Nicely done Microsoft! 🙂

I don't know much about Sound support, anyone to explain to me how good of a news this is ? :S

Dolby Digital Plus which is what they are serving out here provides a decent level of surround sound quality. But at the same time is considered a lossy compression standard. Kinda like mp3. If they had offered out their higher end product, Dolby TrueHD, while bigger in file size/bit rate, it is considered a better quality of sound as it is essentially uncompressed and lossless. Kinda like FLAC or raw WAV Would have been nice while moving into this new generation of OS so advanced they had to skip 9 that they went for a higher quality of audio... with lower quality options available built in for online use EDIT: of course on the whole it is a really nice move that I was not expecting. Probably good news for games helping add exta immersion too. More shiny is always a good thing :infinity: EDIT 2: There I go partly assuming... the mother of all.... A little more detail in summary for those curious: The Good thing about Dolby Digital Plus is that it is a true 7.1 version of surround sound with each channel being a discrete catered for separate sound effect channel. The .1 being the LFE (Low Frequency Effects) of subwoofer channel. Since 5.1 the "rear" two channels were always actually meant to be considered the side chennels, being able to fool the ear into hearing a Rear Effect too. 6.1 came along and added a single real "Rear" speaker for a true rear effects channel. Then finally 7.1 came along with 2 real discrete rear stereo effect channels to give a much better enveloping surround sound for us all to enjoy. So overall, what we will be geting is pretty cool, especially as not yet so many people actually even own a full 7.1 sound setup. I actually Just setup my own 1st one a matter of days ago with some 2nd hand what was Very Expensive high end kit (new price was almost £5,000). It is Good 🙂 - you can obviously buy compatible setups for considerably Less. I would guess a basic new setup with smaller speakers and a small sub might cost close to about £250 and would be enough to enjoy it. (really is worth reading some reviews before spending out hard earned cash !) Salt in the wound of course in the form of the already released replacement of all this tech in Dolby Atmos (backwards compatible), so for some its time to upgrade already again. A great step up for movie goers (a good setup can upmix existing 7.1 sound movies (or games) and is a worthwhile improvement even in this quasi Atmos form I've read). Yes it is horribly expensive being the 1st gen of a new series of kit. I believe the cheapest amp that can run it costs about £550 and then to get the full effect you would still need separate power amps to run the channels this "cheaper" amp does not include built in amp'd outputs for.

This is more aimed at supplying a standard high quality "lossy" codec, by default, for apps and websites to use for streaming content. Netflix and Xbox Video already use Dolby Digital Plus (and can bitstream out via hdmi etc to external amps etc) so this is really just standardising. It doesn't preclude use of Dolby Atmos, which Star Wars Battlefront is already confirmed to support: http://blog.dolby.com/2015/05/dolby-atmos-coming-to-star-wars-battlefront Standard 5.1/7.1 PCM would be preferable for most games rather than using a lossy codec like Dolby Digital Plus so there won't be much traction or effect on that side. I'd love to see object based codecs like Atmos and DTS:X as they perfectly achieve the ability to map 3d audio to the room and speaker layout contained therein. Combined with the advancements being made for VR audio and we might actually see a decent hike in PC game audio for the first time since the heady days of Aureal in the 90s!

Bring back Hardware Audio!

@CDJay A good way of putting it. Should have mentioned PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) which is of very high quality, but had it in mind that the tools for Dolby Digital Plus might be well established and easy for game devs to use to integrate into their games? Though I cannot imagine more open source type tools are far behind or even lacking? That's the nice thing about DTS:X, it is more backwards compatible with older hardware. Amps that can decode DTS-HD Master should also be able to make a decent job of handling the new DTS:X (even if not quite to full effect of the new hardware) which competes with Dolby Atmos.

Correct me if I'm wrong but how is this any different to what third party sound cards do already?

Yawn... Doesn't LAV and other codecs decode DD+? That blurb about the Edge browser tells me that Netflix will soon allowing DD+ and probably 1080p within that web-browser soon instead of just the Win8 Netflix app. ...not that Netflix uses anything other than the minimum bitrate DD+ supports... but it does sound better than the horrid stereo audio Netflix uses. ... I'm just trying to think of why they would do this just for web browser based Netflix watching - and for app store apps that could just build it in? You don't need Dolby to stream a DD, DD+, etc. signal to a receiver. They could also be tossing in Dolby DSP effects (Dolby Headphone might be asking too much) like sound equalizer, and MEEGAA BASSS, etc. as a standard effects package like Vista tried to introduce.

Correct me if I'm wrong but how is this any different to what third party sound cards do already?

Sound cards can translate any sound source to dolby, Windows will not. My only worry about the Edge is - will it support a visible bookmarks bar ? I cant live without them. Secondly, will it save my passwords and stuff in the cloud ?

Sound cards can translate any sound source to dolby, Windows will not. My only worry about the Edge is - will it support a visible bookmarks bar ? I cant live without them. Secondly, will it save my passwords and stuff in the cloud ?

Well, just now there's no bookmarks/favorites bar by default, but you can enable them: Open Edge Click 3 dots icon in top-right corner Toggle "Show favorites bar" to On It supports regular links, folders, but I can't see separators and bookmarklets support. Reordering is broken in the current build. Regarding passwords, it looks like just now there's greyed-out option enabling/disabling of filling password and a disabled button to manage that. So I expect some customizability. On top of that, Edge should offer support for extensions - native, from Chrome and from Firefox. Effectively you might opt for 3rd party password manager, like KeePass, LastPass (stores passwords in cloud, but with local encryption), or another. ---- Back to topic - Dolby support should be great. I hope they'll include Dolby features like 5.1-> headphones, virtual speakers etc.

Not really sure about the impact of all this as we can install software like LAV or MPC-HC. I guess mobile users will benefit the most.

Not really sure about the impact of all this as we can install software like LAV or MPC-HC. I guess mobile users will benefit the most.

This will apply mostly for not-movies. MPC-HC does the job really well, but these Dolby features will be system-wide and available for all the developers to use in any app they want, which is great.

Will i need a dedicated sound card to enjoy this new feature? My motherboard spec. states: "7.1 CH HD Audio with Content Protection (Realtek ALC1150 Audio Codec)"

You should be fine once you have a suitable cable to carry the 8 channels of 7.1 audio from your motherboard to a suitable amp (that has 7.1 analog inputs, not all newer AV Receiver type amps have these any more, relying on HDMI instead). Same kinda cable I had to buy years back for my now rather old Sound Blaster XFi Gamer Pro. Personally I am using the HDMI output on my GFx card to carry the 7.1 audio to my AV Receiver 😉

but then I mine only has 5.1 analog, but then 7.1 virtual...... dont know if mine can do 7.1 over digital or hdmi though..I need to test this someday