Dolby Headphone and VOIP

Sobtanian

Sobtanian

Sobtanian

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Joined
20 Apr 2007
Posts
133
Hello all,

Decided to move away from creative after all these years and bought an Asus Xonar Essence STX from OcUK (top-notch delivery as usual!). It arrived today and wow what a huge difference already (still waiting for new headphones/speakers tomorrow). I spent about 3 hours listening to my FLACs (self-ripped) and I was noticing so much detail in each song it was amazing how much was missing on my creative!

Anyway, I also tested gaming with the card, by enabling dolby headphone and setting windows to 7.1. All was great with BFBC2 (the only thing I tested) but the silly thing is that my mumble chat with a friend was also being "surrounded" - in other words with DH on his voice would come from all around and sound very echo-y, as if he's in a bathroom or such.

If I disabled DH his voice turns back to normal but obviously there's no surround in the game.

VoiceEX and VoiceFX are both disabled, so I can't blame them.

Has anyone got any experience with this? Specifically, is there a way to kind of get VOIP to bypass dolby headphone or such? Or am I doing it all wrong?

Thanks!
 
Marsman said:
Don't think so, I have the same thing with CMSS 3D on my X-Fi. I have gotten used to it now.
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That's the thing, it didn't happen with CMSS. On my fatality titanium mumble voice would stay stereo, whereas games would use the surround. I think it's cos creative had an auto feature that ignored stereo sources and just applied CMSS to surround streams.
 
Could it be that CMSS-3D on X-Fi was using Macro-FX? This simulates sounds close to the listener. There is no equivalent feature on Xonar. Dolby headphone is essentially a speaker and listening room simulation. It renders everything remote from the listener.

You may find it more bearable if you use DH1 for gaming. This simulates a small room with little to no reverb but still gives a surround effect.
 
CMSS felt exactly like the audio was left untouched.

Am very happy with the xonar, the benefits for music have been phenomenal and the games I've tried have been great in terms of quality, and I like DH for surround. It's just such a shame voice is surrounded too.

I was thinking of using mumble via ASIO but according to the beta drivers, an ASIO stream can only run solo :(
 
Sobtanian said:
CMSS felt exactly like the audio was left untouched.
Click to expand...

Not from my experience. I can clearly hear the change when switching between game and entertainment modes. Probably more subtle than DH though, by the sound of it. Haven't used the Xonar in my HTPC for VOIP.
 
Macro-FX is optional. It's set to Auto by default but can be turned off, treating in-ear stuff like the rest of the game audio. Hence it's entirely possible that Macro-FX is on for one of you and off for the other - even if you use the same X-Fi and drivers.

A more fiddly solution would be to enable onboard sound and have that handle VOIP. Send the output from onboard and your Xonar to a mixer and plug your headphones into that. Over-fiddly I know, but it should work.
 
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Yes I'm debating that, or using the crappy 360 headset, but that quality really is crap.

My onboard sound is an xfi - I bet if I enable it both the asus/creative drivers will mess everything up, judging by creative's track record :/

I don't think I'll bother tbh...
 
I've used a Xonar D2 and X-Fi Prelude together before (on Vista x64). Everything on the Xonar was fine. Most things on the X-Fi were fine but Alchemy (legacy gaming surround and EAX support) refused to work with any other sound device installed.
 
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