First Impressions

agreed... when there is a sniper taking pot shots, your friendly yells out that he is under attack...

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Adogg @ Feb 3 2010, 11:21 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>

see i would say the opposite. the side cues from teammates are nice, because you cant rely on anyone on your team to spot people. but the directional audio is all kinds of not right. i spent 2 min walking around trying to find an enemy tank that was supposed to be in the vicinity. had it where i could walk around in a circle keeping the audio in only my left ear... to find out the tank was +100ft away behind a building... outside of said circle. not to mention the phantom vehicle sounds that will sometimes linger well after a truck was blown up, or left.


so pretty much, sound is the only thing that aggravates me.

My only real complaint when it comes to BFBC2 is related to sound as well. The directional sound effects can be too sensitive and not really represent where the object is actually coming from. For example on the beta map I can be at the spawn point for the defensive position and hear when tanks are fired up once they respawn on the attack side. At this point I'm listening for the tank and all of the directional effects are coming from the left side of the map, but...the tank will emerge on the road on the right side of the map.

I also find the audio to be too much at times and over produced. I think this is due to Frostbite's lack of support for hardware mixing and relying solely on software mixing (I guess they were catering to onboard audio). Explosions at times can be obnoxious with this long drawn out mid range boom that sounds over synthesized. I have never had to dumb down settings on my sound card/headset for a game.

Other than that the game is f****** awesome...

I have onboard audio and I have no issues with the sound... like you guys are describing.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Shark @ Feb 4 2010, 12:56 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>

Previous post... "Frostbite's lack of support for hardware mixing and relying solely on software mixing (I guess they were catering to onboard audio)"

I definitely get that immersion feel, but overall I feel that the audio is kind of distorted and not very clean...

yeah... I was trying to affirm your post, by giving you my feedback/sound setup...

Nice find Cletus its a decent read. Katamakel's rationale for using their own software based acceleration is bunk though. The developers at DICE simply did not want to pay for propierty solutions from SoundBlaster, Auzentech, ect. Hardware audio acceleration in PC's will never die simple because it sounds much better and enthusiast want to off load as many processes from the CPU as possible. Also Nvidia and ATI are both working on sound processing units to become the new standard in audio acceleration, that would be added to a mobo in conjunction with the chipset (something like the NF200, ect.). Both NV Fermi and ATI 5 series cards already support audio acceleration.

Katamakel made they point that consoles were eliminating stand alone audio processing unit. Obviously, why would manufacturers waste money on hardware people don't utilize. Most people that connect their console to an entertainment system are using a optical or HDMI conncetion that leads to a receiver. The games audio is encoded in Dolby, DTS, ect. and all of the audio acceleration is done on the receiver. If your someone who is using the stereo outputs on your console and connecting to stereo speakers within a TV set, you don't need much audio acceleration.

I really dont care either way about BFBC2's audio, the game still kicks ass. I'm home audio/video buff (enthusiast/nerd/fag whatever you want to call it) and I just notice that kind of stuff...