Windows Audio Quality Enhancements

re: Windows Audio Quality Enhancements

Nicholas Allen — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 21:13:00 GMT

Interesting post about the problems with the old method for selecting the audio format. Since you said that rounding error were a concern, does that mean you were originally thinking of using a fixed-point format instead of floating point in Vista? Also, how well does the use of floating point in the audio stack deal with applications that leave the floating point control registers in funny states?

re: Windows Audio Quality Enhancements

Chris — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 21:13:18 GMT

Larry, you really should take a look at what your competition is doing. Apple's Core Audio system uses floating point pretty much exclusively (for non-packetized audio), and it's eliminated the need for ASIO on the Mac.

re: Windows Audio Quality Enhancements

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 21:28:07 GMT

Will we be able to install our own filters and stuff at the very last stage before sending the audio to the hardware, or maybe in other places such as the per-app mixing?

It would be kickass to be able to install a high-quality system-wide EQ for example...

re: Windows Audio Quality Enhancements

LarryOsterman — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 22:06:45 GMT

Chris, the guy who was the architect for most of our audio infrastructure (Steve Swenson (http://www.svtrinity.net/index.htm)) worked on audio at Apple before coming to Microsoft.

We know what Apple's doing with audio :)

The big thing about ASIO isn't the floating point, it's the latency. I'll be talking about how we're achieving low latency some point in the future.

Nicholas, the floating point state shouldn't be a problem, because the engine runs in a separate process, and NT virtualizes the FP hardware.

re: Windows Audio Quality Enhancements

Joku — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 22:13:42 GMT

Will there be/Already is a way to find out if certain audio hardware or driver is UAA/User mode one? I hope it will be very clearly visible in marketing whether the chip on the motherboard or card/external box will have all the possible benefits that Vista can offer.

There should be some new, hard to get, logo that ensures that both drivers and hardware are top notch in every respect. VistaHD for consumer crap and VistaPRO for mastering quality converters/audio path and drivers that pass the most rigorous tests in stability and audio quality when under heavy load.

re: Windows Audio Quality Enhancements

Nicholas Allen — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 22:24:22 GMT

Aha! I thought this conversion was being done user mode and in-process. Thanks for clearing that up.

re: Windows Audio Quality Enhancements

Chris Hynes — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 22:31:17 GMT

Will there be any support for audio hardware acceleration or DSP's (such as Creative's X-Fi)?

re: Windows Audio Quality Enhancements

LarryOsterman — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 23:11:11 GMT

Chris, the current plan does not include support hardware acceleration directly in the audio engine.

There is a 3rd party extensibility story, I'll be getting to that later on in the series.

re: Windows Audio Quality Enhancements

steamy — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 23:38:44 GMT

Larry, i love these series, i hope you post every day!!!

re: Windows Audio Quality Enhancements

Chad — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 00:06:58 GMT

What I've seen mentioned UI-wise so far is some kind of a panel with a list of apps and volume sliders. I'm wondering if the idea came up to add a volume slider to individual window title bars, control boxes or some other location so that if I want to control an apps volume I can always find the fader in the same spot without having to find it in the one big panel. Just an idea, obviously I have no first-hand knowledge of how the UI works so what you've come up with may actually work better...

re: Windows Audio Quality Enhancements

Dave Smith — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 02:35:18 GMT

Off topic, but someone has to fix Windows Media Player to be 100% noise-less between track transitions. I still hear a slight tick intermittantly with WMA and WMA Lossless, and it shouldn't be happening at all... especially on Vista.

Also, support of gapless MP3 would be nice, too, using the LAME MP3 Xing header enc_delay & enc_padding to compensate.

re: Windows Audio Quality Enhancements

Sudarshan — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 17:13:01 GMT

Larry
This comment has got nothing to do with this particular blog. But i want to know if you know anyother 20+ year people at microsoft with a blog. The age and experience defintely adds wisdom and i want to read more of you guys.
Thanks
Sudarshan

re: Windows Audio Quality Enhancements

TC — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 10:09:52 GMT

Sudarshan, here's another one:

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing">http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing

I only recently found out about these blogs. I have gone back through a few of them, and read everything they've ever written. This is a good investment of time IMHO.

Another approach is to open http://blogs.msdn.com (the generic URL) daily, and see what comes up there.

Larry Osterman s WebLog Windows Audio Quality Enhancements | Outdoor Ceiling Fans

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Larry Osterman s WebLog Windows Audio Quality Enhancements | Cellulite Creams

Larry Osterman s WebLog Windows Audio Quality Enhancements | Cellulite Creams — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 06:15:14 GMT

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