IPB

Welcome Guest ( Log In | Register )

 
Reply to this topicStart new topic
NR2003 Full 7.1 Surround + EAX for Vista/Win7.
BrunoB
post Aug 8 2009, 05:28 AM
Post #1


Mike Parkes
**

Group: Members
Posts: 13
Joined: 20-May 08
Member No.: 2435
Sim interest: GPL



Since Microsoft destroyed the DirectSound3D and EAX for newer Windows platforms (Vista/Win7) nobody seems to be sure, if its possible to get real surround sound for NR2003 and its different mods.
By real surround I excludes the Creative semi surround called CMSS-3D because its bullshit and has nothing to do with real(discrete) 5.1/7.1 channels.

Partly by accident I have discovered that inside Nascar Racing 2003 slumbers a genuine OpenAL sound engine able to fully support both 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound.
And eventhough I have only managed to activate this full surround capabilities using the latest Creative/Auzentech X-Fi soundcard I wouldnt be surpriced if some other soundcards can participate in the party.

The reason for my interrest in this matter is because I have been blessed by a MB using the legendary nVidia SoundStorm soundcard, which until now has been the only card able to reveal nearly full surround potientials of the Nascar 2003 sound engine.
The SoundStorm was able to output real 5.1 surround sound if the settings was was set to Dolby Digital Live, eventhough NR2003 dont use the Dolby Digital format!
How?
Nobody told users that the reason was that together with this surround decoding an OpenAL part of the soundcard was wakened up.
An OpenAL part that managed to position the output sounds according to the OpenAL directives from NR2003.

2 conditions had to be satisfied to get this stoneage (but superior!) 5.1 surround to work for any game:
1) The game must be OpenAL compatible.
2) The OS has to be the good old Windows 98SE(or to some extend WinXP).
The reason for the OS restrictions is because there are no SoundStorm drivers for later Windows incarnations.
And by the introduction of Vista/Win7 Microsoft changed/cripled the possibilities for any HW surround sound acceleration.
And the nVidia SoundStorm was left behind.

But because of this SoundStorm story I have heard how efficient the Nascar Racing 2003 sound engine could produce real 5.1 surround.
And from then on I have very disapointed with both the soundquality and the missing directional surround from my new Win7 system.

My new system uses the socalled SoundMAX High Definition Audio on the AsusP6T DeluxeV2 MB.
Acceptable for normal CD/DVD playing. But gaming and surround sound is quite another story. High Definition! My ass!
What you get is clipping, distortion combined with too low sound volume. And a poor flat L/R soundfield.
But worst is that conserning surround sound and NR2003 a whole bunch of the directional sounds is lacking.
Then I installed the SRC sound utility which uses the SoundMAX output to create an enhanced surround soundfield.
But because the basic soundquality of the SoundMAX is awfull the SRC is unable to help.

Anyway. I decided to buy a soundcard which combines the latest Creative X-Fi chip with some HighEnd audiophile parts exceeding even the Creative Titanium series.
The Auzentech X-Fi Forte 7.1.
But after a lot of experimentation I concluded that eventhough the Auzentechs soundquality is in another class (its superb), then the NR2003 surround from this Creative incarnation is still lacking some soundfield and directional sounds that the old SoundStorm could produce!
Ie the Creative/Auzentech surround isnt full or real surround.

After some research I found that after Vista/Win7 its only possible to get surround sound (+ EAX) in a game if
1) You have a X-Fi soundcard(OpenAl compatible) that is able to use the Alchemy wrapper to translate the games D3D commands to OpenAL, or..
2) The game itself outputs OpenAL commands (native OpenAL game) and your soundcard is OpenAL compatible, or..
3) The game internal soundengine is capable of directly distributing surround output (with/without EAX) to any soundcard.

And now comes my point:-)
The sound engine inside Nascar Racing 2003 is able to fulfill both 2) and 3).
But the urgent point is that if you get access to the method in 2) the surround quality (soundfield and directional sounds) is way better, than the surround quality from 3) we all have accepted until now!
How about that?

OK. Because opening up this new surround sound mode in NR2003 is not a simple switch in a menu, then I will not go further by producing a manual if there isnt much interrest and demand for it.
After all the NR2003 and its mods isnt the newest kids on the block.
So I will from now on wait and see in this forum and specially in the NR2003 threads in the RSC forum if a discussion about NR2003 and the possibility for real 5.1/7.1 surround starts up.
BrunoB

Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
BrunoB
post Aug 9 2009, 03:27 AM
Post #2


Mike Parkes
**

Group: Members
Posts: 13
Joined: 20-May 08
Member No.: 2435
Sim interest: GPL



UPDATE:
Just found this.
NR2003/GTP with 5.1 surround sound.
https://forum.racesimcentral.com/showthread.php?t=317380
It looks like this guy managed to get it to work but dont actually know why.
I just thought I was the only one who had discovered this:-)
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
Arturo Pereira
post Aug 9 2009, 08:03 AM
Post #3


Denny Hulme
**********

Group: Members
Posts: 283
Joined: 11-July 04
From: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Member No.: 68
Sim interest: GPL



Hi Bruno (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Quite interesting finding !!

I never tried it because I´ve heard awful stories about this, but I guess I need to experiment a bit. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
BrunoB
post Aug 10 2009, 03:30 AM
Post #4


Mike Parkes
**

Group: Members
Posts: 13
Joined: 20-May 08
Member No.: 2435
Sim interest: GPL



Hey Arturo
What really gave me an idea of what was going on was this Bioschock discussion of what happens when you have a native OpenAL game (like Bioschock) and the OpenAL in your soundcard completely takes over. Overriding most of your sound settings (volume sliders) in the game. Because that was precisely what happened with NR2003 when I was experimenting with inis and settings:

https://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthrea...6195&page=1

QUOTE (#11 hordaktheman)
OpenAL, however, is a very different beast. How it works is that when a game uses OpenAL, the driver (-) completely overrides any speaker setting selected within the game. For example, the in-game stereo, 5.1 and 7.1 settings make absolutely no difference to the audio when running under OpenAL because it's the driver setting that controls this.


When I first experienced this I just thought it was a bug in NR2003 or the sound driver. Because it made nearly no difference if you set the Engine sound slider to 2% or 90%. Because the OpenAL HW mixer had allready taken over.
But when I realised that I had to do some heavy "reverseengeneering" to find out which of my experimenting steps had provoked this.
BrunoB
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post

Reply to this topicStart new topic
2 User(s) are reading this topic (2 Guests and 0 Anonymous Users)
0 Members:

 



RSS Lo-Fi Version Time is now: 20th August 2009 - 12:16 AM
Sim Racing Links