# The effects of using an AV receiver vs. Gaming Headsets



## iCadaveR (May 21, 2012)

OK... little bit of a wierd thing here.

After trying a few different headsets,(Logitech G35, Fatality MKII, Soundblaster Tactic Sigma, Titan Ax Pro, Razer Chiciarcas<-forgot how it's spelt, Sharkoon Tactic, TurtleBeach x11, and some generic plantronics) i thought i would try out an oooold Onkyo Receiver i had sitting around. I connected all of these audio "devices" to the x-fi titanium champion s-card via spdif/optical for the record. I noticed something STRANGE. I noticed a HUGE hit registry boost in multiple games. All popular games as well. Cod4, Cod6, Cod7, Battlefield bad company 2, Battlefield 3 and even Homefront. The receiver used is an Onkyo  TX-SR573. Looks like the audio the receiver is getting is 96khz/24bit pcm dts Neo:6. I noticed spdif is only a 2 channel connection so it encodes to what simply'er put than most descriptions is a pizza-like format. One channel per slice. I know that "supposedly" using an off-board sound card that it may use less resources, I really didnt notice much difference using headsets on that soundcard. but I couldn't help but notice a MAJOR boost all around using an AV receiver. Almost like it completely off-loaded the cpu of all audio-related tasks and focuses more on the game's or programs instead. I noticed faster movement<- almost like i was getting higher fps without seeing a huge increase, I also noticed better graphics(by that i mean cleaner, less blurry.) The biggest thing i noticed though was that it no longer took 1.5 second for my bullet to hit someone that was 1.5 feet away from me. I clicked/dead. It was intense. I had pulled off "hacker status" kdr's in tdm matches. cod4 107-15 kd. 

reason i felt this is a big deal for some of the guys on this site is that everyone seems to be overclocking like mad to squeeze that extra frame which results in a less stable system. With the system im using i shouldnt really see 1.5 sec/1.5 feet time delay between time bullet was fired to the time of impact. and NEITHER SHOULD ANYONE THAT INVESTS A BUTTLOAD OF MONEY INTO THEIR PC. 

Asus P8Z68-V Pro/Gen3 mobo
i7 2600k @ 3.5/4.4Ghz turbo
Dominator-GT 2000mhz 8GB 9-10-9-27-2N timings
2x GTX 460's PNY XLR8 @ 765mhz gpu clock
Patriot SSD 128 GB *(O.S. hdd)
Velociraptor 10,000 rpm 300GB (Games and apps hdd)
regular Maxtor 300gb for my music  XD

I was always wondering why i was not getting the hit on the guy i had dead in my sight. Running at 125/250/333 solid fps??? 30% cpu usage at most for cod4???!!! Well that is fixed. 

My main reason for posting this is... Has anyone else experienced this? Any input on getting A headset to give the same performance? Or am i missing something. Some sort of format or Sound Wrapping causing the latency? i noticed in cod4 lowering the sound quality to 22khz i would see a much snappier hit registry than at 44khz. Only problem a desert eagle should not sound like a freakin ray gun.


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## EarthDog (May 21, 2012)

Hit registry and sound have nothing to do with each other...especially sound having anything to do with hit registry.

Honestly, it just seems you need to tighten up your knowledge on how things work in online gaming a bit... that should clear up your questions and problems.


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## iCadaveR (May 21, 2012)

haha. first off. dont insult me. second maybe you should "tighten up" your knowledge of processing. fKn Trolls these days.


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## KingPing (May 21, 2012)

No. Never happened to me.

Audio performance hit on today CPUs is minimal ( games sound quality isn't that demanding ).

I think that something in your PC is messed up if games run faster and look better if you use a receiver.

Maybe i'm wrong but, games running faster because of that is weird, but looking better i can't see how.


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## erixx (May 21, 2012)

Lol. Anyway, there are guys that turn their graphics down to achieve the killrun and stats-gasm of their live, so some part of LAG is generated by the users computer. That is all I have heard. Audio could be the same...


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## iCadaveR (May 21, 2012)

alright thanx for more inciteful comments. but here's my point. yes i know the hit on today's cpus are nothing really. but think about this. playing bfbc2 for instance. ever had that shot that came from your GOL sniper or your shotty point blank and seen the blood splatter from the guy yet he still manages to kill you. and you know he should be dead? you can google it... just put in "bfbc2 hitreg fail... and you will see a lot of it. since i plugged this receiver in not once has that happened to me. i go back to a headset it goes retarded again. ive tried everything from disabling hyperthreading because of a roomer stating that it can cause performance hinders and that "most" games dont utilize it yet. Now something leads me to believe that having the cpu preprocessing the audio before its sent to the headset can cause this no hitreg in bfbc2... seems like the cpu is too busy focusing on that high quality gun sound than the fact you shot the fkr. Causing no hitreg but your video card knows its supposed to render blood because you hit him. ive tried onboard audio, and several soundcards... all of which reacted the same. i suggest someone tests this theory other than me so i know im not trippin. Hook it up with windows default drivers via spdif enable stereo mix and see what im talking about. its a trip. Both pc's ive built... the other was a p6t deluxe i7 940 @4.0ghz build and it acted the same exact way. a buddy of mind running an amd athlon p.o.s. even received a very noticeable boost. give it a shot before you shoot it down because "today's processors are all that"


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## iCadaveR (May 21, 2012)

2x gtx460's @ 1440x900 75hz, smoke and shadows off, and AA @4x, gives me a SOLID 333fps. i typically run a solid 250fps because cod4's graphics engine is designed in a funk that has sweet spots for maxpackets and framerate. + punkbuster's max fps cvar is com_maxfps 250. headset or not its playable to me. im talking about hit registry here. The time it takes for your shot to hit the fkr. even on a server with 200 ping my shots are perfect. bang/dead not bang.....dead.


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## EarthDog (May 21, 2012)

iCadaveR said:


> haha. first off. dont insult me. second maybe you should "tighten up" your knowledge of processing. fKn Trolls these days.


Sorry man, didnt mean to insult you.

Let me put it a different way...just like the trunk lid button on your car has nothing do with how fast your car goes is how using an A/V receiver effects gameplay. 

When using the A/V receiver, all the receiver is doing is AMPLIFYING the line level signal it gets. The CPU/sound card is still doing the EXACT SAME AMOUNT OF CRUNCHING to get that sound out regardless of what is on the other end. Same thing with cans, they accept a line-level out and boost the signal on its own. Again what is at the end of the signal has nothing to do with image quality or FPS. Like someone mentioned above, the CPU cycles used for audio is negligible.


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## iCadaveR (May 21, 2012)

well typically... i play with a 20-35 ping. the 200 ping was a reference. and what i am saying is that when using a soundcard/headset vs soundcard/av receiver... the soundcard isnt actually doing anything except acting as a passthrough. and the car reference reminded me of men in black... dont ever touch the red button.  I can admit i dont know s*** in the audio area. But i can tell you i notice a difference. Maybe you should try it and not be so biased. Also An AV receiver decodes too. So in a sense it does process audio. receiving a pcm= pulse code modulation, Raw audio, or LPCM= lossy pulse code modulation, or formats like DDL 5.1, or even DTS signals then sending and amplifying the corresponding audio channel to the correct speaker. you are leaving out a lot of other variables as well. Bit rate, khz sampling rates, how many channels, what format. yada yada through one digital bitstream/ analog signal. 

video relevence: freeing up cpu usage/ cycles to forward more video information to vram to be processed by gpu... makes sense to me.


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## iCadaveR (May 21, 2012)

im telling you you should give it a shot. try out a receiver hooked up by toslink and test some hit reg


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## iCadaveR (May 21, 2012)

unless you can give me some pointers on using a headset. because ever since i experienced the hit registry i get now ive been staying away from headsets because i know the difference is there. just like with the audiodg.exe memory leak in windows 7. you can always tell something isnt right.


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## EarthDog (May 21, 2012)

Something isnt right... I agree, but you are looking in the wrong place. Where, no clue. Id try uninstalling and reinstalling with the latest audio drivers (even if you are on the latest, reinstall).




> Maybe you should try it and not be so biased. Also An AV receiver decodes too. So in a sense it does process audio. receiving a pcm= pulse code modulation, Raw audio, or LPCM= lossy pulse code modulation, or formats like DDL 5.1, or even DTS signals then sending and amplifying the corresponding audio channel to the correct speaker. you are leaving out a lot of other variables as well. Bit rate, khz sampling rates, how many channels, what format. yada yada through one digital bitstream/ analog signal.


Im well aware what A/V receivers do. I have an HTPC which is connected to my Sony receiver and do not notice any difference in hit registry on that PC vs the one downstairs hooked up to my cans in the same games.

Again the RECEIVER is doing that work, not the sound card.

Holy triple post batman...edit button?????


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## Athlon2K15 (May 21, 2012)

I run a Pioneer Elite reciever for my pc sound and have never noticed anything being different than my logitech G330 headset.


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## iCadaveR (May 21, 2012)

see i dont believe the audio is being processed by the soundcard when using 3.5mm headsets. nor when using a toslink headset. looks like the audiodg.exe service is doing it all. ive seen people making the attempt to turn off all soundblaster special effects and what not in the windows audio panels. I would always see windows 7 utilizing 3% cpu to nothing but audio? i know thats hardly measurable but look at it this way. it has to buffer. thats more information between calculations.


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## Athlon2K15 (May 21, 2012)

So if the soundcard isnt processing the audio why do some audio cards sound better than others? i can guarantee there is a big difference between my onboard realtek and a HT Omega Claro


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## iCadaveR (May 21, 2012)

EarthDog said:


> Something isnt right... I agree, but you are looking in the wrong place. Where, no clue. Id try uninstalling and reinstalling with the latest audio drivers (even if you are on the latest, reinstall).
> 
> Holy triple post batman...edit button?????






I have tried multiple soundcards different drivers and different audio formats.


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## EarthDog (May 21, 2012)

I edited above, FYI.


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## iCadaveR (May 21, 2012)

AthlonX2 said:


> So if the soundcard isnt processing the audio why do some audio cards sound better than others? i can guarantee there is a big difference between my onboard realtek and a HT Omega Claro






maybe the only audio processing because done is a sound equalizer? im not sure... i agree there that some soundcards sound better than others using a headset. i went from using an asus xonar dx to using this x-fi card and i definitely heard the difference. but is it actually formatting the audio to what the speaker in the headset needs to receive?


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## iCadaveR (May 21, 2012)

EarthDog said:


> I edited above, FYI.



yeah i was like wth? where did all the postings go!


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## EarthDog (May 21, 2012)

iCadaveR said:


> see i dont believe the audio is being processed by the soundcard when using 3.5mm headsets. nor when using a toslink headset. looks like the audiodg.exe service is doing it all. ive seen people making the attempt to turn off all soundblaster special effects and what not in the windows audio panels. I would always see windows 7 utilizing 3% cpu to nothing but audio? i know thats hardly measurable but look at it this way. it has to buffer. thats more information between calculations.


So what is processing the audio then?

SB Special effects ARE handled by the sound card so that actually makes sense.

If your CPU is using 30% during games, it has 70% more processing power to throw at ANYTHING, including audio. Its not the CPU or lack of CPU cycles as its clear from your description that you have plenty of CPU, and plenty of CPU cycles left.

One thing though, I am not biased, I am just speaking from a semi-educated position on this issue.


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## iCadaveR (May 21, 2012)

EarthDog said:


> So what is processing the audio then?
> 
> SB Special effects ARE handled by the sound card so that actually makes sense.
> 
> If your CPU is using 30% during games, it has 70% more processing power to throw at ANYTHING, including audio. Its not the CPU or lack of CPU cycles as its clear from your description that you have plenty of CPU, and plenty of CPU cycles left.



right... but think of it this way... one cpu cycle game, the next audio, the next game, the next audio... so on so forth.. you are cutting their potential speeds in half.


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## iCadaveR (May 21, 2012)

EarthDog said:


> So what is processing the audio then?
> 
> SB Special effects ARE handled by the sound card so that actually makes sense.
> 
> ...



yeah i couldnt tell you what half the jibberish says when it comes to speaker impedance or whatever. i get what some of it means but yeah. the biased comment i missed when i edited my original posting ...  forgive me?


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## iCadaveR (May 21, 2012)

and yes you are biased... jftr


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## iCadaveR (May 21, 2012)

cutting out all possibilities saying that todays processors are completely overkill for anything you through at them is quite biased


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## iCadaveR (May 21, 2012)

ima go for a smoke break brb.


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## Athlon2K15 (May 21, 2012)

This isnt MSN or skype so triple posting isnt necessary


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## iCadaveR (May 21, 2012)

AthlonX2 said:


> This isnt MSN or skype so triple posting isnt necessary



yeh yeh yeh... i only clicked it once lol


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## EarthDog (May 21, 2012)

iCadaveR said:


> right... but think of it this way... one cpu cycle game, the next audio, the next game, the next audio... so on so forth.. you are cutting their potential speeds in half.


Thats not the way it works anymore.. think about it... YOU HAVE 4 PHYSICAL CORES and 4 MORE HT CORES! So there is no waiting, it takes a free cycle.

But you never answered my question, what IS doing the processing then?



iCadaveR said:


> cutting out all possibilities saying that todays processors are completely overkill for anything you through at them is quite biased


"jftr" Im cutting out all things not possible, like the trunk button from the factory effecting how fast a car goes (or that whats on the end of a plug effects whats coming out of the plug in this case).... and your CPU information I corrected above.

If you think its the problem, then go get a soundcard where the audio processing is done on the card, like SoundBlaster Xtremegamer.


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## iCadaveR (May 21, 2012)

see one would think the audio is being processed by the soundcard. but what it seems like it is doing is... taking a raw audio file, converting it to a compressed format then being reprocessed to add effects when it gets to the soundcard

doesnt seem like it in the case of using the receiver. because the receiver can have its own built in equalizer so it may turn the soundcard's off


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## iCadaveR (May 21, 2012)

AthlonX2 said:


> I run a Pioneer Elite reciever for my pc sound and have never noticed anything being different than my logitech G330 headset.



when using the pioneer receiver what audio format were you using?

with the receiver... get this... if i persay, encode the audio signal to DDL or DTS i notice the latency, when i leave the encoder off and just set the receiver to DTS Neo:6 the hit reg is flawless

with it on DTS Neo:6 it also lights up the pcm light


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## EarthDog (May 21, 2012)

Onboard audio uses CPU cycles. There is no doubt about that. The more you put on the audio processing like surround effects, eq, etc, the more it uses. Yes. But again, its nothing...negligible. Its not waiting in line to be processed, its not affecting hit registry. It doesnt make sense at all as they are two different things doing two completely different functions that are not dependent on one another.

Buy a separate sound card that handles the processing onboard. It *may* solve the issue, but it wont tell you what the true source of the problem was. 

HOly shit dude. PLEASE stop with the multi posting and edit. My god man. You dont listen at all do you?!! 

EDIT: Man, you are ALL OVER THE PLACE with these edits. 

the signal the receiver is getting has already been 'equalized', the equalizing your receiver would do is ON TOP OF what is already in the signal.


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## iCadaveR (May 21, 2012)

see i have the onboard audio disabled and i am using the x-fi titanium champion which has its own ramdac


This better then?


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## EarthDog (May 21, 2012)

It should be as it has its own audio processing/ram which use much less/no CPU resources. If that doesnt fix your 'issue', it has nothing to do with the audio.


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## librin.so.1 (May 21, 2012)

iCadaveR said:


> im telling you you should give it a shot. try out a receiver hooked up by toslink and test some hit reg



I am using such a setup for years now, and the only differences I noticed:
no noise gets introduced while (so no more "cell-phone-inducted-beeping" yay!), easier to troubleshoot, surround is much easier to set up, less trouble when connecting (jacks get troublesome), and much more care required when disconnecting.

EDIT:
P.S. and yeah, Your problem is prolly somewhere else. For example, drivers.
EDIT#2:
don't forget: "Correlation does not imply causation"


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## KingPing (May 21, 2012)

About the CPU cycles: Audio hit is minimal, with your logic of consuming CPU cycles, then the other several programs running in background should make the game unplayable since they consume more CPU resources than audio. I run a lot of programs, sometimes even another game or folding, and i never notice any performance variation what so ever. 

 About the soundcard: sound is being processed in the soundcard, that´s the whole point. But it was several years ago when a soundcard helped boost performance, today the only difference is sound quality. About the ram in your soundcard, it was a Creative gimmick, benchmarks between with SB Titaniums (one with the ram and the other without, don´t remember the exact models though) showed that in a PC with Core 2 Duo or Quads the performance difference was of 1fps well within the error margin. 

 With all due respect, i still think there is something messed up in your PC, maybe drivers, who knows. As i said, games running faster is one thing, but looking better, i just don´t see how audio have anything to do with that.


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## librin.so.1 (May 22, 2012)

One more thing: if You still think that the audio is slowing Your games down, there is only one way to make sure:

Testing. And by testing, I mean: Taking a HDD with a clean window$ installation, having no unnecessary hardware attached, having only the drivers/essentials (dx, etc.) and that one game installed. Then testing how it acts under different audio modes. If it still works the same way You described earlier, then You can say _there *probably* is an audio related problem somewhere - either in the driver, hardware, or the game code itself._ And then, testing with different audio driver versions, if it changes the behavior, You could say _that problem is *most likely* in the audio drivers_.

Note, I wrote it as "probably"/"most likely" and all. That is because even with such testing You would still know pretty much nothing _what and why_ is actually happening.

So, please stop mistaking correlation with causation - those are two different things.


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## Ra97oR (May 22, 2012)

I don't even know how to respond to this even... Either there is something really messed up with your computer or just flat out placebo effects which is very likely from your posts. 

Also, if you are using USB headsets, your onboard soundcard will have no effect on it what so ever. USB headsets have their own (crappy) DAC and ADC for the sound and mic, likely to have a some sort of sound processor for the virtual surround sounds.



iCadaveR said:


> see i dont believe the audio is being processed by the soundcard when using 3.5mm headsets. nor when using a toslink headset. looks like the audiodg.exe service is doing it all. ive seen people making the attempt to turn off all soundblaster special effects and what not in the windows audio panels. I would always see windows 7 utilizing 3% cpu to nothing but audio? i know thats hardly measurable but look at it this way. it has to buffer. thats more information between calculations.



Is it not about if you believe or not, but it is the fact. Soundcard need to do their DAC function at the very least to have you hearing anything at all.


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## Nordic (Jun 12, 2012)

I would like to inform you of the edit button.

This reminds me of the thread about the guy who claimed a different dns gave him a better ping and gaming experience. This is different though. Have you considered a pseudo effect? I'd give it a few more months and see if your getting the same performance boost.


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