I'm not so sure. I can hear pretty bad degradation of quality and artifacting even at 64kbps mp3. In the end it just comes down to preference. And I don't prefer my sound to be in 32kbps aac.
I'm not so sure. I can hear pretty bad degradation of quality and artifacting even at 64kbps mp3. In the end it just comes down to preference. And I don't prefer my sound to be in 32kbps aac.2 Channel 44000Hz 16-bit PCM has a bitrate of 1375 kb/s (approx the quality of a CD). The same can be placed into a 128kb/s MP3 which for most, is pretty much transparent.
So 29.78 seconds of audio goes from 5 megabytes to 477 kB.
That's just regular old MP3 with its age-old crappy quality. AAC can get similar performance at nearly half the bitrate. At those rates, the loss is barely perceptible. You could lower it to noticeable levels and get away with it in fast action games for things like gun fire. In which case, 32 kb/s (which is the bitrate needed to go from 5mB to 120kB) may, in fact, be plenty.
MP3 and AAC are two completely different codecs. AAC is like MP3 on steroids. Most independent blind testing agrees that AAC is far superior to MP3s in quality (And those studies are a couple of years old, when AAC implementations were fairly new, no doubt, the latest/greatest implementations have gotten even better).I'm not so sure. I can hear pretty bad degradation of quality and artifacting even at 64kbps mp3. In the end it just comes down to preference. And I don't prefer my sound to be in 32kbps aac.
Yes it is less intensive. But it is less intensive by the same margin that it was 10 years ago. In other words, the same level of processing power is still required to process sounds, however, general processing power has increased dramatically to turn it into a non-issue.Sound quality is important but when you have good samples, not an issue.
Long ago the amiga had very good sound while being 8 bit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga#Sound
No todays sound effects rely more on positional sound effects. That will probably cost more calculation power then decompressing (assuming Creative is left out). Perhaps someone found a solution to combine 3d sound and compression with a minimal amount of calculations.
Come to think of it, is sound effects through use of creative cards still less cpu intensive with the new windows vista / W7 cpu only audio programming model ?
I would think not.
early games used far less than cd quality for sound effects, for many things you don't notice it much. hell they'd let you set the 11/22/44hkz setting..8/16bit. you could get away with lowering it a bit and not sounding too horrible. standards were lower then too of course. i'm just not sure i'd hear artifacts in explosion sounds lol
MP3 and AAC are two completely different codecs. AAC is like MP3 on steroids. Most independent blind testing agrees that AAC is far superior to MP3s in quality (And those studies are a couple of years old, when AAC implementations were fairly new, no doubt, the latest/greatest implementations have gotten even better).
Yes, you can hear artifacts pretty badly in 64bit MP3s, But if you read what I said, I recommended 128 MP3s for the minimum MP3 bitrate, which, as I said, for most is tolerable and some are even unable to tell a difference.
The OT was on sound in video games, and in the end it comes down to "What is the minimum bitrate I can shove into this game without people noticing." You, the user, have no say in that (other then purchasing the game or not). And lets be real, how often have you been playing a game and said to yourself "Gee, the sound quality in this game really sucks."
This isn't about music quality sound. To which I would say a minimum 128kb/s AAC should be use or 196kb/s MP3. This is about things like gunshots which only need to be loud, and sound somewhat like a gun. Preserving the original sound is not the biggest issue on the plate.
Because FLAC is open source and therefore Satan incarnate. On a serious note, the difference between 192kbps VBR LAME mp3 and FLAC is only noticeable if you pay attention, and in games often your focus is on the visual not the audio.
pay attention on some ungodly expensive equipment perhaps.
plus people have little frame of reference for what an audio artifact is in an audio explosion sound effect anyways. i'm sure you could double blind test down to 128kbps easy with game sound effects and most couldn't tell that from flac.
not sure why you have this super hard-on for AAC, but mp3 is actually very good at bit rate ranges from 192-256, often beating AAC in blind listening tests.
but you're right, AAC is much better at lower bit rates, however there are other formats that are just as good if not better than AAC for such uses, such as Ogg, which is opensource/freeware
The point is basically if you don't have access to the original, you really can't tell the difference except at ungodly low bitrates (~32 kbit or so) -- for "most" music. Plus, sound is more than bitrate -- I've heard awesome music and effects encoded at 64 kbit or even lower; and total crap encoded at 320 kbit/lossless. Would I want my awesome sound effects encoded at a higher bitrate? Sure. But I don't have access to the original, so I can only guess that it sounds that much better. Throwing bits at the problem won't help if the source, recording, mastering, etc are crap.
dude you can totally tell the difference between a 128k and 256k mp3 (assuming the uncompressed song is good). maybe i misunderstood you but the way i read that post it seems like you think only super low bitrates sound discernibly bad, but that simply isn't the case. the better your listening setup is (source, speakers/headphones, interconnects, etc), the more you'll be able to hear of a file, the more you'll be able to scrutinize it. there is a limit, of course, but it's definitely not below 192k.
i agree with your point about having a good original, though, crap in crap out. the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. unfortunately (or...fortunately?) for most people, the weakest link is their ears. i know people with crappy car speakers or crappy headphones and they think it sounds amazing. i know lots of people who use an ipod with the stock earbuds and they think it sounds awesome, which really answers the whole question of sound quality in games. it's definitely good enough; while i could go on about how bad 128k sounds compared to lossless, the vast majority of consumers wouldn't be able to hear the difference on their setup or with their ears regardless. a lot of it you have to know "how" to listen to the music. it's like appreciating visual art. you don't just hear the music, you have to really delve in and listen (well, at higher bitrates. at 128k it's not too hard to tell). most people lack the ability and, furthermore, the concern to do this, especially with games.
BTW a double blind test to prove that even most musicians have a hard time telling the difference between 128/256.
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/itunes_256_vs_128_bit?page=0,1
They ran the test twice, once with the "crappy" earbuds, and once with the more expensive ear-buds. Guess what? People did WORSE with the more expensive ear-buds.
Bass and high treble are the most tolerant of poor compression.There's a pretty good difference between 128 and 196. With a good bass setup like my three enclosed 12" subs, I wouldn't recommend anything under 224VBR unless you like listening to muffled farts.
BTW a double blind test to prove that even most musicians have a hard time telling the difference between 128/256.
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/itunes_256_vs_128_bit?page=0,1
They ran the test twice, once with the "crappy" earbuds, and once with the more expensive ear-buds. Guess what? People did WORSE with the more expensive ear-buds.
I would just like to add one thing, The audio industry is one of the biggest industries built on the placebo effect out there. Everything from "vacuum tubes is the best!" to "Digital doesn't compare to analog, LP All the way!" are mainly built on fallacious assumptions and misrepresentations of the truth.
http://www.theaudiocritic.com/downloads/article_1.pdf <-- An Excellent read
Short of hearing damage, we all hear the same thing. Yes, we all can't split chords from each note without training, but we can all hear said chords.
I'd say 0.00000001% of all humans can discern the difference between 128kbps Mp3 and better.
Funny how people can go nuts over TV's. Contrast Ratio, backlight type, size, etc. But, no one hardly ever is concerned with the audio stuff on anywhere near the same level