Left 4 Dead and 5.1 Headphones

**Boot** · 01-21-2009, 11:09 AM

I recently bought some Medusa 5.1 headphones, and haven't noticed a lot of directional sound in Left 4 Dead. I'm running a Creative X-Fi card, and have the L4D audio set to 5.1.

My question is do others get nice situational awareness from their 5.1 headphones (which means I need to play with settings and/or clean out my ears), or is there just not much 5.1 audio engineering built into L4D?

**DrBeat** · 01-21-2009, 12:30 PM

From my experience, you can tell vaguely where a special infected is, but many of the sounds (like the boomer up close) seem quite ambient.

tuoply · 01-21-2009, 12:56 PM

^^I agree. With my Razer Barracuda's I can get a general direction of where the infected are, but it's difficult to pinpoint it.

*Edit: I'm using a Razer 5.1 card with my headset. I also have a SB 5.1 with 5.1 speakers. Haven't used them enough in l4d to tell if it's any different

Morganan · 01-21-2009, 12:57 PM

Are you using a creative card? If so, you have to do a special setup with their alchemy program to get true 5.1 sound.

I'll find you a link if that is the case

**Boot** · 01-21-2009, 09:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Morganan

Are you using a creative card? If so, you have to do a special setup with their alchemy program to get true 5.1 sound.

Yes, I have a Creative X-Fi, but I'm on WinXP. I thought ALchemy was a Vista thing, am I wrong on that?

I just checked my settings and it looks like I had Creative's CMSS-3D set to upmix. I turned that off and will see what happens tonight.

EDIT: Haha, funny! I Googled "Left 4 Dead" and "Alchemy," and found this thread on the 2nd page! Yay TG!

Morganan · 01-22-2009, 01:26 PM

I found the post..

http://forums.steampowered.com/forum...ht=ALCHEMY+5.1

5th post down, copied/pasted below

I went back and dug up some info from when I was playing Insurgency..

If you plan on using DirectSound, then you'll need Alchemy I believe. Duration: 10 Buffer: 4

Quote:

Originally Posted by thomase
For HL2, you have a few different options as well. The HL2 sound engine is software based and creates a mix of 2 (2 speaker or headphones), 4, or 5 channels. If snd_digital_surround is set to 0 (default), it uses DirectSound3D to map these 2/4/5 channels to 3D coordinates. The result is that the 2/4/5 channels go through a final DirectSound3D mixing phase. The 2 channel output DOES NOT include any special virtual spatialization processing for headphones. I don't really understand why they did it this way, but that is the story. Maybe they didn't know how to do direct multi-channel output, although that is hard to believe.

If snd_digital_surround is set to 1, instead of using DirectSound3D, the engine sends the 2/4/5 channels DIRECTLY to the associated channels. This mode was added in a patch some time after release. For some reason, doing it this way instead of through DirectSound3D fixed some problems for Soundstorm users with DD encoding to a 5.1 receiver, hence the name of the variable snd_digital_surround even though it REALLY has to do with DirectSound3D. You don't need a Soundstorm to turn on this feature and get 2/4/5 direct channels instead of going through DirectSound3D.

So, for a 5.1 setup you probably wan't to be in "Game Mode". Set both the game and Creative speaker settings to 5.1. Now you have 2 options; you can set snd_digital_surround to 0 or 1 and see which you like best. I'm guessing most people with 5.1 setups prefer setting it to 1.

For a headphone setup, I'd recommend experiementing between 3 different settings. As a common setup for all 3, first you have to untick "Synchronize with Control Panel". Then set the game to 5.1 mode and set the Creative panel to Headphones. Make sure you enable CMSS3D and set MacroFX and ElevationFilter to Auto or Off. Now for the options:

1.) Set snd_digital_surround to 0 (default). The engine will map the 5 channels to DirectSound3D hardware voices and your X-Fi will virtualize this for headphones.

2.) With the X-Fi in "Game Mode", set snd_digital_surround to 1. The engine will send 5 channels directly to the X-Fi, bypassing DirectSound3D, and these will be virtualized for headphones. The difference is that when sending to the X-Fi as raw channels, the X-Fi will use it's own pre-determined locations for the virtual speakers it is trying to simulate. When in DirectSound3D mode, the game controls these positions. They are certainly different, but I don't know exactly what the positions are in each case.

3.) With X-Fi in "Entertainment Mode", set snd_digital_surround to 1. This is similar to option 2, but the X-Fi will add a little extra processing to simulate the behavior of speakers in a virtual room (slight reflections, etc.). I find that this externalizes the sound image a bit more, but you may feel that it interferes with the game's own environmental effects.

Morganan · 01-23-2009, 01:44 PM

I forgot to mention, I use the first option for my headphones and it works just fine. Just be sure to change the 2 settings in alchemy, Duration: 10 Buffer: 4 You have to create a new "game" in alchemy as HL series isn't something alchemy is made to work with.

**Kebab-Kastike** · 01-27-2009, 06:27 PM

I got X-Fi headphones and they work well for me. I hear where the baddies are coming and when zombies start to get too close behind me (screeeeeeeEEEEEEE) I turn back to the way I hear it and manage to melee it off me before he can land a hit.
Make sure you have headphones checked in the Audio part instead of 5.1.

Also this game is a blast played on with real 5.1 setting we have in our computer room. That's the way it's meant to be played. I just can't play with it too much because comms would break the athmospehere. It's rare candy only eaten in single player.

**Boot** · 01-27-2009, 10:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kebab-Kastike

I got X-Fi headphones and they work well for me. I hear where the baddies are coming and when zombies start to get too close behind me (screeeeeeeEEEEEEE) I turn back to the way I hear it and manage to melee it off me before he can land a hit.
Make sure you have headphones checked in the Audio part instead of 5.1.

I forgot to update this. After turning off the CMSS upmix the 5.1 sound has been pretty good. I haven't tried Morganan's other setting suggestion yet but so far it's working. I think with 5.1 HPs though I need the 5.1 setting, otherwise it would be 2 channel.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kebab-Kastike

Also this game is a blast played on with real 5.1 setting we have in our computer room. That's the way it's meant to be played. I just can't play with it too much because comms would break the athmospehere. It's rare candy only eaten in single player.

Heh -- I bought and modded a throat mic a while back so I could use my nice Klipsch 5.1 setup and still have comms.... but everyone said it sounded like I was talking through a sock which is why I just got the Medusas. I agree though, a nice loud 5.1 setup is the way to go for the full effect!

**Kebab-Kastike** · 01-28-2009, 10:29 AM

Well, we have X-Fi on both computers and they give headphones the directional sounds.

Morganan · 01-28-2009, 10:33 AM

I have full 5.1 sound on my headphones and let me tell you, it makes it 10x easier to play to be able to not only see, but hear directionally.

=Sarc= · 01-28-2009, 10:49 AM

If you set the speakers in the Creative panel to headphones, your 5.1 headphones will go to waste. It processes the audio for stereo headphones to recreate directional audio.

Set the option to 5.1 wherever you can and make sure the Creative panel is in game mode. CMSS should also be off all the time. It really screws with the audio channels to recreate surround sound from a stereo source. You don't need that for games. You just got your 5.1 headphones so it may take some time to adjust. It's not exactly the same as 5.1 speakers. It took me a bit of time to get used to it but I can tell when zombies are running up behind me.