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IMO the main reason why dedicated audio cards aren't a thing anymore is that Microsoft killed hardware accelerated audio as part of their driver API changes in
by ndiddy 2y ago
IMO the main reason why dedicated audio cards aren't a thing anymore is that Microsoft killed hardware accelerated audio as part of their driver API changes in Vista. The result is that games today have worse spatial audio than games that came out 20 years ago. If Microsoft hadn't done that, I think audio cards would have been in the same position as video cards where most users have their needs met by integrated solutions and gamers/high end users get dedicated cards (of course dedicated audio cards would have been more of a niche than GPUs).
- omcnoe 2y agoYeah there were old dedicated sound cards with support for spatial audio, and they were killed. But CPU's also just got really really fast in the meantime. You don't need dedicated hardware for spatial audio processing, it's cheaper and easier to do in software.
- wtallis 2y agoThere have been enough attempts post-Vista to do spatial audio on GPUs that I don't think the argument that CPUs were fast enough really holds water. I think it's mainly that spatial audio hasn't been a must-have feature, so omitting it or half-assing it hasn't been a problem.
- kuschku 2y ago> The result is that games today have worse spatial audio than games that came out 20 years ago This was already solved 7 years ago, but few games actually make use of it: https://valvesoftware.github.io/steam-audio/ https://valvesoftware.github.io/steam-audio/
- johnnyanmac 2y agoI wouldn't call a private implementation of spatial sound "solving the problem". If tech were that simple we'd have solve a lot of non-trivial problems.