Munich - Sand and pebbles patter against the windshield. Two other drivers have got you in their sight, looking for an opportunity to overtake you. You can tell by the way the drone of their motors gets closer and closer. Your right front wheel is scraping against the thoroughly dented fender. Real life or computer game? Sometimes it's hard to tell. Computer games allow gamers to immerse themselves in virtual worlds. And all aspects of these simulations are becoming more realistic - and that applies to the sound as well.
A 3D surround sound environment can be a big component of that feeling of really being there.
"It's like films with 5.1 sound when you hear an airplane fly by overhead. The difference from stereo is immediately noticeable," explains Daniel Visarius from the Munich-based magazine Gamestar. 3D sound is especially helpful for first person shooters and racing games when trying to locate and get a bead on opponents.
Or, as Christoph Muellers from sound card manufacturer Terratec expresses it: "You hear where they are shooting at you from."
Sound then becomes an atmospheric complement to the other crucial game elements. Aural fantasies require the right hardware, though. As the sound chips installed on the motherboard can in some cases even provide surround sound to surround-ready loudspeakers, many PC users forgo a separate sound card.
"When you are working with PCs, though, you need to differentiate between 5.1 sound for home theatres and 3D sound for games," Visarius explains. The sound for games must be constantly recalculated.
To keep the aural experience in sync with the doings on the screen, the sound card calculates in real time how the sources of sound are distributed spatially.
If there's no additional hardware in place, then the CPU has to bear the processing load, says Peter Roebke-Doerr from Hanover-based computer magazine c't. Games represent a particularly heavy load for a computer.
A sound card is therefore "a must" for "serious gamers," Roebke- Doerr says. The flip side is that onboard sound is fine for standard users, says Dirk Sturny from PC peripherals maker Logitech, which produces PC loudspeakers among other items. Still, onboard solutions can provide no more than simple audio effects for gaming, claims sound card maker Creative reports.
Their limited suitability for games is not just a question of insufficient processing power.
"More than anything else, in this field it's a matter of standards," Visarius says. One example of this is EAX, a widely used standard among game designers that offers the opportunity to simulate the sounds of different environments and materials. A cathedral with tremendous reverberation sounds different from a tunnel, Roebke-Doerr explains.
The latest version of EAX, version 5.0, runs exclusively on sound cards from Creative - the company developed EAX itself. For maximum gaming sound, Visarius feels that gamers have little choice but to buy a card from Creative's X-Fi series. Other providers like Asus or Terratec can only use Version 2.0, which dates back to 2000. Both the game and the operating system must also support the EAX standard.
Unlike Windows XP, this is no certainty under Vista. Windows requires a software interface to harness the hardware acceleration of the soundcard and thereby the EAX audio effects. In the past-right up to version 9.0c for Windows XP-this was implemented as DirectSound3D in DirectX. This sound solution is no longer contained in DirectX 10 for Vista.
"The old sound interface was no longer contemporary," Microsoft says in justification of its decision.
In its place, Microsoft has arranged a system whereby the CPU calculates the surround sound, Microsoft claims. Onboard solutions in particular benefit from this. The effect is not necessarily a positive for gamers, however, since sound card performance that was available in the past has disappeared under Vista and its DirectX 10.
One remedy is a program called ALchemy from Creative. A so-called wrapper translates calls to DirectSound routines into the corresponding OpenAL commands, the manufacturer reports. The tool only works for X-Fi cards and-in a version that consumers must buy - the Audigy series. Owners of other models are out of luck.
The experts nevertheless recommend that "serious" gamers go for a separate sound chip.
"People spend good money optimizing the graphics, so why not the sound," Visarius says. The performance gains only become a factor once the system is maxed out. The decisive benefit is the sound itself. "For 20 euros, desktop speakers EAX won't make much of a difference."
The hardware experts recommend 5.1 speakers that start at 100 dollars. Good soundcards can be had for as little as 50 dollars, Roebke-Doerr says. That's enough to hear those pebbles patter.
