Sound: Do you think about it much when you play games? All one needs to do is look at your sound setup to know that answer. Some pay mucho bucks on headphones, soundbars, speakers, and other equipment to achieve the best sound output. Others go with some cheapass thing that is good enough for them as they don't really care. What I am getting at is that people can have VERY differencing opinions on the subject of sound, and that can make it a BIT hard when one looks into a sound solution for their devices.
Saying all that, this blog is going to talk about the recent thing that was added to FF14, spatial sound. I am sure you have seen the ads for it, they pop up every time you start the launcher. What is it? Does it work? Is it better than what you normally hear? Well, I have been testing it out so I will try and answer those questions.
Before I do though, two things.
1. from the 1st paragraph, people perceive sound DIFFERENTLY! What sounds good and satisfying to me may NOT sound good to you and vice versa, so it is OK to doubt me and my findings.
2. This judgement is coming from someone who has the (still good!) hearing of a 54 year old person. Hearing ability goes down as one ages, so you younglings will mostly hear and perceive sounds BETTER than older me! (unless you are dumb and listen to music at VERY high levels all the time, then your hearing is probably shit. ;-) )
(Fun fact! Young people, around teen years and such, can hear much higher frequencies than adults. Adults sometimes use this to annoy kids by broadcasting annoying high sounds from devices the adults can't hear anymore but the kids can. LOL)
Ok, Spatial sound. How is it different from surround sound? Surround sound comes at you in angles, left, right, front, and back with it's sound. It sounds good but is not precise. Spatial sound is more natural sound and uses loudness, tone, pitch and location. Unlike surround sound, spatial sound is way more directional; when a sound goes off, you have a much better idea where exactly the sound is coming from around you.
Take something like Dolby 5.1 surround; when a sound goes through it from a direction, you hear it from that direction, right? But you can't really tell the exact position. You just have a general idea left, right, front, back and a lot of time it is a combination of two of them, which causes the surround effect.
Now the same sounds in positional. When done right, the sounds are far more precise. You know the sound is in any one of up to 12 positions around you, the last 4 being top and bottom channels. This makes it not only more of a surround effect, but also more of a "oh, it's over there" effect. THIS is what tends to confuse people when comparing the two in tests. They expect normal surround and it does not happen the way they expect it to, so they say it sucks or is not working right.
During sound tests, I found an excellent example of 8k positional sound on youtube which I am going to link here. Use good headphones when listening to this and be amazed, it is truly jawdropping and a great example of what I am talking about. Imagine if games used this technology for their sound. Maybe one day.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRrvRtnlqvM&list=RDvRrvRtnlqvM&start_radio=1 Ok, back to testing. I downloaded the Immerse FF14 game pack, installed and tested it within the game. If you have been following this at all, you probably have seen the comments people have made about it, that it makes the sound muffled, kind of like being underwater. When I tried using it I found the same thing. It made the sounds very odd, low and muffled. There was no oomph to them anymore. Adjusting settings did not help any either, it just did not work well.
Note: I was using Razer Blackshark Pro headphones and Windows 10 when doing this. I also tried this with the Sony SRS NS7 neck phones, same result.
So it seemed a failure, right? I thought so and gave up on it for a while. But a week ago I decided to revisit it and see if there were any changes. Browsing the internet, I found that the developers had posted there had been an update to the software to fix the muffled issue and that people who tried it after the patch and adjusted settings reported improved results.
Deciding to give it another chance, I followed the directions, did another ear pic, downloaded the patch, and went into FF14 to adjust settings and test. So what was the result?
Yes, the patch DID help. The muffling was gone and it sounded much clearer than before. I could get a better idea of what the enhancement was doing. Ok, I need to say something about this.
Remember what I was saying before, about how spatial sound is different from surround? This was VERY evident when the pack was turned on. The sound went from kind of an all around you feel to a more directed feel. I will say it was very odd at first and took some getting used to. I think THIS is what will throw people off when trying the pack out; the sound is just so......different at times. Whether you like the feeling or not will be totally up to you. Remember what I said, we all perceive sound DIFFERENTLY. Some will like this, some won't. It's kind of up to you and your tolerances.
Note: this sound change mainly takes effect with things making sounds around you like people, monsters, waterfalls, etc. It does NOT affect the all around environment sounds like birds, wind, water, crowds, etc, only physical things making noise around you.
So it DID change the sound but I think not really enough for me. It was ok in the world, but I did not really like it in combat too much when I tried it in trials. It also made voices much louder if you had not adjusted the voice slider properly. All in all, I just thought it was ok.
So no I decided not to get it. BUT looking at their site, there was another way to try this, their immerse Gaming Hive spatial software designed to work with any game. Unlike the FF14 game pack, this is a sound source which you chose on your computer, then tie your output to it. It is more complex with many settings to adjust your sound depending what kind of game you are playing and is synced to use with many headphone brands. I read many favorable reviews online on it saying it was pretty good, so decided to test it out since there is a 14 day trial.
Using the same ear thing as the FF14 pack, I setup the whole thing, chose my headphone profile, (it had one for the Blackshark), and went to test it out.
Holy CRAP! This was MUCH better than the game pack! The spatial sound was much more distinct and clear with no muffling whatsoever, at least to my ears. The fights were more dynamic with positional sounds coming from sources all around you in boss fights. I want into the Shiva fight like they had in the game pack demo and Good Lord it sounded good. It really was a vast improvement from that game pack.
Looking at it, I think the reason was it was FAR more adjustable in what the thing was attempting to do with sounds. Hive also has different profiles for sounds. there is close combat, for melee fighting, distant combat, for FPS games, and surround spatial for RPG's and MMO's. You can also further adjust this in your device settings for sound distance and volume. Putting the settings for melee combat really made a difference in big boss fights as well as dungeon fights, as the sound was closer to you like it would be in those kinds of fights. Note, it was also fine in the surround mode, but was just a BIT more immersive if you adjusted it for melee.
This is easy to do since the Hive menu is at the top of the screen if you want it there. Just click on it and adjust the settings on the fly. Hive also has a sound 'radar'. This is a symbol on screen that shows the current profile setting, melee, FPS, or surround, and the exact positions the sounds are coming from around you in an 8 point compass. People say this is a BIG help in FPS games as you can tell where exactly things are making sounds around you by looking at the compass which lights up the spots. Oh, you can also change sound profiles by clicking on the middle of the compass if you have it on the screen. (it is adjustable to show or not.)
One thing with this, it is only for games, it don't do crap for watching streaming stuff like Netflix, HBO, etc, so don't use it for movies. Switch it off and use stuff like Dolby, DTX, Atmos, etc.
Also, this is a subscription service, you can't buy it outright like with the game pack. It costs $15 a year or you can buy the 5 year plan for $40. Did I get it? I have not yet as I am writing this, I am currently doing more testing, but honestly I probably will sign up for a plan.
So there you go, my experience with Spatial and FF14. (as well as other games) Like I said, these are MY impressions with MY ears. Your results if you decide to try this might vary MUCH differently. Like I said, testing sound out is SUCH a bitch since people are so different. If you do decided to try it out, let me know what you think.
One last thing I wanted to say about sounds and positioning. For some reason, some people are bitching about the spatial sounds switching position when you move the camera position around, They want the sounds coming from where the character is facing, NOT the camera.
I look at that and go WTF? Are they KIDDING? Do you realize how confusing that would be to you? Do they understand WHY sound is done this way, the camera rather than the character, because deary that is where the player is LOOKING, and ear hearing perception works from where YOU are looking, NOT your character! UGH! If they did it from your character's positioning, it would be INCREDABILY confusing to your hearing. It is simply not done this way in a 3rd person camera controlled game for this very reason.
