PS4 Secret Sauce Confirmed: PS4 has AMD's TrueAudio DSP.

In a nutshell, TrueAudio is a return to the concept of hardware accelerated audio processing, with AMD leveraging their position to put the necessary hardware on the GPU. Hardware accelerated audio processing in the PC space essentially died with Windows Vista, which moved most of the Windows audio stack into software. Previously the stack was significantly implemented through drivers and as such various elements could be offloaded onto the sound card itself, which in the case of 3D audio meant having the audio card process and transform DirectSound 3D calls as it saw fit. However with Vista hardware processing and hardware access to those APIs was stripped, and combined with a general “good enough” mindset of software audio + Realtek audio codecs, the matter was essentially given up on.

Now even with the loss of traditional hardware acceleration due to Vista, you can still do advanced 3D audio and other effects in software by having the game engine itself do the work. However this is generally not something that’s done, as game developers are hesitant to allocate valuable CPU time to audio and other effects that are difficult to demonstrate and sell. Further complicating this is of course the current generation consoles, which dedicate a relatively small portion of what are already pretty limited resources to audio processing. As a result the baseline for audio is at times an 8 year old console, or at best a conservative fraction of one CPU core.

Dominic also mentioned;

• PS4 is not a super-computer, but it's an impressive piece of technology
• They chose the hardware (admitted mainstream-spec) to hit the price-point and at the same time a 10-year cycle.

It'l make those MP3's sound deeper and more crisp and enhance the sound of your CD collection....

3D sound demo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKnhcsRTNME

If you have headphones put them on, or listen with decent speakers.

Listened with headphones... Damn. I'm impressed.

interesting they have gone with an audio solution from amd.

what is xbox one's audio solution? apparently some kind of dedicated audio block within the SoC.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-the-xbox-one-architects

It's cool they can make sounds appear at different distances just using stereo speakers and headphones.

Imagine what they can do with a 5.1 or even 7.1 system?

Lol no way.

5 years tops.. Had they hit it with 7970 instead of 7870 it could have gone the distance but not with this. Especially considering Nintendo (if they so choose to remain in the console race) will undoubtedly have to get the NEXT gen started soon given what the Wii U packing and how it's performing.. Even if they don't. With how dated the consoles are any other company can step in with a console that obliterates the current ones in 5 years for cheap

Xbone have audio hardware also but most or all is reserve for kinect. Shame. Another superior aspect of PS4.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKnhcsRTNME

wow

listend with my 7.1 pulse elites...holy shit....

....yall realize X1 can do the same if not better right? It has a DEDICATED chipset for audio

@Blake135: will all launch titles have this effect?

I used my Corsair Vengeance Headset.. That sounded amazing.

Those sounds wow

reserve for kinect use unfortunate. Confirm by developer on beyond3d.

so this beats the SHAPE audio block in the Xbox One... oh man lemmings, bragging about SHAPE was your last hope

Xbox One audio chip its so good than it can share a few loads to Kinect aswell.

@Blake135 said:

In a nutshell, TrueAudio is a return to the concept of hardware accelerated audio processing, with AMD leveraging their position to put the necessary hardware on the GPU. Hardware accelerated audio processing in the PC space essentially died with Windows Vista, which moved most of the Windows audio stack into software. Previously the stack was significantly implemented through drivers and as such various elements could be offloaded onto the sound card itself, which in the case of 3D audio meant having the audio card process and transform DirectSound 3D calls as it saw fit. However with Vista hardware processing and hardware access to those APIs was stripped, and combined with a general “good enough” mindset of software audio + Realtek audio codecs, the matter was essentially given up on.

Now even with the loss of traditional hardware acceleration due to Vista, you can still do advanced 3D audio and other effects in software by having the game engine itself do the work. However this is generally not something that’s done, as game developers are hesitant to allocate valuable CPU time to audio and other effects that are difficult to demonstrate and sell. Further complicating this is of course the current generation consoles, which dedicate a relatively small portion of what are already pretty limited resources to audio processing. As a result the baseline for audio is at times an 8 year old console, or at best a conservative fraction of one CPU core.

Dominic also mentioned;

• PS4 is not a super-computer, but it's an impressive piece of technology
• They chose the hardware (admitted mainstream-spec) to hit the price-point and at the same time a 10-year cycle.

More info from http://pixelrant.com/2013/10/08/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-amds-new-trueaudio-technology/

This is for games Shape is mostly for Kinect lemmings were told they just didn't listen..

Countered by FMOD and Turn 10 devs. http://www.develop-online.net/news/fmod-studio-optimised-for-xbox-one/0114931

Firelight Technologies has confirmed that its FMOD Studio tech is optimised for the newly announced Xbox One console.

The audio middleware utilises the Xbox One's 'Scalable Hardware Audio Processing Engine', and is available to authorised Xbox One developers to download for evaluation with immediate effect.

FMOD Studio is already being used in Turn 10's Forza 5, the Xbox One addition to the Forza Motorsport series.

“We’re thrilled to be working with Turn 10 on the Forza Motorsport franchise for Xbox One. They’re really pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in game audio.” said Raymond Biggs, lead developer for FMOD Studio. “They’re doing things in Forza Motorsport 5 that just weren’t possible with the last generation of consoles and audio tools. I know gamers are going to be blown away.”

In what that post contradict his point.?

Bkillian says it on Beyond3D Shapes is mostly for Kinect and very small part is actually for developers to use on games,he worked on the xbox one sound block with MS so yeah,he knows.

"Xbone have audio hardware also but most or all is reserve for kinect. Shame. Another superior aspect of PS4."

The text in on bold is BS

those planes sounds awesome!

Very good.PS4 is the best.

You right is not all..

But it is almost all.

Based on FMOD+Turn10's PR, the remaining SHAPE resource after Kinect allocation is enough to power FMOD middleware that can deliver beyond Xbox 360's audio experience i.e. "They’re doing things in Forza Motorsport 5 that just weren’t possible with the last generation of consoles and audio tools".

You can't compare something when you don't have the base numbers for comparison.

Don't care, visuals are more important.

TrueAudio will also give you three cool beeps when it Red Lines.

The whole crap about shape was about how powerful it was even that it is just 15 damn Gflops,enough to offload 1 core,thing is that is share with Kinect and most of the shape is actually for kinect speech processing.

So yeah most of the resources are tied to Kinect,and now the PS4 gets true audio DSP unveil so yeah the playing field was more than even,unless you consider True Audio DSP from AMD to be crappy.

PS4 runs Battlefield 4 at 900p (900x1600) medium settings and it runs at 44-60 fps

http://pixelenemy.com/battlefield-4-on-ps4-comparable-to-medium-settings-on-pc-like-night-day-difference-to-current-gen-version/

A decent gaming rig would easily run the game at higher resolution with better graphics and still have a higher frame rate.

Dat Audio, i listened through my sennheiser 598's, proper boss sounds o.0

Glad i bought the AMD R9 290 :)

I like to see NVIDIA update and restore "SoundStorm" in future GeForce GPUs.

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MPC: Didn’t Microsoft pretty much put a stake through the heart of advanced audio with Microsoft Vista when DirectSound was demoted and games could no longer directly access the hardware audio layer? How does TrueAudio get around this limitation?

AMD: Ah, this is some of the real magic behind AMD TrueAudio. By operating through the graphics driver, we aren’t held accountable to the limitations imposed on the hardware audio layer. We do not touch the Windows audio stack at all.

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AMD's beats Vista's audio layer road blocks via the GPU driver path.

# tormentos, your so wrong but go ahead and spout what you think.

X1 and PS4 audio will not differ. Both can and will use a form of 3D sound otr at least true 7.1 audio

Sad thing is most devs won't use it, there isn't really a demand at all for better Audio

Back like 8 or so years ago there was a big push for better Audio in games on the PC, but it never kicked off, most devs just didn't care

I remember some devs even used the PS2's audio chip for better graphics instead of better sound, pretty sure God of War 1/2 did

You can't compare GFLOPS numbers between different processors.

http://beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1788668&postcount=693

bkilian: Everyone talks about this 100GFLOPS, but all I've ever said is that the entire 360 CPU would not be able to run Shape at 100%. Remember that the 360 CPU gets, on average, an IPC of 0.2. So while the chip is _technically_ 100GFlops, you will never see that in real running code. Jaguar cores have an IPC of close to 1. A single jaguar core could almost outperform the entire 360 CPU on production code.

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Make sure you remember that...

Against IBM PPE, give AMD Jaguar some credit. There are technical reasons why MS and Sony has dumped IBM PPE IP for their next-gen consoles.

This in-turn makes Intel Ivybridge/Haswell simply murders IBM PPE.

PS; I have h264 encoder software dev quotes that simply made negative remarks on CELL and PPEs i.e. this is for CELL's video decode playback BS demos i.e. the video quality is not comparable.

>7870

It's comparable to a 7790/7850, i don't know why everyone compares it to the 7870, it's not even close to a 7870, especially not a 7870 GHZ

7850 at 900 Mhz~= 1.84 TFLOPS.

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7870 XT = ~2.995 TFLOPS

7870 GE = ~2.56TFLOPS

its not a tensila core its just true audio framework for encoding and decoding not even close to what x290 with 3 DSP cores and the x1 with 4 DSP cores for shape

@tormentos: thats the same guy that said that the durango and yukon are the same thing and the yukon diagram has two gpus ........you right he worked on x1 so he should know? i love when you contradict yourself torm lol

Funny that you do not bold or underline word right before. Just like when you attempt to take developer word and twist before, and I own and recent game prove ps4 much superior. I am surprise you come back after such ownage and paying $500 for 720p 12fps in 2013.

Kinect team fight to reserve entire chip for spy device, but no confirmation if they succeed. At least you do not deny most is reserve for spy camera. TLHBO.

Funny that you just stated some BS and the rest of the above post is yet another BS.

I have already stated 12 working CU prototype-7850 will NOT exceed the retail 7850 with 16 CUs @ 860Mhz, let alone a faster 18 CU @ 800Mhz GCN. In simple terms for you, it's 18 CUs > 16 CUs > 12 CUs.

I don't recognise "ownage", since your brain (if you have one) can't handle beyond Xbox 360/X1/Lem vs PS3/PS4/Cows.

I don't care about X1's Spy BS since X1 is not in my purchase list.

AMD Radeon HD R9-290 non-reference card is my purchase list i.e. I play games at 5760x1080p.

WTF lol...

You the father of secret sauce for the xbox one here.?

Jit compression.

PRT working better on xbox one to do split memory.

ESRAM. 133GB/s alpha blending - 204 GB/s

Move engines.

12CU Pitcairn inside the xbox one,when is Bonaire.

Shapes.

Come on Ron don't pretend now that you didn't cheers lead for the xbox one,how many times i told you what would happen,i posted benchmark after benchmark comparing both GCN and you ignore it.

Remember the whole 7790 doesn't factor in 204Gb/s,cache and crap like that.?

I told you what will happen regardless of ESRAM,DME,jit compression and all that crap,the xbox one GPU was weak,1.18 TF is 600+ Gflops away from the PS4,and look at the end results only 720p galore on xbox one,and almost all games on PS4 been 1080p.

The time for excuses is over,and the time to retract is to,don't feel bad that you loss the argument after all,it happens.

Lol'd

WTF LOL...

From http://au.gamespot.com/forums/topic/29451500/xbox-one--7790-confirmed-by-xbox-one-architec.

You can't properly add memory bandwdith.

X1 can add memory bandwidth since it has two memory pools (think of L-shaped multi-memory controller setups) while PS4 has a single memory pool.

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JIT compression was from vgleaks and has similar pattern when ATI added 3DC+ texture compression to Xbox 360.

LOL at your PRT statement. Using AMD PRT is not automatic you clown. LOL. Game ports from the PC doesn't support DX11.2 LOL.

GPUs must have "Move Engines" if it has to copy large blocks of data efficiently. GPU has been doing that since 1985 era Amiga's custom chipset.

Your Pitcairn vs Bonaire codename junk is just noise to actual CU design being the same across GCN. Games like BF4 or Crysis 2 ((without factoring 7770's tessellation bottleneck with NVIDIA Fermi bias patch) scales with GCN's CU count. I have shown you CU bounded games and thier results.

With mostly CU bounded games (e.g. BF4, Crysis 2), the prototype 7850 with 12 CUs would be rendering sub-1080p if the target frame rate is 60. If the target frame rate is ~30, you get results like NFS Rivials at 1080p for X1 (with slightly less shader/CU based effects) and PS4. I have shown you the results with CU count gap with BF4 and Crysis 2.

If NFS Rivials targeted 60 fps, you most likely end up like BF4's X1 (720p) and PS4 (900p) results.

Btw, KZSF multiplayer has frame rates hitting high 30s to 50 and one should see why BF4 went for 900p for PS4.

With SHAPE, your the clown who compares GFLOPS across different processor designs. You have FMOD+Turn10's PR stating they can do more with SHAPE when compared to Xbox 360 in relation to audio.

Your mind is only limited to Xbox 360/X1/Lem vs PS3/PS4/Cows.

The audio coming out of the DS4 speaker is surprisingly good.

Dirty little secret, all three consoles use dedicated audio drivers.