Hello everyone,

thinking of replacing my old sound system, and looking at 5.1 surround systems. Question is: Will P3D use the surround channels, or will I be getting normal stereo sound?

Thanks,

Dimitrios

The sound is stereo.

P3D won't natively drive a 5.1 system.  I use a Yamaha home theater receiver I bought off the scratch-n-dent discount table at Best Buy to synthesize signals to drive a 5.1 channel system (7.1 channel, actually, but I only use 5.1). 

I send the stereo audio from the computer to the receiver via a fiber optic S/PDIF (TOSLINK) cable, and its "7 Ch Enhancer" mode synthesizes independent signals to the speakers and subwoofer.  It produces a good immersive sound field, but not with 3D spatial effects like you get with actual surround sound content.  I use a 12" powered subwoofer with it to good effect, too.

Ok, too bad. But thanks for your feedback, guys.

The sim may only output 2 ch but I had a 4.1 system for a while and it does give a good sense of spacial awareness. Give it a try, you will probably like it.

Interesting, thanks for the tip!

Ok, good to know, as I have the MJC! Looks like I'll have to spring for a surround system after all.

Ultimately, I'd like to have scenery, AI and engine sounds from a surround system, and ATC over headphones or the TV I'm using as screen. I'm sceptical that can be done, though. The A2A PA-24 for example seems to produce it's custom engine sounds through the cockpit...

No problem sending ATC audio to a headset (or to a separate set of speakers).

There are probably other ways to do this but here's how mine is set up:

I have a separate sound card in addition to the motherboard audio (usually Realtek).

In P3D audio settings, assign the the Primary Playback Device to the sound card and the Voice Playback Device to Realtek. Connect your main sound system to the sound card output and your headset to the Realtek output.

...Lloyd

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can tell the direction of taxiing aircraft, and I send primary to sound card (stereo system speakers) and atc to the HDMI connected TV speakers. Works great if ATC voice gets in the way I turn the TV down.

a good soundcard like Creative SoundBlaster THX can emulate surround sound from a Stereo channel. Of course it´s not as good as the sound you´ll get from a Digital mastered DolbySurround or THX  source but it´s doing an acceptable job. In conjunction with the separation of atc and voice it´s going well. Its doing the same as a Dolby Digital 5.1 receiver.

Edited April 1, 20206 yr by BerndB

GSX support true multi-channel audio ( 5.1, 7.1, etc. ), either with speakers or with 5.1/7.1 headphones. This because it uses its own sound engine, separated from the sim, through OpenAL, which is centered around 3d sound.

While most common soundcards use OpenAL in DirectX mode, so what will actually create audio will be the standard DirectSound drivers, in some cases OpenAL can be hardware accelerated and include extra effect, such as Creative Labs EAX extensions or the extra on-board memory some cards have to cache samples, for a lower cpu impact when loading new sounds.

All GSX vehicles have 3d positional audio, and not just their engines, even when they do extra sounds, the sound emitter is located where it's supposed to be. For example, the metallic sound of the catering cart being pushed by the catering guy, has the sound emitter located precisely on the vehicle extending catwalk. GSX passengers chatting and making belt noise will be heard *behind* you (if you are setting in the cockpit), if you have a multi-channel audio system, and if you turn your head towards the cabin, the sound rotates in front of you, because GSX tracks the eyepoint position/orientation in realtime constantly, precisely for the reason to support positional audio.

Since, like anything else in GSX or FSDT, every software tech we use is exposed to all our add-ons using Python scripts, thanks to the Couatl engine, not only we already had this since FSX ( and then P3D, all its versions ), but even some of our sceneries can use it.

So, in addition to have GSX vehicles sounds coming from their proper direction in 3D on a multi-channel audio setup ( all of them have 3d emitters placed in the same world coordinate system used in the simulator, and they also move with the vehicle ), we used this feature in some of our sceneries.

At KMEM, the Control Tower interior, which can be visited in Avatar mode, has all sort of sounds effects, all of them fully 3D. For example, the top floor has several telephones that sometimes ring at random, and you can easily hear which one is ringing because there's a separate sound emitter for the ringing sound located precisely at the coordinates of the actual telephone graphic 3d model, same for the random keyboard typing in the background, or the random atc chatter, with a sound emitter located in the position of the radio receiver 3d mesh.

There are many other 3d sounds at KMEM, several hangars have their own ambient sounds, especially the big FedEx one has quite a bit of sounds in it, all positional.

All without affecting fps in any way, since all processing happens entirely outside the simulator, in its own memory space and its own separate threads, and of course everything is removed from the system as soon the control tower interior is unloaded from memory, that is when exiting Avatar mode.

Edited April 2, 20206 yr by virtuali

Superb! The sound system should be arriving today, can't wait to test it!

Edited April 2, 20206 yr by d.tsakiris