games dont do 7.1?

I

idividebyzero

Gawd
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Feb 5, 2007
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I have my PC hooked up to my receiver via HDMI and am only getting 5.1 channels when I set Windows speaker config to 7.1. I get no sound out of my side speakers in games, only front and rear. So does this mean PC games dont support 7.1? I tried Dragon Age Inq and Far Cry 4.

If I set windows to 5.1 and then my receiver to PL IIx then it works well, sounds correctly track from side to rear as I spin around, although rear is more muffled than sides.

I thought PC games supported as many speakers as you had because there was no reliance on Dolby?
 
Ya for whatever reason a lot of games don't do 7.1 output. Some do, they'll do basically nay configuration of speakers you have, however many only do a few like 2.0 and 5.1. Generally, you find it is an issue with newer games. Older games that used hardware acceleration worked with whatever speaker config you had since it was abstracted. Newer ones that do their own thing often forgo 7.1 support.

It's annoying, my side speakers sit idle in most newer games. When I redo my sound system I'll probably get rid of them and just go with 5.1 given how little uses them.
 
If you want a new game that does 7.1, and does it pretty well, try Wolfenstein The New Order. It works with all the speakers on my system.

Also as a side note, many games are actually not 5.1 or 7.1, they are 5.0 or 7.0 meaning they don't ever send anything to the sub explicitly, they send full range sound to the mains and surrounds. So having your receiver or what not do crossover is important.
 
Well that sucks, so Im limited to 5.1 regardless since Im not going to remember to switch to 7.1 every time I play one or two games that might support it. Thanks to it being analog the receiver cant figure out what its supposed to be, its either 7.1 with 2 empty channels or 5.1 for everything.
 
idividebyzero said:
I have my PC hooked up to my receiver via HDMI and am only getting 5.1 channels when I set Windows speaker config to 7.1. I get no sound out of my side speakers in games, only front and rear. So does this mean PC games dont support 7.1? I tried Dragon Age Inq and Far Cry 4.
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It might be both those games that do that. I know for sure Dragon Age Inquisition does that with sending the surrounds (side) to the rears and annoys me. I have other 7.1 games like Lords of the Fallen, Alan Wake, Crysis 2, Batman AA, Shadow of Mordor, Alien Isolation, and Dark Souls 2 I know for sure output 7.1 correctly. Try this link for a list of PC games with surround sound:

http://satsun.org/audio/
 
You shouldn't need to switch it back and forth, Windows should do the mapping correctly. The mapping for games is different than movies. Movies use side speakers in 5.1, rear only in 7.1. Games use rear in 5.1, sides only in 7.1.

The reason is different speaker placement. The THX setup for movie speakers is mains at 30 degrees, surrounds at 90-110 degrees. For games, you do mains at 45 degrees, surrounds at 135 degrees. If you go to 7.1 you then add side speakers at 90 degrees. It is closer to a DTS MA music setup than theater setup.

On my system, 5.1 games correctly use FL FR C SBL and SBR, and 7.1 games then also use SL and SR.

The reason is the difference in the goals. In movie theaters, the surround channels are actually whole walls of speakers. You can see there are usually 10 or so speakers per wall, all of which are one channel. So surround sounds are very diffuse atmospheric things. To replicate this in the home, THX and Dolby recommend dipole speakers right to your sides.

Not the case with games, they are all precisely placed point source audio. So they go for a symmetric audio setup using all monopole speakers. In 7.1, that means a speaker every 45 degrees except right behind you.

So if you want to modify your setup to better work with games, instead of have the surround back speakers touching each other as per THX, spread them out to be the same width as your front channel speakers. 45 degrees is technically ideal but 30 works fine. Then just tell your receiver that the speakers are in a wide setup for when it is doing movies.

The only issue is if you use your computer to play movies, it'll route the 5.1 sound wrong per the way a movie expects it.
 
I don't think it's that complicated. I just think that it's as simple as a lack of communication between the sound designers and audio programmers. If not that, I'm pretty sure the popular FMOD engine only supports up to 5.1 speaker configurations. XAudio2 needs to be explicitly told what the speaker configuration is but does support up to 7.1. Aside from that I expect that the budget for sound is not that high considering the issues recent releases have had with sound or the lack of effort put into 3D positioning.
 
PLENTY of games do 7.1! Far Cry 4 DOES NOT do 7.1, neither did FC3. That's just Ubisoft. There's no reason modern Ubisoft games can't do 7.1, they just don't initialize any speaker configuration over 5.1. Ubisoft mostly uses DirectX/XACT/XAudio2 (that's all Microsoft DirectX stuff) for their audio API, which is perfectly capable of doing 7.1, but they don't code their games to detect anything over 6 speakers. Most of the time, it's just a matter of the game being programmed to be thorough in detecting your speaker configuration.

The site at satsun.org is mine. If you click on the "Out" column it'll sort by number of channels output and you'll notice that plenty of games use at least 7 speakers. As was said, the "7.0" games are games that don't output anything to the subwoofer, but if you're using HDMI then there's a chance that your receiver is using bass re-direction so you probably won't notice. I think that my Onkyo receivers redirect bass when using HDMI but I haven't verified that completely.
 
Sycraft said:
You shouldn't need to switch it back and forth, Windows should do the mapping correctly. The mapping for games is different than movies. Movies use side speakers in 5.1, rear only in 7.1. Games use rear in 5.1, sides only in 7.1.

The reason is different speaker placement. The THX setup for movie speakers is mains at 30 degrees, surrounds at 90-110 degrees. For games, you do mains at 45 degrees, surrounds at 135 degrees. If you go to 7.1 you then add side speakers at 90 degrees. It is closer to a DTS MA music setup than theater setup.

On my system, 5.1 games correctly use FL FR C SBL and SBR, and 7.1 games then also use SL and SR.

The reason is the difference in the goals. In movie theaters, the surround channels are actually whole walls of speakers. You can see there are usually 10 or so speakers per wall, all of which are one channel. So surround sounds are very diffuse atmospheric things. To replicate this in the home, THX and Dolby recommend dipole speakers right to your sides.

Not the case with games, they are all precisely placed point source audio. So they go for a symmetric audio setup using all monopole speakers. In 7.1, that means a speaker every 45 degrees except right behind you.

So if you want to modify your setup to better work with games, instead of have the surround back speakers touching each other as per THX, spread them out to be the same width as your front channel speakers. 45 degrees is technically ideal but 30 works fine. Then just tell your receiver that the speakers are in a wide setup for when it is doing movies.

The only issue is if you use your computer to play movies, it'll route the 5.1 sound wrong per the way a movie expects it.
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The sound is dramatically better when both sides and rears are being used in games with Pro Logic IIx, when there are no side speakers and just rear it sounds like crap, nothing ever sounds like its to the side of you.

John721 said:
With your receiver, you should be able to use something like Pro Logic IIx, or whatever the latest is, or it's DTS rival, to expand the sound to all 7.1 channels from a 5.1 encoded mix. And it looks like you've done this already. If the source sound is only 5.1, you'll have to choose between this bit of 'digital assistance' or just running it 5.1.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/ultimate-surround-sound-guide-different-formats-explained/
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Pro Logic IIx doesnt work when the computer is set to 7.1 analog, the receiver thinks its getting 7.1 channels already and doesnt try to fill in the missing channels. The only way to get Pro Logic IIx working in a game that is 5.1 is to set Windows to 5.1 speakers in the speaker config (which then disables 7.1 in games that support it). There is no way to automatically switch from 5.1 LPCM to 7.1 LPCM with Windows.

If PC games would support Dolby/DTS then this wouldnt be a problem since the bitstreaming would tell the receiver that its a 5.1 signal. This is especially annoying when watching a video with no Dolby track, because then its just stereo and Pro Logic can do nothing to help.
 
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idividebyzero said:
The sound is dramatically better when both sides and rears are being used in games with Pro Logic IIx, when there are no side speakers and just rear it sounds like crap, nothing ever sounds like its to the side of you.
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Depending on your speaker setup, ya that can be the case. If you align them right you can get a nice surround field from rear only speakers, but if they are setup in a home theater config then ya. Ultimately, you do what sounds best for you because there is no universal "right" answer.

It is a huge pain in the ass no doubt, and I'm actually going to jettison consumer gear and go with pro gear instead due to the increased routing flexibility. I'll also probably drop to 5.1 since there isn't much point in having 7.1 these days.
 
idividebyzero said:
The sound is dramatically better when both sides and rears are being used in games with Pro Logic IIx, when there are no side speakers and just rear it sounds like crap, nothing ever sounds like its to the side of you.



Pro Logic IIx doesnt work when the computer is set to 7.1 analog, the receiver thinks its getting 7.1 channels already and doesnt try to fill in the missing channels. The only way to get Pro Logic IIx working in a game that is 5.1 is to set Windows to 5.1 speakers in the speaker config (which then disables 7.1 in games that support it). There is no way to automatically switch from 5.1 LPCM to 7.1 LPCM with Windows.

If PC games would support Dolby/DTS then this wouldnt be a problem since the bitstreaming would tell the receiver that its a 5.1 signal. This is especially annoying when watching a video with no Dolby track, because then its just stereo and Pro Logic can do nothing to help.
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The only thing you need to do is to set it and forget it. If you're connected via HDMI to a 7.1 system, set Windows to 7.1 and go with it. Accept the fact that some games and many movies don't support 7.1 output.

Dolby Live and DTS Connect encoding, which are lossy formats, are completely unnecessary in gaming these days since HDMI is available, unless your only option is SPDIF. Direct analog and HDMI are superior.

Dolby and DTS are essentially audio compression codecs designed to fit multi-channel audio into a small space (9GB DVDs). Of course, with Blu-ray, Dolby and DTS now have lossless formats, but as far as non-disc formats go now days, compressing audio is almost a matter of personal preference and trying to save space on a smart phone. Games still use lossy OGG format, though, but I'd still recommend using either HDMI LPCM or direct analog.
 
djoye said:
The only thing you need to do is to set it and forget it. If you're connected via HDMI to a 7.1 system, set Windows to 7.1 and go with it. Accept the fact that some games and many movies don't support 7.1 output.
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^^^ This. Thank you for your site btw!
 
djoye said:
The only thing you need to do is to set it and forget it. If you're connected via HDMI to a 7.1 system, set Windows to 7.1 and go with it. Accept the fact that some games and many movies don't support 7.1 output.
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His issue is with speaker mapping and how receivers deal with it. For theater purposes, the ordering of speakers is SL and SR for 5.1 and then SBL and SBR for 7.1. So if you have 5.1 content, it plays via the surrounds, which are placed to your sides, and the rear speakers sit idle. Games are different, 5.1 is SBL and SBR and then 7.1 adds SL and SR.

Now if you have your speakers set up like games want them, with speakers every 45 degrees (similar to DTS MA setup) then that works great. You get the best positional audio with a given number of channels. However if you have a THX setup, then it doesn't sound so good. THX calls for the surround back speakers to be mounted right behind you, touching, since that mimics a theater setup most closely. In that case, you want the surround speakers to your sides to activate, that'll give you better sound, not the rear speakers, if only one set is used.

Now you can make that happen by switching the output to the receiver to 5.1 mode. When it receives a 5.1 signal setup, the receiver does not use the surround back channels, just the surrounds. So it gets him what he wants.

Basically the issue is just that PC audio looks at things different than theater audio and wants a different speaker setup. If your setup is optimized for HT then a game that does 5.1 sound being sent over a 7.1 signal isn't going to have good surround since all the surround will get clustered in the two back speakers which are right next to each other.
 
djoye said:
The only thing you need to do is to set it and forget it. If you're connected via HDMI to a 7.1 system, set Windows to 7.1 and go with it. Accept the fact that some games and many movies don't support 7.1 output.

Dolby Live and DTS Connect encoding, which are lossy formats, are completely unnecessary in gaming these days since HDMI is available, unless your only option is SPDIF. Direct analog and HDMI are superior.

Dolby and DTS are essentially audio compression codecs designed to fit multi-channel audio into a small space (9GB DVDs). Of course, with Blu-ray, Dolby and DTS now have lossless formats, but as far as non-disc formats go now days, compressing audio is almost a matter of personal preference and trying to save space on a smart phone. Games still use lossy OGG format, though, but I'd still recommend using either HDMI LPCM or direct analog.
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Correct 100%. Dolby Digital and DTS have no place in PC gaming. They need to go the way of the dodo.
 
Sycraft said:
His issue is with speaker mapping and how receivers deal with it.
Click to expand...

I had an idea about this. I'm not 100% sure if this would work or how it would sound but I believe with Equalizer APO (http://sourceforge.net/projects/equalizerapo/) you can remap channels. So set Win to 7.1 and if you're savvy you could possibly make a script/batch file whatever to swap the channels around for the 5.1 games that map the side surrounds to rear surrounds and another for remapping back to default. E APO only works with DirectSound though.

Hardware wise one could buy a miniDSP nanoAVR HD (http://www.minidsp.com/products/ht-series/nanoavr-hd) to remap (it can store 4 different configurations):
1114mitr.fig1.jpg


Side note: I picked up Apotheon for PC the other day. I played it on my 7.1. The music comes through the Front L & R. Sound Effects and Voices meant to come from the Center channel come through my Rear Surrounds and the Sound Effects and Voices that are supposed to pan to L or R show up in my Side Surrounds. Center does nothing. dafuq?!
 
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