Valve Introduces Steam Audio
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Aura89
If this is the same thing they added to CS:GO, i wasn't that impressed, and turned it off.
AMD4Life
I've never been much of a fan of virtual surround/reverb effects and always preferred a properly implemented stereo signal with quality headphones. That said, I understand some people feel differently and this has its place.
Glidefan
Moderator
Bounces, audio occlusion... that was EAX back in Win95-WinXP...
Fox2232
Wasn't that thing already in Portal? When it came I was bugging around everything. And even at start where there is long fall, you get to hear Wheatley from above with all the echoes.
But if you hack yourself upwards to source of audio, it shifts as you get closer and becomes clearer while echoes go more to background and have time delay.
malitze
Did the same at first but after some patches now I feel locating is easier, especially when it comes to height.
Denial
I don't think any of their current titles implement this system?
For me, the pinnacle of sound is R6 Siege. I don't think it's a very realistic system (in terms of realistic propagation), but it's absolutely incredible for positional audio. I can tell when someone is above or below me and even how many rooms away they are. The destructive system makes it even better, you can blow holes in walls and use that to increase the volume from specific directions. I've played tons of FPS titles and it's by far the most useful in terms of gameplay.
Hopefully this will be as good or better. I'd like to see more gaming companies make use of sound/audio/music in games - I feel like few do it really well yet it has a significant impact on the experience.
Robbo9999
Sounds good - nuff said!
RealNC
If this is the same as what they use in CS:GO, then thanks, but no. It sounds muffled and weird. Like you're underwater.
Meanwhile, using the Dolby Headphone function of my sound card for converting 5.1/7.1 surround to binaural audio for stereo headphones sounds much, much cleaner. And more realistic. With CS:GO's HRTF, the audio seems to mostly come from inside my head. With Dolby Headphone, it actually sounds like it comes from the correct distance around me.
Aura89
would be very surprised if this is not what they implemented into CS:GO, though i'm certain it's the only title.
In terms of portal 2 earlier in this thread, it definitely was not in that.
http://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/2016/12/17260/
Mufflore
This is nothing to do with headphones or the quality of a basic stereo signal.
Its about simulating how sound bounces around a virtual environment based on objects positions in 3D space and how sound reflects/is blocked by them.
What you are suggesting is akin to using bitmap images to create every image possible in a game environment.
They cannot record every single way a sound can be heard and make it vary as needed.
Irenicus
If you truly want immersive, accurate and high quality sound you really need a good receiver and some kick ass speakers. But it will cost you a fair bit. Headphones can be great don't get me wrong, but they can't ever emulate 6(or more) individual $1000 speakers (each). Nor can they shake the room 🙂
Robbo9999
Well said and I agree, this Steam Audio thing is a positive, some games currently try to do this & some work better than others, will be interesting to see how good the positional audio is with this new system. For this implementation it sounds as if some simple good audiophile headphones is the best way to experience any benefits of this.
Noisiv
eax was jusr reverb and other cheap effects type of garbage to begin with, and Creative killed A3D and Aureal, which had had a proper physical model of sound propagation, and which hopefully Steam Audio aims to be
Prince Valiant
It'd be nice. Seems like most developers don't want to take the time to implement better audio or don't think it matters.
SHS
It had nothing to do with Creative Labs as Aureal won favorable lawsuit any way and that alone should have give them a big boost in investor at the time in grant slam of things because of financial scandal with Media Vision in long run aureal still end up filed for bankruptcy as lack of no financial backing, poor management practices, total lack of financial accountability that cause they own doing in first place.
Robbo9999
True, at least in the case of Fallout 4 which I was just playing today - the positional audio is terrible, very hard to locate an enemy based on their voice etc, with their distance being a particularly hard thing to judge from it. (In fact I just uninstalled that game after only 23hrs play - I found it depressing & boring & just a chore, least I got my SSD space back now! Strange as I remember being engrossed & enveloped in New Vegas.)
Pinstripe
There's nothing strange about that. New Vegas was developed by Obsidian (talented) while F4 was developed by Bethesda (boring).
qqryq
Binaural audio is fantastic! I'm using Four Channel Ambiophonic Transcoder - free, standalone binaural transcoding implementation tool:
http://www.hotto.de/software/fourchannelambiophonictranscoder.html
Mufflore
It would be nice as a plugin for Foobar with ASIO, WASAPI ...
Unfortunately the Windows mixer loses a lot of detail.
qqryq
Ambiophonic Transcoder is available as standalone application and VST/AU plugin 🙂
