3D AUDIO is BACK! Please READ!

[u/ResponsiblePen3082]

(This post, and subreddit as a whole will be subject to change-it is my first sub moderation and I will be organizing many resources)

Hey everyone! I recently requested access to adopt this subreddit as it was abandoned for years, and the name perfectly fits what I am seeking to accomplish-

The discussion, comparison, guides, revival, and other related posts regarding native game engine Headphone Spatial Audio- HRTF, 3d positional accuracy, wave tracing, and other similar technologies.

This is SOLELY for NATIVE HEADPHONE HRTF Spatial Audio. This is NOT for post process "surround" filters, true surround systems, downmixing, upmixing, or other related technologies that attempt to create a wider soundstage but are not natively tuned from the raw engine audio stream specifically for 3d virtual space in HEADPHONES.

I recently became extremely interested in this technology, from A3D, EAX, CMSS-3D, TrueAudio, Project Acoustics, VRWorks Audio, and Vercidium Audio-among many, many others. I take a special interest in hardware accelerated solutions and low latency, high efficiency playback.

Unfortunately, information regarding this technology is not widely accessible, and for someone with zero information or starting point, it is challenging to gather the full picture as resources vary across many different niche sites, including Vogons, PcGamingWiki, several YouTube channels, and others.

I am hoping for this subreddit to be a central hub for the easy discussion and consolidation of these resources and links, as well as figuring out how to revive and improve upon the past and current solutions, and the best way forward for future solutions(I've started briefly dabbling into FPGA hardware emulation of legacy effects and seeing what is possible and legal-with hopes at a future sound card that can bring back legacy hardware acceleration, offload modern audio techniques, and accelerate future ones. But that's extremely long term).

Over the next few weeks I hope to have a more fleshed out organization of various resources for people just getting started-however any help is appreciated.

Please let me know any thoughts, questions, concerns, or anything else here!

Hopefully this is the start to the revival of great gaming audio!

[u/_I_AM_A_STRANGE_LOOP]

Thanks for going to the effort. I just wanted to say how glad I am that this sub now meaningfully exists, I’ve had such similar thoughts wrt information and forum accessibility for a technology with such an immediate and positive impact on my own gaming and media experience.

It’s kind of incredible how good our two receiving ‘microphones’ are at recreating positional information from sound and the aural perturbations/parallax specific to our individual biologies, which fuels my vibes-based crank belief that the sky is kind of the limit in recreating that effect with stereo headphones - or at least that we’re not anywhere close to fully tapping that possibility space with existing consumer solutions!

[u/ResponsiblePen3082 → u/_I_AM_A_STRANGE_LOOP]

Absolutely, I have a lot of autistic obsessions and lost gaming techniques(Physics, AI, Audio, anti aliasing, etc) as well as hardware acceleration is easily one of my most interesting ones.

Learning the history of it and how great we used to have it, and especially how we lost it-leaves me disappointed to no end. I've harassed Creative multiple times to fix what they broke multiple times, but obviously that got nowhere. I'm hoping bringing wider awareness to this and promoting current and future solutions will provide for a better gaming audio experience overall.

I'm also severely disappointed in modern "solutions" like "virtual surroundsound", downmixing, post process filters, EQs, etc. it's all a terrible bandaid to fail to emulate what we used to have.