Why dont PC games have uncompressed audio???

I dont know what format PC games use but its obvious my headphones sound a bit better in movies than games. I loaded up the soundtrack of DMC4 manually from the folder through VLC and it was kinda obvious that it's not even 320-bit MP3 quality. Why is this? We care so much about graphics, why not about sound??

Just loaded DIRT 2's soundtrack through winamp and it shows 100 KBPS, once again I ask why? I dont have any problem with downloading more bytes for better sound. Heck they can easily make 2 versions of games in which one has uncompressed audio and the other has normal one so people who could care less about the sound quality dont get upset about the bigger downloads.

I am not even asking blu ray quality but 128-bit MP3 quality?

As it is PS3 is the sound king and please dont try to say that it doesnt matter.

i don't think it really matters

uncompressed audio probably takes too much space

Generally speaking, the sound quality is'nt better than last gen, even worse on some games. The reason for this is mostly because of disc space I guess, specially on multiplats. The X360's limited 6.7GB is lower than both the PC and the PS3 can handle on each disc. Even lower than what the PS2 and Xbox had available last gen. Developers don't want to use time with increasing the audio quality on the PC and PS3.

This is also the reason why developers have to have limited dialog and sound effects in games.

I have my PS3 hooked up to a pretty good surround system, and there is a HUGE difference between multiplats and PS3 exclusives in audio quality. PC, I can't say so much about since I only got a crappy PC speaker system on it.

I assume you mean lossless sound, uncompressed soundfiles would be massive (a 5.1 mix at 24bit /96khz would fill a single layer dvd in less than an hour) it wouldn't make sense not to compress them. There are a number of games that use FLAC ( a lossless audio format) usually they are games with long pre-rendered video clips, but most games still use MP3s mainly because of the space they end up saving over a lossless format.

Space. Audio decoding (for lossy or lossless formats) takes a negligible amount of CPU power, specially with today's multi-core CPU's.

I think devs spend more time in creating a believeable 3D soundscape first, but rarely bother with higher quality source files. Really, most of the sound effects in a game can be replicated in an acceptable quality with pretty heavy lossy compression. Music would relaly be the only thing that would benefit from lossless or high bit rates for lossy compression. But again, no one really bothers. Another reason might be to give you a reason for purchasing the sound track either seperately or as part of a collector's edition.

[QUOTE="JohnF111"]It doesn't matter... Are you an Elitist who has just discovered something that the PS3 beats PC at and you all mad? :lol: Doesn't matter.tagyhag

Because despite what the audiophiles that mysteriously appeared in mass say about uncompressed audio on Blu-ray, the majority of people neither care about; nor have the equipment to take advantage of it. I've compressed several Blu-rays to stick on my portable media players; and I honestly cannot tell the difference between 320kbps surround sound and uncompressed.

Because despite what the audiophiles that mysteriously appeared in mass say about uncompressed audio on Blu-ray, the majority of people neither care about; nor have the equipment to take advantage of it. I've compressed several Blu-rays to stick on my portable media players; and I honestly cannot tell the difference between 320kbps surround sound and uncompressed.

AnnoyedDragon

If you cant tell the difference in say 128kbs and 320 then you need your ears checked. OR you are just happy with sub-par sound? Funny though how the pcgamers pass off sound but brag all day long about graphics?...strange indeed..

On a side note...most people these days listen to chopped music files these days and wouldnt know a good sounding system if it fell out of the sky and hit them..

If you cant tell the difference in say 128kbs and 320 then you need your ears checked.

VanDammFan

Good thing I didn't say that then. I said between 320kbs and uncompressed, not lower than that.

Lots of people seemed to mysteriously turn into audiophiles, right around the time PS3 announced uncompressed audio support. I put it down to fanboyism and nothing more.

And if you are going to jab at PC, recognise that it is a developer limitation; and not a hardware one. There is nothing about PC hardware that prevents the use of uncompressed audio. Suggesting otherwise is as ridiculous as rejecting PC hardware capabilities; because developers cannot be bothered to upgrade their console ports.

Funny though how the pcgamers pass off sound but brag all day long about graphics?...strange indeed.. VanDammFan

I personally wouldn't mind uncompressed audio either, but I would prefer something with a higher bitrate. I have a pretty nice setup & when i play games & music I can rly tell the difference.

Uncompressed is an output format. Im other words it's just a certain way that the game/audio format encodes the final mixed audio stream that gets sent to the receiver. It's completely independent of how a game stores its source audio assets, since those will end up getting decompressed and manipulated by the game so it can be mixed with multiple simultaneous audio samples, or so special effects (doppler, reverb, etc.) can be added. Right now the only practical way to send uncompressed PCM to a reciever is over HDMI, and I would suspect that majority of people with gaming PC's are not sending audio over HDMI, since they're probably just going to their monitor over DVI. So they're either using a stereo analog audio port for speakers/headphones, or multiple analog outputs, or SPDIF/toslink. None of which will support uncompressed PCM surround. I'm sure most PC gamers don't even hook up their PC's to a receiver capable of uncompressed, unless they have a home theater PC. For consoles people using receivers is still not going to be the common case, but it's more likely. Either way Sony just includes support because they wanted PS3 to be a capable Blu-Ray player in higher-end home theater setups.

In terms of audio source data, games can store them however they want. It will never be uncompressed, since that would be stupid. But it can be lossless. Most people won't notice or care though if you go lossy, so most developers will decide it's not worth it. Once again on PS3 it's a little different, just because PS3 games have so much disc space available. Either way, it's hardly a big deal unless you're really obsessive about audio quality.

I dunno, but Crysis' audio is superb when set to Very High, and there's lots of PC games in my collection that have very high quality audio. Just as good as any of my PS3 -games. (The best one in my collection has to be Ratchet&Clank: A Crack In Time). I use S/PDIF to connect to my 5.1 home theatre... God, I love good audio in games :)tume-x

Once again on PS3 it's a little different, just because PS3 games have so much disc space available. Either way, it's hardly a big deal unless you're really obsessive about audio quality.

Teufelhuhn

It's a little different because a few games do have uncompressed audio. However, since the jailbreak thing, I got curious and started browsing certain websites, and I discovered that, once the disk image is scrubbed, the overwhelming majority of PS3 games take up as much space as a 360 games; and some could actually fit on a regular DVD5. That means the audio and video are just as compressed as they are on the other consoles.

Uncompressed is an output format. Im other words it's just a certain way that the game/audio format encodes the final mixed audio stream that gets sent to the receiver. It's completely independent of how a game stores its source audio assets, since those will end up getting decompressed and manipulated by the game so it can be mixed with multiple simultaneous audio samples, or so special effects (doppler, reverb, etc.) can be added. Right now the only practical way to send uncompressed PCM to a reciever is over HDMI, and I would suspect that majority of people with gaming PC's are not sending audio over HDMI, since they're probably just going to their monitor over DVI. So they're either using a stereo analog audio port for speakers/headphones, or multiple analog outputs, or SPDIF/toslink. None of which will support uncompressed PCM surround. I'm sure most PC gamers don't even hook up their PC's to a receiver capable of uncompressed, unless they have a home theater PC. For consoles people using receivers is still not going to be the common case, but it's more likely. Either way Sony just includes support because they wanted PS3 to be a capable Blu-Ray player in higher-end home theater setups.

In terms of audio source data, games can store them however they want. It will never be uncompressed, since that would be stupid. But it can be lossless. Most people won't notice or care though if you go lossy, so most developers will decide it's not worth it. Once again on PS3 it's a little different, just because PS3 games have so much disc space available. Either way, it's hardly a big deal unless you're really obsessive about audio quality.

Teufelhuhn

The sound in UC2 adds alot to the awesome game that it is, I doubt the experience would have been as awesome with 128Kb/s audio sampling and limited use of audio samples. Now we have several multiplat games that say they have DTS support, but the sound sampling is'nt really up to the DTS standard at all.

The X360's limited 6.7GB is the main reason why the sound is'nt any better this gen.

It's a little different because a few games do have uncompressed audio. However, since the jailbreak thing, I got curious and started browsing certain websites, and I discovered that, once the disk image is scrubbed, the overwhelming majority of PS3 games take up as much space as a 360 games; and some could actually fit on a regular DVD5. That means the audio and video are just as compressed as they are on the other consoles.

LordQuorthon

Going by the terrible Force Unleashed PS3 to PC port, the vast majority of the data on the disk is duplicates; done to compensate for disk speed limitations. They duplicated level assets over and over again, each area being in a compressed file; and each file containing asset duplicates.

I wouldn't be surprised in the least if most PS3 games could fit on a single DVD, after you cut out all the duplicated content.

Space, BluRay isn't abig thing on the Pc, they're still using DVDs for games, until BluRays are more common they'll still use extremly compressed audio, which is somewhat sad, as TC said, they could at least use 128bit MP3s :S Anyway, Ps3 is sound quality king for sure, but this shouldn't be new :S

I dont know what format PC games use but its obvious my headphones sound a bit better in movies than games. I loaded up the soundtrack of DMC4 manually from the folder through VLC and it was kinda obvious that it's not even 320-bit MP3 quality. Why is this? We care so much about graphics, why not about sound??

Just loaded DIRT 2's soundtrack through winamp and it shows 100 KBPS, once again I ask why? I dont have any problem with downloading more bytes for better sound. Heck they can easily make 2 versions of games in which one has uncompressed audio and the other has normal one so people who could care less about the sound quality dont get upset about the bigger downloads.

I am not even asking blu ray quality but 128-bit MP3 quality?

As it is PS3 is the sound king and please dont try to say that it doesnt matter.

[QUOTE="LordQuorthon"]

It's a little different because a few games do have uncompressed audio. However, since the jailbreak thing, I got curious and started browsing certain websites, and I discovered that, once the disk image is scrubbed, the overwhelming majority of PS3 games take up as much space as a 360 games; and some could actually fit on a regular DVD5. That means the audio and video are just as compressed as they are on the other consoles.

AnnoyedDragon

Going by the terrible Force Unleashed PS3 to PC port, the vast majority of the data on the disk is duplicates; done to compensate for disk speed limitations. They duplicated level assets over and over again, each area being in a compressed file; and each file containing asset duplicates.

I wouldn't be surprised in the least if most PS3 games could fit on a single DVD, after you cut out all the duplicated content.

[QUOTE="tagyhag"][QUOTE="JohnF111"]It doesn't matter... Are you an Elitist who has just discovered something that the PS3 beats PC at and you all mad? :lol: Doesn't matter.JohnF111

Yes when I only had speakers then I never really noticed it but it gets obvious when you start gaming with a high quality pair of headphones...

Because despite what the audiophiles that mysteriously appeared in mass say about uncompressed audio on Blu-ray, the majority of people neither care about; nor have the equipment to take advantage of it. I've compressed several Blu-rays to stick on my portable media players; and I honestly cannot tell the difference between 320kbps surround sound and uncompressed.

AnnoyedDragon

And yes I agree 320-bit sounds really really good.

Did you read my post? We are talking 100-bit sound in games and as I said I wouldnt mind if it were 320-bit MP3 level but it is not which is unacceptable because 320-bit MP3 certainly does NOT take ridiculous amounts of space.

And yes I agree 320-bit sounds really really good.

Gambler_3

Just for the record, we don't refer to it as bit. Bit depth is something different from kbps.

Anyway the quality of audio in games differs on what the developers want. There will be games that use better than the highly compressed audio you refer to.

-edit

Just had a quick look, Amnesia the dark decent has better than 320kbps quality audio.

It's a little different because a few games do have uncompressed audio. However, since the jailbreak thing, I got curious and started browsing certain websites, and I discovered that, once the disk image is scrubbed, the overwhelming majority of PS3 games take up as much space as a 360 games; and some could actually fit on a regular DVD5. That means the audio and video are just as compressed as they are on the other consoles. hd in their native bitstream formats the ps3 actually sends out a LPCM signal which the audio system has to then convert to dolby hd and or dts hd.

LordQuorthon

The X360's limited 6.7GB is the main reason why the sound is'nt any better this gen.

Martin_G_N

:roll: your not actually making that claim right? all uncompressed audio is is a spec sheet, a look what we can do, most no one uses it and most consumers dont have audio system capable of it and studio masters themselves have gone on record to say that they cannot tell a difference between UPCM and DTS HD or Dolby HD.
Next you'll start saying the regular ol'dolby 5.1 the 360 uses sounds like **** and no 360 game sounds good.

By the way at the topic at hand the ps3 still isn't audio king. A high end sound blaster card on a pc makes that high end, hell intergrated audio on some motherboards beats what ps3 is capable of, so no PC is audio king.

I dont know what format PC games use but its obvious my headphones sound a bit better in movies than games. I loaded up the soundtrack of DMC4 manually from the folder through VLC and it was kinda obvious that it's not even 320-bit MP3 quality. Why is this? We care so much about graphics, why not about sound??

Just loaded DIRT 2's soundtrack through winamp and it shows 100 KBPS, once again I ask why? I dont have any problem with downloading more bytes for better sound. Heck they can easily make 2 versions of games in which one has uncompressed audio and the other has normal one so people who could care less about the sound quality dont get upset about the bigger downloads.

I am not even asking blu ray quality but 128-bit MP3 quality?

As it is PS3 is the sound king and please dont try to say that it doesnt matter.

Gambler_3

so you are try to say that DMC4 & dirt2 on ps3 have better sound than pc?

By the way at the topic at hand the ps3 still isn't audio king. A high end sound blaster card on a pc makes that high end, hell intergrated audio on some motherboards beats what ps3 is capable of, so no PC is audio king.

WilliamRLBaker

[QUOTE="LordQuorthon"]

It's a little different because a few games do have uncompressed audio. However, since the jailbreak thing, I got curious and started browsing certain websites, and I discovered that, once the disk image is scrubbed, the overwhelming majority of PS3 games take up as much space as a 360 games; and some could actually fit on a regular DVD5. That means the audio and video are just as compressed as they are on the other consoles. hd in their native bitstream formats the ps3 actually sends out a LPCM signal which the audio system has to then convert to dolby hd and or dts hd.

WilliamRLBaker

The X360's limited 6.7GB is the main reason why the sound is'nt any better this gen.

Martin_G_N

:roll: your not actually making that claim right? all uncompressed audio is is a spec sheet, a look what we can do, most no one uses it and most consumers dont have audio system capable of it and studio masters themselves have gone on record to say that they cannot tell a difference between UPCM and DTS HD or Dolby HD.
Next you'll start saying the regular ol'dolby 5.1 the 360 uses sounds like **** and no 360 game sounds good.

By the way at the topic at hand the ps3 still isn't audio king. A high end sound blaster card on a pc makes that high end, hell intergrated audio on some motherboards beats what ps3 is capable of, so no PC is audio king.

If a game supports DD5.1, or even DTS but are only using 128Kb/s bitrate on the audio sampling, then the point is gone. The X360 has a limit of 6.7GB per disc, and the graphics takes up more space than last gen. The audio has to suffer for it, because it's the easiest to compress, or remove dialog and sound effects. Sure, a computer has a good sound processor that can clean up the sound, but it can not do anything with repetitive dialog and sound effects.

[QUOTE="WilliamRLBaker"]

By the way at the topic at hand the ps3 still isn't audio king. A high end sound blaster card on a pc makes that high end, hell intergrated audio on some motherboards beats what ps3 is capable of, so no PC is audio king.

[QUOTE="LordQuorthon"]

It's a little different because a few games do have uncompressed audio. However, since the jailbreak thing, I got curious and started browsing certain websites, and I discovered that, once the disk image is scrubbed, the overwhelming majority of PS3 games take up as much space as a 360 games; and some could actually fit on a regular DVD5. That means the audio and video are just as compressed as they are on the other consoles. hd in their native bitstream formats the ps3 actually sends out a LPCM signal which the audio system has to then convert to dolby hd and or dts hd.

WilliamRLBaker

The X360's limited 6.7GB is the main reason why the sound is'nt any better this gen.

Martin_G_N

:roll: your not actually making that claim right? all uncompressed audio is is a spec sheet, a look what we can do, most no one uses it and most consumers dont have audio system capable of it and studio masters themselves have gone on record to say that they cannot tell a difference between UPCM and DTS HD or Dolby HD.
Next you'll start saying the regular ol'dolby 5.1 the 360 uses sounds like **** and no 360 game sounds good.

By the way at the topic at hand the ps3 still isn't audio king. A high end sound blaster card on a pc makes that high end, hell intergrated audio on some motherboards beats what ps3 is capable of, so no PC is audio king.

The PS3 slim can actually bitstream, so that DTS HD or Dolby HD logo will light up on your receiver :P The fat PS3 has to decode the DTS HD format to PCM which is uncompressed from what I can tell. Or you can just load the PCM track on your movies or games, Uncompressed Lossless PCM is better than the lossless codec like DTS HD or Dolby true HD.

i don't think it really matters

Vinegar_Strokes

[QUOTE="Gambler_3"]

[QUOTE="WilliamRLBaker"]

By the way at the topic at hand the ps3 still isn't audio king. A high end sound blaster card on a pc makes that high end, hell intergrated audio on some motherboards beats what ps3 is capable of, so no PC is audio king.

DudeNtheRoom

Dont think there is a way around it you either need a good receiver or a good sound card if you want good audio. Of course your games need to support it or else it be no reason to have all that nice audio tech. Though a lot of PS3 games do include a PCM track, though not sure if it is compressed.

uncompressed audio probably takes too much space

Harisemo

The PS3 slim can actually bitstream, so that DTS HD or Dolby HD logo will light up on your receiver :P The fat PS3 has to decode the DTS HD format to PCM which is uncompressed from what I can tell. Or you can just load the PCM track on your movies or games, Uncompressed Lossless PCM is better than the lossless codec like DTS HD or Dolby true HD.

GTSaiyanjin2

The point of lossless compression is not to lose data while compressed form. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossless_data_compression

Lossless data compression is a c.lass of data compressionalgorithms that allows the exact original data to be reconstructed from the compressed data.

[QUOTE="JohnF111"]It doesn't matter... Are you an Elitist who has just discovered something that the PS3 beats PC at and you all mad? :lol: Doesn't matter.tagyhag

And how do we know the PS3 games have uncompressed audio? All we know is that it sends an uncompressed signal via HDMI. PC has had uncompressed 5.1 signals for years. Think it was around the PS1/N64's time. I can hook up my PC via 4 RCA cables and this would be considered uncompressed since RCA doesn't use an encoder. It's pure 2 channel sound. If I used say DDL or DTS Connect over optical/SPDIF to the receiver, then all audio would be compressed down for the receiver to decode via a lossy signal that fits within the bandwidth limitations of those cables. Uncompressed signal =/= uncompressed audio.Plus we have much higher quality DACs than whats available on the PS3.

So we are sound king, PC that is. In the end though, its up to the developers. Its up to them how great the quality of the sound will be and what format of encoding will be used. Games such as WoW has mediocre audio (One part of the engine and game that really needs to be overhauled,) but games like Bad Company 2, Amnesia, and SMG should be references for any developer on how to do great audio design.

I dunno about everyone else here but I have my PC hooked up to a decent home theater receiver (Onkyo TX-SR508 to be exact.) On Blu-Rays the difference between DD/DTS and Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HD is fairly noticable to me, and I have just decent speakers. With music the difference between an MP3 and FLAC/WAV is really noticable unless its a quality MP3 file but even then I could nitpick without too much trouble. With games its hard to pick it out as I have to use DDL for the time being but I can say the PS3's audio is fantastic over HDMI. MGS4 sounds amazing. Of course if I want really good quality I'll use my Sennheiser HD 555s with an Auzentech X-Fi Forte. :P

some games use formats other than mp3. for instance, ogg is open source (no licensing fees!) and gives better quality at lower bitrate.

but the reason why pc games don't use uncompressed audio is because there's not really a discernable difference.

also there would probably have to be another dvd for the audio lol

As it is PS3 is the sound king and please dont try to say that it doesnt matter.

Gambler_3

Uncompressed sound is a side benefit of high-capacity Blu-rays. But compressed sound is indiscernible if the bit rate is high enough. Leaving it uncompressed is more of a marketing gimmick.

The sound quality of Blu-rays is understated though.