5.1 surround in racing sim

[n3wt0n]

Hi everyone,

I am in the beginning stages of building a sim racer cockpit (look for my starting thread soon) and need a bit of advice regarding speakers. How much benefit would there be to a 5.1 setup vs a regular 2.1 setup. I would get great stereo separation with just a 2.1 kit but the 5.1 setup wouldn't cost much more and has the potential to be way more immersive. With the 5.1 setup it does create a need for rear speaker pods, therefore adding to the complexity of the build but if it's worth it than I will gladly take on the extra effort. I plan to play modern racing games like assetto corsa, Dirt and the sims (eventually iracing) while still going back through the older titles like need for speed. So I am basically looking for advice from anyone who can chime in about the benefits of 5.1 over 2.1 in a cockpit scenario. Am I right that 5.1 could really increase the immersion or is it all just smoke and mirrors?

Thanks,
n3wt0n

[Xiaou2]

More speakers = More immersion.

 We have seen this going back to even the 80s... with TX-1.  (4 speakers)

 The car sounds pan from one area to the next... allowing you to hear where they are in relation to your car.
You can hear them approaching,  as well as the sound of them on your tail... or fading off in the distance.

 Unfortunately, Mame team does not seem to understand the value of multichannel sound, and has never finalized its workings.

 Maybe they just are incapable of the task...

[n3wt0n]

Thanks Xaiou2, that's exactly the info that I needed.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ant2]

My triple screen rig has 5.1, now if you only play retro arcade games, you will never use the rears.  Except the daytona++patch seems to use them.
If you play the new pc racers the dirt games, grid etc, if you have the space to mount them then definitely add them for that extra £20.

My Mario kart rig doesn't have space to mount at the rear and since it's only a player 2, for LAN i didn't worry about it.

Also get yourself a transducer for under your seat, if the games you play support simvibe as well, you are in for a real treat.

[SailorSat]

More speakers = More immersion.

 We have seen this going back to even the 80s... with TX-1.  (4 speakers)

 The car sounds pan from one area to the next... allowing you to hear where they are in relation to your car.
You can hear them approaching,  as well as the sound of them on your tail... or fading off in the distance.

 Unfortunately, Mame team does not seem to understand the value of multichannel sound, and has never finalized its workings.

 Maybe they just are incapable of the task...

Things might change some day... Believe! ^^

[Fursphere]

I've got 5.1 speakers in my rig.  Totally worth it.  Even with cheapy old 5.1 speakers.

[Malenko]

Maybe they just are incapable of the task...

I look forward to your code contribution to fix this. MAME is open source now so you can just do your code and release your own and not need their approval for the code.

[Xiaou2]

"you wont get any Brownie points for saying so."

 Ive contributed to mame, more than the avg. bear,  and I do not have to program, to think its pathetic.

 If I were a programmer... it would have been done Ages ago.
Along with fixing ancient, and lacking, input system.

[Malenko]

 Ive contributed to mame, more than the avg. bear,  and I do not have to program, to think its pathetic.

 If I were a programmer... it would have been done Ages ago.
Along with fixing ancient, and lacking, input system.

Bitching about 720 doesn't count. What code, dumps, or boards did you provide?  Its easy to complain when you aren't the one who has to fix it.

[Howard_Casto]

From what little I know about the subject, the reason mame doesn't have 5.1 is because the games in mame didn't have 5.1.  Surround sound is done with a stereo signal encoded in such a way that when pumped into a surround sound receiver it can be split to various speakers.  It's done that way so that various setups that aren't full 5.1 (5.0, 4, stereo ect) can still use the audio.  Again, afaik, arcade games don't do that.  The audio will only be played on a certain hardware configuration, so different audio and sound effects are just pumped to different audio channels, one for each speaker. 

DirectShow allows you to feed audio to different devices in windows.... that would be the way to do it and be arcade accurate.  This is fairly easy to setup.  As for true surround sound.... eh it's probably doable, but due to the way surround sound works it would probably never sound right, even on the original hardware.  A 3d environment would have to be setup and virtual speakers positioned roughly where the speakers were on the original cab with the "camera" placed where the player is. 

I'm not suggesting I would be able to do it myself though, this is just the little I know on the subject.

[n3wt0n]

Thanks for all the input guys. I guess I mean for more modern titles that currently support surround sound. I wouldn't ever expect pole position or other older mame titles to have 5.1 sound because pole position never had 5.1 sound.   

[BadMouth]

Thanks for all the input guys. I guess I mean for more modern titles that currently support surround sound. I wouldn't ever expect pole position or other older mame titles to have 5.1 sound because pole position never had 5.1 sound. 

A number of older games did have more than 2 channels of sound.
It's a shame that MAME doesn't support the extra channels, but to be honest I probably wouldn't play those games much anyway.

[Xiaou2]

 Ive contributed to mame, more than the avg. bear,  and I do not have to program, to think its pathetic.

 If I were a programmer... it would have been done Ages ago.
Along with fixing ancient, and lacking, input system.

Bitching about 720 doesn't count. What code, dumps, or boards did you provide?  Its easy to complain when you aren't the one who has to fix it.

 Scanned and hand edited Discs of Tron backdrop artwork.  No easy feat getting a collector to allow you to borrow such a thing.

 Scanned and snail mailed +12? pages worth of schematics to a dev (in germany I believe),  for Discs of Tron Environmental.  This allowed them to finally institute the lighting correctly.

 Gave the  information about how to scan and repair artwork, for use in mame... which has led to a whole team of people submitting artwork.

 Provided information about Sega Turbo,  which allowed the broken driver to finally get to a working status.  Previously, dev was totally stumped.

 Dumped supposedly missing TX-1  roms.   Turned out that they were the same as the other sets... but It was done regardless.

 Found a rare dual mouse program in windows.. contacted developer... and then got the information provided, to a mame dev...which got dual mice into mame eventually.

 Donated money towards purchase of some rare mame PCBS.

 Smoothed over some bitter relations with a collector,  and mame devs.  I believe this led him to dumping some more rare rom sets.  He was also the one whom helped me dump the TX-1 roms.

 Provided Aaron Giles with crystal frequency timings on some Outrun PCBs...  as well as some other information.

 And yeah... spent countless hours in walls of texts, to try to get 720 to have an arcade accurate way to use the real controller.

 ...Probably some more that I am forgetting.

[Xiaou2]

From what little I know about the subject, the reason mame doesn't have 5.1 is because the games in mame didn't have 5.1.  Surround sound is done with a stereo signal encoded in such a way that when pumped into a surround sound receiver it can be split to various speakers.  It's done that way so that various setups that aren't full 5.1 (5.0, 4, stereo ect) can still use the audio.  Again, afaik, arcade games don't do that.  The audio will only be played on a certain hardware configuration, so different audio and sound effects are just pumped to different audio channels, one for each speaker. 

DirectShow allows you to feed audio to different devices in windows.... that would be the way to do it and be arcade accurate.  This is fairly easy to setup.  As for true surround sound.... eh it's probably doable, but due to the way surround sound works it would probably never sound right, even on the original hardware.  A 3d environment would have to be setup and virtual speakers positioned roughly where the speakers were on the original cab with the "camera" placed where the player is. 

I'm not suggesting I would be able to do it myself though, this is just the little I know on the subject.

 There Should be the Option for dual soundcard output.. if that is what it will take... to get multi-channel sound for the games that use it.
Its worth it, for game like TX-1 ... and even Turbo.

 There is also no reason why a virtual surround option couldnt be a secondary / temporary option.   However, I agree that direct output would be a required method First and foremost.

 If such a thing does not happen sooner than later... many people may actually Lose the ability to even know what audio channels were supposed to go to what speaker... and where the actual speakers were supposed to be located.

 For example... do you know where the speakers are located, in a TX-1 ?   Hint:  its not what you would expect...

 Did you know that Discs of Tron environmental uses a second audio board.. and has additional audio sounds and effects than the standard cabinet?  Its a similar case for the sitdown version of Spy Hunter.


 And BTW ...  mames stubborn and selfish choices, have actually caused a good deal of original cabinets to be gutted... because people couldnt get a pc to interface with the unique arcade controls, speakers...etc.    Now, with their recent talk... they seem to want to stop support for older OS's and potentially wipe out any way to display on real arcade CRTs...  which may further destroy cabinets.

[Malenko]

fence of text

Saying you did something and proving you did something are not one in the same; just like your project threads.