Windows sound settings and games

tintin82 · 28 Nov 2013 at 05:57

Hi all,
I have been gaming for years and have a pretty decent PC with a SB Xfi and SP2500 speakers. One setting that I have always really overlooked was the advanced audio settings (always having it maxed at 24 bit 192000 hz). That is until I started playing BF4 and the only way I can stop it crashing is to lower the settings to 16/24 bit 44100 hz.
My question is, how do these settings affect in games performance, and can you tell a difference (I don't think I can), what do you have yours set at?

Thanks for the help

C64 · 28 Nov 2013 at 11:22

96 khz under soundcard software settings and 24 bit 96khz windows sound settings
Xonar DX

wickfut · 28 Nov 2013 at 11:34

set it to 16 bit / 44khz. Higher figures for anything outside of a top recording studio is pretty much marketing fluff.

24 bit audio is used for dynamic headroom. It's used for recording only and is makes no difference for playback.
The higher frequency khz is used to take aliasing of the ADC filter away from 20khz. It's inaudible for playback.

If by some act of god you can hear a difference, all it means is that your soundcard/audio interface prefers to run at that specific bitrate/frequency and has nothing to do with the actual audio recording.

tintin82 · 28 Nov 2013 at 14:01

Very informative, thank you.

Now set to CD quality 44100 16bit

Kosmiche · 28 Nov 2013 at 15:07

If you can't hear a difference, why not just use 19200 khz? If you can't hear it what difference does it make.

wickfut · 28 Nov 2013 at 15:47

Eames said:
If you can't hear a difference, why not just use 19200 khz? If you can't hear it what difference does it make.

because it crashes his game.

think of it like upscaling video, only for audio. 24/192khz is processing 5x more data than it needs to.