Would virtual surround headphones in doom help you in a similar way to counterstrike and other fps's?

[invictius]

Apparently they're all a gimmick, even the ones with a total of eight drivers, but still make things like directions of shots and footsteps easier to pick up.  I do know, with gzdoom at least, 5.1 on a home theatre system is super accurate and you can hear fireballs cross from in front of you to behind.  Very directional.  But we don't have footsteps in doom and I guess it's less important about what direction you're being shot from?  Though I think the original manual mentioned something about differentiating near and far sounds.

[Edward850]

They aren't a gimmick, the science is sound (remember you only have two ears yourself, surround sound works by manipulating latency between your two ears, which is how it actually works for natural sound).

It's likely pointless in Doom however, given it doesn't have a complex sound scape. The source port used also needs to support surround sound, you won't get anything if it only handles two channels, which is most of them.

[invictius]

2 hours ago, Edward850 said:

They aren't a gimmick, the science is sound (remember you only have two ears yourself, surround sound works by manipulating latency between your two ears, which is how it actually works for natural sound).

It's likely pointless in Doom however, given it doesn't have a complex sound scape. The source port used also needs to support surround sound, you won't get anything if it only handles two channels, which is most of them.

 

Hmm, the usual argument for it being a gimmick is that you only have two ears, you can't hear if things are ahead or behind you, and that's all done in software.  Vs 5.1 speakers where the sound is coming in different directions relative to your ears.  If you find a pair of surround headphones that can replicate the sound you hear on dolby atmos test videos, with dolby atmos hardware, I'll eat my hat.

[Edward850]

24 minutes ago, invictius said:

Hmm, the usual argument for it being a gimmick is that you only have two ears, you can't hear if things are ahead or behind you, and that's all done in software.

Right, you only have two ears, and yet you know if a sound is behind you don't you? So of course you can reproduce that with just two drivers. It's all about how sound latency works between your two ears, your brain measures this which is how it perceives direction and you can recreate this same effect with precisely timed speakers next to your ears.

 

There's currently two implementions of this effect depending on your platform. Xbox consoles have a Dolby software solution that can do it with any pair of headphones, and various PC USB headsets such as the Logitech G935 do it on a hardware level reporting to the system as a 7.1 speaker system. Both ultimately work the same way but with different levels of support, though for the most part any game that supports surround sound works with both (the game does have to support it, see my previous comment about channels, it can't work if the game/video has no/limited directional output).

 

Of note the Xbox solution might actually be better, because it hooks into the Xaudio2 API which has natural positional information and can feed that straight into Windows Sonic/Dolby Atmos/DTS which allows it to do head/ear positioning for any point, as opposed to the Logitech method which has to recompute that from 7 directional channels.

Edited May 18, 2023 by Edward850

[invictius]

34 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

and various PC USB headsets such as the Logitech G935 do it on a hardware level reporting to the system as a 7.1 speaker system.

 

They do that?  I thought dts headphone did nothing like that.  I got them on sale and was a bit disappointed with the sound quality, so haven't used them much.  Might be a good idea to do so.

[Edward850]

You have to make sure you install their drivers, the Logitech G HUB, which you allow you to enable and test surround sound.

Also use the flat EQ.

[invictius]

14 hours ago, Edward850 said:

You have to make sure you install their drivers, the Logitech G HUB, which you allow you to enable and test surround sound.

Also use the flat EQ.

 

Regarding your previous message, you're essentially saying if a game supports surround sound via an amplifier, it can pass on its' surround output to surround headphones to make it sound a lot better than upmixing a stereo only source?  That's really what I need (I tried a 7.1 amp once with a 7.1 game and barely heard the difference)

 

With g-hub frontal sounds seemed ok, but the rears just didn't sound like they were behind me.  Same with the center channel, to a point.  They didn't sound directly left and right like stereo headphones but didn't sound as directional as I'd like.  Even with fiddling with the virtual speaker position.  Same story for razer krakens and even the razer tiamat (The one that actually takes analog 7.1 sound card input)

[DNSKILL5]

I thought Doom always had sound that differed based on direction and distance between the sound and the player position? I think even Wolfenstein 3D has that at least the DOS version does. Or are you referring to something else? I’ve often played with music off or really low volume in deathmatch because it helps me hear where other players may be. 

[Edward850]

1 hour ago, invictius said:

Regarding your previous message, you're essentially saying if a game supports surround sound via an amplifier, it can pass on its' surround output to surround headphones to make it sound a lot better than upmixing a stereo only source?  That's really what I need (I tried a 7.1 amp once with a 7.1 game and barely heard the difference) 

I have no idea what you are referring to. I said nothing about amplifiers and so I don't think you understood what I said at all, sorry. I don't know how to differently phrase what I said however.

 

1 hour ago, CAM-7EA said:

I thought Doom always had sound that differed based on direction and distance between the sound and the player position? I think even Wolfenstein 3D has that at least the DOS version does. Or are you referring to something else? I’ve often played with music off or really low volume in deathmatch because it helps me hear where other players may be. 

Doom's mixer only supports two channels, you can only do left/right directional audio with that, which is not enough for surround positioning. You have to replace the mixer entirely to get surround sound, as you need to either pipe to multiple channels (at least 4 or 5 to do it roughly) or a 3D audio API which does it in the background. GZDoom does this with OpenAL (though no idea how effective it is), the official port actually pipes audio positions into Unity's sound system so that may be surround sound as well, assuming Unity handles it accordingly.

Edited May 19, 2023 by Edward850

[Individualised]

26 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

I have no idea what you are referring to. I said nothing about amplifiers and so I don't think you understood what I said at all, sorry. I don't know how to differently phrase what I said however.

I think they mean the USB sound card

[invictius]

25 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

I have no idea what you are referring to. I said nothing about amplifiers and so I don't think you understood what I said at all, sorry. I don't know how to differently phrase what I said however.

I was rambling a little.  My first paragraph was in response to this:

 

On 5/18/2023 at 8:43 PM, Edward850 said:

Both ultimately work the same way but with different levels of support, though for the most part any game that supports surround sound works with both (the game does have to support it, see my previous comment about channels, it can't work if the game/video has no/limited directional output).

When you said "For the most part any game that supports surround sound works with both" I thought you meant "Surround headphones will have an easier time of creating believable surround sound if the game has a non-headphone surround option to start with".

 

28 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

GZDoom does this with OpenAL (though no idea how effective it is), the official port actually pipes audio positions into Unity's sound system so that may be surround sound as well, assuming Unity handles it accordingly.

 

It is very effective.  Maybe too much so, it's super directional.  On a home theatre amplifier, anyway.

[Foxpup]

2 hours ago, Edward850 said:

Doom's mixer only supports two channels, you can only do left/right directional audio with that, which is not enough for surround positioning.

It absolutely is enough, if you use a head-related transfer function that properly accounts for the fore-aft asymmetry of the human head and ears causing sounds in front of you to sound different from sounds behind you. Doom's mixer of course didn't use a head-related transfer function, though I think most modern game engines (including Unity) do, and is also how surround headphones work under the hood. (How else would they work? You've still only got two ears, after all.) This also means there's no point in using surround headphones if the engine already provides HRTF for regular stereo headphones.

[Edward850]

8 hours ago, Foxpup said:

It absolutely is enough, if you use a head-related transfer function that properly accounts for the fore-aft asymmetry of the human head and ears causing sounds in front of you to sound different from sounds behind you. Doom's mixer of course didn't use a head-related transfer function, though I think most modern game engines (including Unity) do, and is also how surround headphones work under the hood. (How else would they work? You've still only got two ears, after all.) This also means there's no point in using surround headphones if the engine already provides HRTF for regular stereo headphones.

I think we are discussing two different subjects. You just described something that isn't naturally in Doom's mixer, and thus wasn't the point.

10 hours ago, invictius said:

When you said "For the most part any game that supports surround sound works with both" I thought you meant "Surround headphones will have an easier time of creating believable surround sound if the game has a non-headphone surround option to start with".

That's the general idea, as long as the game has the channel support and the headphones expose themselves as such.

Edited May 19, 2023 by Edward850

[Foxpup]

8 hours ago, Edward850 said:

You just described something that isn't naturally in Doom's mixer, and thus wasn't the point.

Surround sound output of any kind isn't in the original Doom mixer, so virtual surround headphones have nothing to work with anyway in that case. Any ports that do support surround sound output are probably doing so using a modern 3D sound API with HRTF for proper specialisation with regular headphones. A quick glance at the OpenAL docs suggests that this is enabled by default if the OS reports stereo headphones are connected; nether developers nor users need to do anything to get this behaviour. Virtual surround headphones won't provide any benefit in that case either since the sound library is doing it already.

[bLUEbYTE]

Can't speak of headphones as I haven't used surround ones, do they have several little speakers placed in different parts of the earpiece?

More generally though, surround sound (not 'virtual', actual physical multi-speaker setup) is super useful in doom. Last night I broke the normal analog output configuration in windows while setting up 5.1 via HDMI, and there's an added sound latency with 5.1, but it is still worth it. I'm running GZDoom BTW.

I find it helps immensely during fights and one example would be that you can pinpoint much more accurately how close is that back-teleporting monster to you during the heat of the combat. This (virtual) 360-degree sound field tells you so much, like who's near you and what are they doing - when they make their sounds anyway - in realtime during action and influences my movement among other things, and approximating that with as many positional speakers as possible can only be a good thing.
 

Edited May 21, 2023 by bLUEbYTE

[hobomaster22]

On 5/20/2023 at 3:57 AM, Foxpup said:

riginal Doom mixer, so virtual surround headphones have nothing to work with anyway in that case. Any ports that do support surround sound output are probably doing so using a modern 3D sound API with HRTF for proper specialisation with regular headphones. A quick glance at the OpenAL docs suggests that this is enabled by default if the OS reports stereo headphones are connected; nether developers nor users need to do anything to get

OpenAL does it by default for sure and I am able to tell if sound is coming in front or behind with my headphones. This would include GZDoom and Helion. With SDL2, I couldn't tell the difference between sound coming directly in front or behind. This would cover most other ports. Not sure if this is something SDL2 supports. I wasn't able to hear the difference in the few ports I tested.

[Edward850]

32 minutes ago, hobomaster22 said:

Not sure if this is something SDL2 supports. I wasn't able to hear the difference in the few ports I tested.

SDL2 only functions as an intermediate output, mixer behavior is up to the application. In general, any port just using SDL2 for audio will just be using Doom's original 2 channel mixer or a variation there of.

 

You can actually get 8 channel output out of SDL2, and if you don't account for that it can really mess with your audio buffers, which is something I needed to fix for multiple ports (well fixed once and then reported out to various authors).

Edited May 21, 2023 by Edward850

[dasho]

Doom's audio is only 2.5 channels, everyone knows that