation of EAX into the game engine, of course. Some few games support EAX w/o making much use of its features or it simply doesn't work correctly.
But even non-EAX games can be a better experience on a 4-point-surround system since it's quite nice to have the game music come from all 4 speakers.
"Real" surround sound support (5.1 = 4 speakers + 1 subwoofer + 1 center speaker) is very rare in gaming. I think some of the Wing Commander titles had "real" Dolby 5.1 surround sound and a very little number of other games. If you're watching a lot of DVD's on your PC I'd say go for a 5.1 surround system. Else, it's not worth the extra money for games. Get a decent FPS system and you should be very happy with it.
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Wed Aug 22, 2001 8:32 pm |
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Stiletto
God Emperor
Joined: 06 Jul 2001
Posts: 312
Location: Orlando, Florida |
Well I fancy myself somewhat of a sound enthusiast. I don't see the point of a 5.1 system for a computer. Two decent speakers make a sound stage that should cover the range between them. Some speakers can create such a great stage that you can hear everything in between them as if there was something really there. Its pretty neat, just go listen to a set of B&W 801s, or comparable speaker. With such small speakers that computers have, there really is not a problem putting them in a location where the right and left are about equidistant from the monitor to either side. Stereo imaging comes from hearing the left and right sound from the left and right at the same time, you hear it coming from directly in the middle. When you start getting into bigger speakers that you can not necessarily place well is when you get into needing a center channel speaker. Even watching DVD's, unless you got a hell of a monitor, you are practically going to be wearing your computer speakers like headphones. The center speaker is really just to localize the sound in the center when you have no other way of creating that image. |
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Wed Aug 22, 2001 11:50 pm |
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