SoundStorm gone for sure, but does that just refer to the name?Hexus had a little chat with NVIDIA over at IDF, and it turns out that SoundStorm, the popular integrated sound solution on nForce2-based motherboards, is dead.
Now, before you reach for the Kleenex, consider the fact that NVIDIA's own CEO Jen-Hsun Huang made a statement back in December that read " will come in a way that you won't expect". Perhaps NVIDIA just means the old implementation of SoundStorm as we know it is dead, but they have something even greater up their sleeves?
Brian Del Rizzo informed us of this fact, and stated that at the recent NVIDIA Editors day in which their CEO and Spiritual leader - Jen Hsun was infact talking about other technologies in which they are exploring audio possibilites, these would eventually end up as sound solutions across all platforms. But he was firm in his statement that it was indeed gone.
I know some of you are tired of this SoundStorm whining (which, I'll admit, can get rather tedious), but I, personally, would love to see SoundStorm back. Real-time Dolby Digital encoding of any audio stream for playback on my Logitech Z-5500s was the best thing to happen to computer audio in the last few years, in my opinion. I was highly disappointed to learn that the Audigy2 is incapable of doing this, and requires me to resort to the analog outputs if I want true 6-channel audio while gaming.
As a side note, if anyone out there knows of a filter/encoder that transparently encodes any audio source into 5.1 DD/DTS, I'd be eternally grateful. ;-)
Article Link: Soundstorm is gone forever
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