27 replies to this topic

[mpad]

 

Hey you forgot my idea of multichannel speaker setup or proper 5.1 / 7.1 support No I really just like to know if this is on anybody elses wishlist or totally off? Idea was the ability configure output for every channel. For example I have front speaker in the Backglas, surround down in the middle of the cab and center down at the coin door. It would be great to redirect physics and sfx to surround for that purpose. And better use for standard pc audio system fo cab builds.

 
Actually, that might be pretty cool for some of the environemental sounds... like, any sounds that VP makes (ball rolling, flipper, wall hits, etc) would be positional but Pinmame only uses the primary left and right (of course, any change to ROM sounds would have to be done by VPM anyway).  Although, for original tables there were have to be the distinction between environmental sounds and game sounds.  But still, I'm not sure I've heard fuzzel or mukuste ever comment on positional environmental sounds.
 

 
First mention of 5.1 setups made me think. Is this serious? What are you going to do? Pipe in ambient arcade noise behind you? But I get it, and I'm warming up to the idea. 
 
Backglass sounds can already be split from table sounds in VP. I have my playfield screen connected via HDMI to an NVIDIA GTX660. The card has audio drivers, so it is putting out an audio signal through HDMI as well as a video signal. I simply have VP direct table sounds to the TV and then turn up the volume.
 
Due to the screen orientation that means left TV speaker is located at the top of the playfield and right TV speaker at the bottom. I don't know if any authors make use of this to locate sounds with one speaker or another. It may all be mono.
 
It's an interesting idea that it may be possible to position environmental sounds in five or seven different areas under the playfield. In practice, the inside of the cabinet is really close quarters. There may not be enough separation for the human ear to distinguish that closely versus stereo, especially over the usual backglass/game output.

I got rid of all the tv speakers.
I didn't understand why vp uses two soundcards with two channels each, when most of the onboard cards already have eight channels. must be related to the fact that real pinball machines use car stereo systems.
computers and games have had multichannel for a long time... good old pro pinball timeshock had dolby sourround. awesome.
I play zen pinball some times and this makes good use of the rear speakers.
I just like the idea tho have separate mechanic sounds and tablecUsic with one soundcard and one (cheap) set of speakers.

[Carny_Priest]

Yes, I used to play Pro Pinball with a surround set up on my desktop back in the day. I'm not so sure about having speaker wires hanging out of the cab for surround in the year 2014.

I imagine it's not so straightforward to add surround.

Digital output in six channels requires at least AC-3 compression. That would be proprietary. A raw PCM stream that requires no decoding for a basic amp would be stereo only. And there aren't many options, if any, for amps that have a surround decoder and a small footprint and a reasonable price. An amp/receiver for home audio takes up a lot of space in the cab. A surround system for PC with decent performance puts the amp in a subwoofer box that takes up a lot of space in the cab.

It might be possible to use analog outputs. You would need a couple of mini-amps and do the labor of blending these components together. Hey, if the devs and authors add the feature, I'd give it a spin. But it is a lot of hoops to jump through versus the current solution.


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[mpad]

Now it is like this:
Table sound: soundcard#1
Music: soundcard#2
All I'm asking for is an otion to do this:
Table sound: soundcard#1 (FRONT)
Music: soundcard#1 (REAR)

I wasn't asking about dts or THX support, only to use the channels for output
I have a pretty small and very powerfull 5.1 set in my (small) cab, and it cost around 150 bucks.

[Carny_Priest]

I'm not sure what it would take to route the ROM sounds to a rear channel rather than a different sound card. Still have the problem of routing table and music sounds in ROM-less tables. If the capability was added, the scripts for these tables would have to be modified to take advantage of it.

In any case, if all you want is a second analog stereo output for your amp and use it with VP9 today you can spend $10 or so for a USB sound card.

What are you using for your 5.1 set?


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[bleasby]

I have one suggestion about the backward compatibility.

 

Why not deal with that problem by simply adding a table reader info like "Build for" and let the vp executable run the appropriate visual pinball version for each table?

 

I don't know if you guys already intend to do something similar, but let me try to explain myself if it is not the case.

 

The idea is: 

 

1) Require on every new table release, from vp10 forward, to the table file present a reader with the info for example,  BuildFor=10.0.9.

 

2) Make the Visual Pinball executable read this info.

      2.1) If there is no version defined on the build for, just load and play the table using the vp 9.9.0 code.

      2.2) If there is a version defined and the BuildFor is higher than the installed visual pinball version, create a msgbox asking for the user to update his visual pinball executable. 

      2.2) If there is a version defined and the BuildFor is lower or equal to the installed visual pinball version, use the appropriate functions that are compatible with this version.

 

That way the final user will never more have to worry about which visual pinball executable to use, even for the future vp11, vp12,.... versions.

Besides that, the developers could still add extra features, and even breaking compatibility features, without having to worry about any final user complain. If the table builders want to take advantage of these changes and update their tables, they just need to follow the release notes.

 

I believe this would simplify a lot the confusion for new users, hopefully attracting the ones that can help on creating new content also.

Edited by bleasby, 13 June 2014 - 11:11 AM.

[Carny_Priest]

http://www.vpforums....e=2#entry268802

 

Hi, I've continued to be intrigued by the idea of multi-channel speaker configurations under the playfield in a cab. It seems some panning functions exist for ball rolling sounds in VP9. 

 

http://www.vpforums....als&article=135

 

If you are a user like me, you may have simply routed VP music sounds to your playfield graphics card. And through the HDMI connection you can simply turn up the volume on the TV (if you have not decased and removed the speakers) and voila you have playfield sounds coming from the playfield. In the standard orientation, the right channel would be near the player and the left channel near the top of the playfield. Actually, depending on the TV speakers they may be more aligned to the left of the player rather than center.

 

Multi-channel output from VP as directed in the script by table authors could improve localization of events that are not covered in a standard DOF configuration such as gates, kickers, collision events, as well as ball rolling on the x-axis as well as the y-axis.

 

I've done some research, and this post is more about possible hardware configurations that might meet the happy medium among price, performance, space, and ease of setup. Take this as the viewpoint from someone who has not purchased a multi-channel setup for PC at any point this century. There may be HDMI-compliant equipment that does what I'm trying to describe with ease. The assumption here is that all equipment needs to be contained in the cabinet. It is certainly always possible to run lines from the cabinet to a standard home AV receiver and/or subwoofer enclosure. That is an option that doesn't work for me aesthetically.

 

I'm not counting on that HDMI connection to deliver the multi-channel goods. Many if not all LED TVs have an optical output that could be connected to a multi-channel receiver with the signal decoded by the receiver. The research indicates that many TV models due to DHCP limitations will not pass through a multi-channel signal through S/PDIF that did not originate with the TV's tuner. It may just pass through stereo. I have a low-end brand of TV (Westinghouse), so I didn't even bother putting it to the test even though the unit does have an optical S/PDIF output connector.

 

I have an NVidea GeForce GTX660. It's a very good card but it's audio features are obviously not a primary focus. If I look at the available feature set in Windows Control Panel, Dolby Digital is available. I don't know if that means pass-through of a Dolby Digital signal or decoding of a Dolby Digital encoded signal such as DVD audio. It simply may not even be technically possible or desirable to transfer table sounds as encoded audio in this manner. If technically possible who is going to pay the license/royalties to Dolby?

 

Although HDMI is capable of transferring uncompressed multi-channel signals, I have not seen any PC-specific speaker system products with HDMI. Certainly, just about any current home AV receivers can take the signal but these tend to have chassis designed for AV racks. The footprints are large for the interior of a pinball cabinet. Mini-sized performance AV receivers are on the market but the ones that I have seen are expensive.

 

A straightforward solution is running 6+ channels through analog outputs. Many motherboards have multi-channel integrated sound usually from RealTek. My motherboard is just stereo, but there are many options for cheap internal or USB-based sound cards with multi-channel analog outputs. The output lines can be run to just about any current PC-based speaker system, but such systems usually have the input panel and amp piggy-backing in the subwoofer enclosure. Again, this can take up a lot of space in the cabinet. An alternative is to run the output lines to a multi-channel amp board such as this:

 

http://www.parts-exp...-board--320-307

 

There are other examples at ebay and aliexpress if you don't mind waiting for shipping from Asia.

 

Blending and calibration of the signal outputs can be managed with the sound card driver software or at least Windows. Not including speakers, this can be <$50 solution.

 

At a little more cost, a single cable connection, digital solution is possible. Just about any higher end-ish sound card in the $40 to $50 range might have Dolby Digital Live and/or DTS Connect technologies which encode uncompressed multi-channel 5.1 audio in real-time for transfer via S/PDIF. For current equipment this means optical/TOSlink. The receiver/amp also needs an S/PDIF connector for input but these connectors are common. Even without Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect, if the sound card has an S/PDIF output it may be possible to use the free open source solution, ac3filter:

 

http://www.ac3filter.../wiki/Main_Page

 

Going back to my last purchase of a PC-based speaker system in 1999, the product I bought did not have the amp integrated with the subwoofer, but had the amp/DAC broken out into a separate chassis with dimensions 9" x 6" x 3" which is nice and small. Cambridge Soundworks at one point had a good pedigree in the audiophile world. This particular unit has built-in Dolby Digital decoding. My wife and I first watched DVDs on our PC with this system before we had a stand alone DVD player. I still use the system today although as 2.1 for my arcade setup. The amp is not powerful but the matching speaker system is pretty efficient so there is plenty of volume for its intended application for near field sound reproduction. Good to use for a pinball cabinet where you only really need a good setup for one player at a time. It is overkill to install a system that can fill sound in a nightclub.

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/390

 

Since then, a couple of newer generations were produced that added more features: a little more power for the amp, optical S/PDIF, DTS decoding, etc. Before they too started integrating the amp/decoder functions into the subwoofer enclosure.

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/677

 

http://ixbtlabs.com/...e5700vsdtt3500/

 

These amp/controllers are old (really old) but still come up for auction from time to time on Ebay or for sale on Craig's List. Sometimes they may be described as not working. A common issue is that the master volume potentiometer gets dirty and causes the sound output to get scratchy, intermittent, or not working at all. Opening the chassis and giving the pot a blast of contact cleaner gets the unit working like new again.

 

Here's one in a current auction but it costs too much considering that they are missing the AC adapter:

 

http://www.ebay.com/...=item540be9c860

 

For maximum performance, look for a complete system including the proprietary 9-pin DIM cable that when matched with an old Soundblaster Audigy card can deliver 6 channel uncompressed (lossless) PCM audio at up to 24bit / 96kHz through the single connection. The Audigy is old (really old) but ubiquitous in its day. It's easy to find these cheap on Ebay and Creative did produce a Windows 7 driver for it. It's the proprietary cable that can often go missing. But even if the cable is long gone, Creative does sell for $5 the license for upgrading the Audigy and newer sound cards to use Dolby Digital Live to encode and pass through compressed multi-channel sound.

 

http://us.store.crea.../B006GK76QE.htm

 

In any case, if multi-channel sound support was added to VP implementing it in a cabinet does not at all have to be an expensive proposition. And proper localization of sound events on the playfield screen could further enhance the immersiveness of the simulation. I, for one, could see it worth at least a test.

Edited by Carny_Priest, 10 July 2014 - 11:02 PM.

[arngrim]

dof could cover everything, but the remaining sounds are better like this, without toys.
8 or 10 (preferably) contactors, 1 knocker, 1 gear motor, 1 shaker, + 2 speakers inside the cab is an awesome combination.
besides that we need an easy solution to remove redundant sounds of our toys, pro lem not everybody has the same forcefeedback package.
perso i delete these sounds on all my tables, in the end it is always the same sounds that are removed

[Carny_Priest]

Yes, the surround speaker idea was to cover events that may not be covered well by toys: ball collision events ( ball to ball or ball to wall, ball to glass , and so on), ball rolling sounds, etc. Stereo sound is a good addition giving you sound along one axis, top and bottom of the playfield or left and right side of the playfield. But four or more speakers covers both axes. Discrete sounds can be directed to any part of the playfield.




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