Optimum speaker setup for PC gaming?

pendragon1 said:
read my other replies and look at the other pics...
the article, if anyone had bothered to click on it, shows the dolby layouts.
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I went through all the guides when I was setting mine up - I think mine is basically the Dolby 7.1 setup but on a PC, you're closer to the front speakers vs most HT setups. (I didn't angle my rear speakers because they were wall mounted but it was fine)

I'm not sure that 8 channel PCM surround sound in PC games is always the same as "Dolby" but I found the positional info to be spot on in most games.

One issue I had early on was that I was using very small Orb satellites and they were rolling off pretty high - like 200Hz or a bit higher and I remember specifically in Overwatch, when that big guy with the hook would come up behind you, it wasn't convincing because the sound, while positional, was too thin. I got some JBL 5.25" 2-way wall mount speakers and it made a huge difference and gave the positional sound more presence and weight...
 
DoubleTap said:
I think mine is basically the Dolby 7.1 setup but on a PC, you're closer to the front speakers vs most HT setups. (I didn't angle my rear speakers because they were wall mounted but it was fine)
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yes and yup. id just turn them up a notch or two to balance them out.
 
FighterAce124 said:
I thought so as well, but on doing research, 5.1 documentation from Dolby and the like refers to the back left and right as "Surround left" "surround right". and 7.1 adds in "Rear surround left" and "Rear surround left"
According to that, when you add 7.1, the 5.1 "Surround Left" and "Surround right" are moved forward into more of a direct left and right, while the rear surround are added to the back.
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7.1 was always an odd opinion of placement design. The gotcha of some systems I've seen are people don't match the placement with the speakers audio throw. I've seen some where the SL and SR where put dead left and dead right of center zone but put in the ceiling and then SBR and SBL put on stand dead rear. The audio field doesn't match.

The usual next discussion I get into is if the front speakers are ear level on stands, should the rears be as well? Should box speakers be flipped? Horizontal vs vertical? I'm not going to put my opinion as it will derail the thread into said discussion. My point is, when it comes to modifying a multi use room for surround audio, placement for room convenience is always the first decider. Then cost. Then achieving the audible goal. No one is putting a speaker on stand in the middle of a walkway to match Dolby's golden angles. Of course, if the room is a dedicated theater, then it gets far simpler to balance.
 
How do you folks drive your 5+.1 rigs from a PC? HDMI to a receiver?
 
DoubleTap said:
That seems strange - this is roughly how I setup 7.1 in my 10'x10' office:
View attachment 627435

Part of the reason I stopped was just the insane amount of cabling that was taking over the room.

4 monitors, 3 of which were connected to work PC and home PC (11 cables) plus 4 pairs of RCA from the sound card to the AVR and then 8 wires running to the speakers. Not to mention everything else in the room.

If I bought a house, I'd consider a built in surround system if I felt like it was still relevant to gaming.
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Absolutely. If I end up moving, I'm going to have someone modify my new house with speaker placements in mind. I ran most of my cables below my carpeting by hand using a 10-ft piece of molding with the wires taped to the end, and it was a colossal pain. It looks okay since there's a couch on top of it, but it's less than ideal.

A friend that works as a builder mentioned that loads of new customers are having him install ceiling/wall mounted speakers with heavy gauge wiring pre-run. He's also been doing subwoofer enclosures below furniture a fair amount lately, too.

uOpt said:
How do you folks drive your 5+.1 rigs from a PC? HDMI to a receiver?
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Yup, that's what I'm doing. Both Nvidia and AMD cards have solid HDMI-out functionality. I'm running mine into a Denon AVR. I've used several other brands over the years (Sony, Onkyo, Marantz) and Denon has been the most trouble-free brand for PC's.
 
uOpt said:
How do you folks drive your 5+.1 rigs from a PC? HDMI to a receiver?
Click to expand...
HDMI to a Marantz AVR. With an HDMI out to my monitor as well I can use PIP to watch cable/dvd in the corner or split screen to use my second pc at the same time too.
 
The optimal setup is headphones with a good HRTF. (Add a subwoofer if you want immersive explosions.)

Aureal understood this back in the late '90s and made it a selling point with A3D - people were getting that "aural wallhack" feeling in PC games back in the day because of it, and Creative had to drive them out of business because a Vortex2 with A3D on headphones or quality stereo speakers > 4.0/quad speakers on a comparable Sound Blaster Live! of the day.

On top of that, DirectSound3D was doing object-based positional audio literal decades before Dolby Atmos was ever a thing, until Microsoft killed it with Vista because Creative's crappy drivers kept giving everyone BSoDs and gave us the crappy XAudio2 in its place, which discarded 3D audio sources in favor of 7.1 speakers worth of positioning. At least we have some kinda new spatial audio API with Windows 10, though I have no idea what really utilizes it.

Second best thing would be, as you might have guessed, quality stereo speakers with a good HRTF, though now they have to worry about crosstalk cancellation and other crap like that when both ears can hear both channels. Doesn't stop me from getting a similar sensation with some old planar Monsoon computer speakers, the sort that are inherently highly directional (just getting up out of your seat or moving your head too far takes your ears out of the sweet spot) and have clarity that can rival electrostatic headphones.

Third best would be surround speakers, which most of the time are entirely two-dimensional and have no sense of height while also being a bit fiddly with what is supposed to be the "correct" angle for the rear speakers, no thanks to Dolby Labs suggesting slightly different placements for 5.1 and 7.1.

Note that even the console manufacturers are starting to understand this hierarchy and the importance of HRTFs now, as the PS5 makes quite the selling point of its 3D audio system, which is actually tunable by the user instead of being just one generic HRTF, and some games even outright recommend playing with headphones instead of surround speakers because of that immersion.

Setting up the HRTF is its own challenge, of course.
  • The newest games often do that mixing internally, or perhaps use Microsoft's latest spatial audio API (which Windows Sonic for Headphones and the optional paid Dolby Atmos implementation hook into) that I admittedly don't fully understand.
  • Older games may need it to be done at the sound card level, in which case I'd suggest a GSX 1000 because it's plug, tweak a few Control Panel settings so it's presented as 7.1 speakers rather than stereo speakers, and play, with one of the better HRTFs I've experienced.
  • The oldest DS3D/OpenAL-era games need either a hardware X-Fi card with Game Mode and CMSS-3D Headphone, or far more likely, DSOAL (to wrap DS3D games into OpenAL) + OpenAL Soft so you can sidestep the Creative hardware requirement and use whatever sound device you want.
 
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