Probably a dumb question. But why do some games say they support Pro Logic 2? Isn't a a/v reciever transforming a stereo signal into a surround signal? So why can u change the sound from stereo to sourround? What's the benefit on turning PL2 in the game on? Isnt the reciever doing the job? And does it work with Dolphin Emulator anyhow? I read that only the LLE interpreter supports DPL2.
Thx Kur
(09-23-2011, 11:02 PM)kurgebeat Wrote: [ -> ]why can u change the sound from stereo to sourround? What's the benefit on turning PL2 in the game on? Isnt the reciever doing the job? And does it work with Dolphin Emulator anyhow? I read that only the LLE interpreter supports DPL2.
The stereo signal has to be specially coded with surround channels using Pro Logic 2.
If you turn PL2 on in a game and have a PL2 receiver, you'll get surround sound. If PL2 is not on and you have a PL2 receiver, you'll only hear stereo (no surround).
The PL2 receiver is decoding the surround channels from the stereo signal.
It works with Dolphin when LLE mode is used and you have a PL2 receiver hooked up to the PC (via stereo cables). Dolphin does not decode the PL2 signal.
Hope that's clear.
(09-23-2011, 11:48 PM)skid Wrote: [ -> ] (09-23-2011, 11:02 PM)kurgebeat Wrote: [ -> ]why can u change the sound from stereo to sourround? What's the benefit on turning PL2 in the game on? Isnt the reciever doing the job? And does it work with Dolphin Emulator anyhow? I read that only the LLE interpreter supports DPL2.
The stereo signal has to be specially coded with surround channels using Pro Logic 2.
If you turn PL2 on in a game and have a PL2 receiver, you'll get surround sound. If PL2 is not on and you have a PL2 receiver, you'll only hear stereo (no surround).
The PL2 receiver is decoding the surround channels from the stereo signal.
It works with Dolphin when LLE mode is used and you have a PL2 receiver hooked up to the PC (via stereo cables). Dolphin does not decode the PL2 signal.
Hope that's clear.
Yeah thx for the answer. So, in the manual of my a/v reciever it says, that it can improve normal stereo signals with PL2 mode. This doesn't work then, if the audio source isn't coded in PL2?
Prologic II is a upmixer/matrix decoder. It takes a stereo signal and attempts to extract information from it for the other channels in your surround sound system. Normally it extracts ambient/reflected sound from the FL and FR channels to use for the SL and SR channels but it also looks for directional cues (phase shifts and such) to extract directional sounds to the SL and SR channels. These directional cues are usually not present in regular stereo mixes.
Games with PLII on the box use the dolby surround encoder. The game renders a 6 channel (5.1) audio track then uses the dolby surround encoder to matrix encode the information into a stereo track to send to the receiver. This stereo track contains directional cues. The receiver (or any device with the PLII decoder) can use the PLII to extract directional sound effects to the appropriate speaker channel using these cues.
Sorry to revive an old thread, but I figured it made more sense than making a whole new one. Does Dolphin pass the DPLII audio cues over HDMI or only analog? If HDMI, I assume I set Windows Speaker Settings to stereo. As for Dolphin, I see I should use LLE but does DirectSound/XAudio 2/OpenAL matter?
Also, what about headphones? I pass HDMI audio to my receiver through my videocard but when I'm using headphones, I switch to my Creative XFi Titanium HD (I'd use that for analog sound to the receiver too but that's a bone I'm picking w/ Creative right now...). So when using headphones, do I have to switch to the newdecoder in Dolphin? If Dolphin is decoding the DPLII, then it is processing it into 5.1, so I should set my speaker settings as 5.1 (even though headphones) and let the Creative card downmix the 5.1 into 2.0 virtual surround? Or do Wii/GC games already have virtual surround if you just leave it set to stereo?
(02-24-2013, 06:50 AM)Jendrix Wrote: [ -> ]Does Dolphin pass the DPLII audio cues over HDMI or only analog?
Both, I think.
(02-24-2013, 06:50 AM)Jendrix Wrote: [ -> ]does DirectSound/XAudio 2/OpenAL matter?
Not when you have a DPL2 decoder on your receiver.
(02-24-2013, 06:50 AM)Jendrix Wrote: [ -> ]do I have to switch to the newdecoder in Dolphin?
If you have your headphones connected directly to your PC, yes, enable the new decoder. If your headphones are connected to your receiver, then the decoder can remain disabled.
(02-24-2013, 06:50 AM)Jendrix Wrote: [ -> ]If Dolphin is decoding the DPLII, then it is processing it into 5.1, so I should set my speaker settings as 5.1 (even though headphones) and let the Creative card downmix the 5.1 into 2.0 virtual surround?
Correct.
(02-24-2013, 06:50 AM)Jendrix Wrote: [ -> ]do Wii/GC games already have virtual surround if you just leave it set to stereo?
No, Wii/GC games do not have virtual surround.
Awesome and fast response, thanks so much skid! And since I see you're a dev, thanks for your work on this awesome emulator too!
Actually two more quick questions:
- HLE vs LLE?
- Do I need to use Creative's Alchemy to pass all the OpenAl stuff to the soundcard when using headphones?
1. HLE is an fast but inaccurate dsp emulator (the dsp is the chip the processes audio on the GC/Wii). It is sufficient to correctly reporoduce the audio is most games but can cause audio issues in some games. LLE is a dsp emulator that is much slower but more accurate (and therefore less likely to experience audio issues). LLE also requires that you dump the dsp microcode and coefficient table roms from your GC/Wii and place them in the /Sys/GC folder.
2. No. Alchemy is for EAX emulation. Dolphin does not use EAX.
Also I don't really see the advantage is downmixing from 5.1 to stereo for headphones. Why not just run the game as stereo?
(02-24-2013, 09:35 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]1. HLE is an fast but inaccurate dsp emulator (the dsp is the chip the processes audio on the GC/Wii). It is sufficient to correctly reporoduce the audio is most games but can cause audio issues in some games. LLE is a dsp emulator that is much slower but more accurate (and therefore less likely to experience audio issues). LLE also requires that you dump the dsp microcode and coefficient table roms from your GC/Wii and place them in the /Sys/GC folder.
2. No. Alchemy is for EAX emulation. Dolphin does not use EAX.
Also I don't really see the advantage is downmixing from 5.1 to stereo for headphones. Why not just run the game as stereo?
Good point on the Alchemy - it jogged my mind that Alchemy was to pass DirectSound to OpenAL, not the other way around, so should have no problem getting straight OpenAL
As for the downmixing, it's to get virtual surround. If the creative cards detect a surround sound stream, when you use headphones they'll virtually recreate that stream in 2.0 (really pretty much similar to the way DPLII works in general). If I was just using straight stereo, that's all I'd get.
As for the LLE vs HLE question, I get that HLE is more inaccurate but I was just wondering if it was capable of passing the DPLII signal or if I needed to stick w/ LLE. At some point in time, I read that HLE was not capable of passing DPLII info but that may have since been added.
Course all this is moot anyway if the Windows 8 Audio stack screws everything up. I could see it taking the DPLII signal from Dolphin and just cutting it down to stereo to pass to a receiver b/c it doesn't know what to do w/ it.
It should work with both but I'm not entirely sure. You could test it.
Also i really doubt that virtual 5.1 will sound any better than stereo considering these are video games with positional audio rendering engines that we're talking about