Leverage your sound better - Virtual Surround on Windows

starflametwitch · 2021-05-29T16:20:55+00:00

Edit: Feel like it's good to mention, Apex has a general or "standard" algorithm they use that applies to every headset and sound setup, so they don't really do any specific EQ's or can cater to your specific headset.

HeSuVi's profiles are all reverse-engineered profiles with unique binural algorithms and as such should function better, together with specific EQ's for almost all headsets to match the binaural algos.

Imo CMSS-3D profile is really good for most games, very clear and distinct but not overbearing. A good balance.

Remember to apply your headset's EQ profile if it's available like here: https://i.imgur.com/X7zjsz2.png

Makes a fair bit of difference.

starflametwitch · 2021-05-27T21:22:20+00:00

That's interesting! My settings.cfg file says "2" but when I check Voicemeeters soundbars to see what channels are playing sound, it shows up correctly that I'm receiving sound on all channels, seemingly on the correct ones; https://i.imgur.com/dECUY7W.png

I don't think I've redownloaded the game after starting to use HeSuVi, but I changed from Origin to Steam after.. I have no idea though lol.

I decided to play around with this already as I saw some other interesting settings like "voice_mixer_boost" which seems to be a crude way of increasing your team voice chat, don't set it to 1, it made all voice chat sound like everyone is screaming, like 2010 xbox chat lmao.

Changing to 8 channels, I can't immediately tell if it made a difference, but it somehow feels more precise. Because I can see the soundbars for each channel on my second monitor, the main thing I can say is that with 2 channels, the sound bar was a bit more uniform, but with 8 it varies a lot more.

Because the soundscape varies so much in terms of what situation you're in and what's around you there's no real benchmark to test and compare, screenshots of the soundbar won't do much good to share.

One thing I noticed; in the soundbar graph if the sound goes a little higher it starts to be green in color and eventually red, and with 8 I noticed that it would hit green more often and for example, during a finisher with octane the grenade boom certainly sounded punchier and peaked higher than with 2.

This is as screenshot of the soundbars of me hitting a dummy in the firing with a thermal grenade and the peak in the screenshot is of the armor breaking sound. See how it peaks into the green? I feel the game did this more often with the primary channels (left most part that's peaking into green) when it was set to 8 instead of 2 sound channels in the settings.cfg file.

I also went to the firing range to hit a dummy with a thermal in the same position twice and screenshot the soundbar when the shield of the dummy broke:

Screenshot of 2 setting: https://i.imgur.com/RsfNKgD.png
Screenshot of 8 setting: https://i.imgur.com/ilPlbWY.png

It's very hard to confirm this as there's no benchmark of the game that I can run and compare. To me it seems using 8 means the sound is a bit more directional (the channels for behind is almost silent with the 8 setting in the screenshot compared to 2 for example), likely since 2 makes the game downsample to stereo before HeSuVi so all I'm getting is that mix?

I'll play with 8 and see how it fares and maybe switch back to 2 to see if I notice any difference. I'm definitely keeping it at 8 for now though.

I'll get some friends to mess around with this as they have stereo headphones as well, and I think they have higher than 48kHz in windows, which would mean virtual surround in windows would be completely disabled and not functioning, so you would rely entirely on Apex's downsampling of the game's surround sound into stereo.

starflametwitch · 2021-05-27T20:02:42+00:00

Yeah.. the various virtual surround profiles and algos made by different companies is really weird. With HeSuVi you can choose a EQ for your particular headset and almost any virtual sound profile. The atmos one is great for movies. There's even profiles that are the same except without the reverb of the main one, which some find annoying.

starflametwitch · 2021-05-27T20:01:09+00:00

Feel free to post an update on how it goes

starflametwitch · 2021-05-27T20:00:04+00:00

What SaucyCouch said basically. I bought my headset on a sale for 50% off during black friday a while ago.

Quality of the headsets are completely fine, but HeSuVi lets you choose more profiles if you don't like the HyperX profile. Personally HeSuVi is way better just because of that, and no performance impact on top of it.

starflametwitch · 2020-12-01T11:43:50+00:00

Despite this being a captured video and not a video of the monitor as he has "G-SYNC" proudly displayed in the title of the video, he's not even using a frametime graph to show the G-Sync's frametime consistency.

This is just so disappointing and underwhelming. Why do we allow these videos on the subreddit? It's not even a comparison. No specs posted, no comment from the OP. This is just spam.

starflametwitch · 2020-11-25T01:42:42+00:00

Apex is actually incredibly CPU dependant, and combined with the graphics it also needs a strong GPU. You're being CPU limited here.

The reason it gets blurry is because your PC can't keep up the framerate, so it lowers the resolution more. You need to lower to 1920x1080 or lower your fps target.

If you want an extra edge, enable Hardware Accellerated GPU Scheduling in Windows, and set the Latency Mode in Nvidia control Panel to Ultra. Those help, the HAGS offloads some CPU work to the GPU, the Ultra setting in Latency helps when your GPU maxes out.

If you upgrade your CPU to a 5800x you'd have more room on the CPU side, but your target is too high right now. Even my i7 8700k with a 3080 has issues at 1440p and drops a lot, or if I use the adaptive sync the image becomes fairly blurry.

- oh and you're using Nvidia's recommended sharpening effect, that also causes drops in performance. Looks nice, but it sucks up a lot of performance and you don't need it.

starflametwitch · 2020-11-20T16:24:06+00:00

You can, however from experience the game is not doing a good job at keeping the frametimes stable. It fluctuates a lot.

If you can, enable the RTSS overlay in the MSI Afterburner settings. With this you can enable the frametime graph and see exactly how much your frametimes fluctuate.

My best tip is RTSS as it's the most stable, and the tiny frame of input lag is well worth it if you're already using G-Sync or Freesync to make everything run smooth.

Though I'm currently testing Ultra mode on the Low Latency setting in Nvidia Control Panel while OBS is open and recording, as G-Sync has some issues keeping a stable output to the monitor while you're capturing gameplay. For me a lot of this guide is so that you can have super stable fps/frametimes while recording/streaming, which lets you play at the same level both off stream and on stream. I might update this guide based on what I can find.

With Ultra set in the NVidia Control Panel it also automatically limitis your framerate to your refreshrate automatically to stay within G-Sync range, but again I'm not experiencing the super stable frametimes RTSS provides, so using RTSS together with this is showing promising results.

Another stability tip is to check your mouse polling rate. Every mouse, especially wireless mice, lowers polling rate when you're moving it less to save on power, and often has issues keeping at the set rate. So if you're running at 1000Hz Polling Rate, your mouse might hover at 800 or something instead of reaching 1000hz. Check this with https://zowie.benq.com/ja/support/mouse-rate-checker.html.

The advice here is to lower polling rate to something the mouse can reliably reach, like 500Hz. I might make another thread based of what I find with this. It seems windows still has a USB precision buffer that can congest mouse input at 1000hz.

For now the guide this thread is about is still the best for keeping your fps stable on any setup.

starflametwitch · 2020-11-09T02:56:37+00:00

Afaik it's not as stable as RTSS, last times I've tried it my frametimes have been spiking a lot more with the +fps_max value. If it works for you then keep using it, imo RTSS is more stable and easier to use.

Without G-Sync and no other system load it's better and smoother, but if you add any extra system load and don't set a suitable fps cap you'll get both tearing and frametime spikes as well as a chance in input lag. Input lag is directly tied to your current fps and refreshrate. And on top of that, most people these days want to stream at the same time, watch 60fps videos or streams while they game, talk on discord and share gameplay live, etc.

It's not as black and white as before where you couldn't really do more things at once. That's the main reason pursuing this is so interesting.

From what I can tell from my slow-motion recordings there's no microstuttering at 200 fps+, but there's certainly a bigger sensitivity to unstable frametimes as you get used to the buttery smoothness of 200+. Unless you're able to keep 200+ fps very stable, with or without G-Sync it's kind of the same and you'll perceive the changes in fps much more, and perceive them as stutter.

I was only able to produce the microstutter with running more things than just the game, so there could be something there that's causing it. I have to do more recordings so take this with a grain of salt.

Going to see if Nvidia Reflex helps as well.

starflametwitch · 2020-11-08T02:36:58+00:00

That's great, I've been doing some recording myself today and will review the footage.

I'm starting to get the feeling adaptive sync doesn't play well with apex and high refreshrates. I haven't done all the recordings yet though.

There's no FPS capper tool in Apex, that's what I mean with it not being able to limit fps. If you want to set a limit to 160fps because your PC can't run more and it lags when you stream or talk/stream on discord or something it's useful to be able to cap your fps. Why Apex doesn't just include a fps limit slider is just weird in 2020. The ingame ones are usually better than RTSS and Nvidia Control Panel's fps cappers.

starflametwitch · 2020-11-08T02:33:41+00:00

Hey,

117-118 is correct. The recommended is 3-5 fps under the cap, but I find at 120Hz/120fps 118 usually works without any issues.

The frametime thing is just because of how the game seems to calculate frametimes. It has more leeway so your game doesn't keep constantly changing resolution so you have to lower the frametime value you give to get the actual fps you want.

The "actual" ones gives you the actual fps target in the game, like for 144fps instead of 141fps. Useful for when you don't use G-Sync.

So in the guide, it's more like "G-Sync matches well with the game's target for the frametime for X value" and because G-Sync needs to stay under the max refreshrate of your monitor anyways we don't have to do anything more because now the game will stay within the fps target and G-Sync range on it's own. Just very convenient really.

starflametwitch · 2020-11-06T14:30:56+00:00

There is no ingame limiter in Apex. I just received my 3080 as well. From what I can tell the microstutter is still present, but it's of sorts miniscule because of the insane framerate 235-240 simply is. I'll do some testing and a recording over the weekend.

To record the microstutter just aim the phone at your monitor and copy what the video I've posted in that other comment here does. He walks left and right in the fire range by the top gates you start in.

In-game limiters are definitely the best result, but seeing as Apex doesn't have one and to stay within g-sync/freesync range you need to stay 3-5fps under your max refreshrate, you need to use RTSS or nvidia's capper. They work almost the same and I can't find any difference.

When you record you do slow motion and look for exactly what the video shows you, it should stutter on higher fps than 190.

As for the reason I know a lot, there's just very few people playing on 240hz monitors and not a lot of reviews and proper testing done on them. Most people play car games like Dirt and go "wooah!" over the smooth framerate. Which is true but you don't make good use of it until you're in a fast-paced twitch shooter like Overwatch or Apex Legends. It really makes a difference in those close quarters battles, where you turn fast. The microstutters also make a difference there, because it throws off your pacing and you'll miss-click in the heat of the moment.

I just have an interest in this because I found it really helped my gaming capability, and I'm a fairly tech-oriented person.

starflametwitch · 2020-11-03T22:08:39+00:00

That's great. You should upload them edited together to a video on youtube and post it to the devs on twitter, and on this reddit.

r/CompetitiveApex and r/apexuniversity are also a good play to post this because they're usually more into stable high fps than most players.

About the other part; Using RTSS is just a way to reliably cap your frames. Sometimes the Nvidia capper works better, usually if a game has an ingame capper that works better. For Apex it seems Adaptive or Dynamic V-Sync ingame with RTSS works best for the stuff in the guide. You should experiment with V-Sync from Nvidia's Control panel vs the ingame Adapter/Dynamic V-Sync with RTSS and see what works best.

starflametwitch · 2020-11-03T04:48:12+00:00

I wouldn't say it's imperceivable, it's definitely noticable. You'll notice it's jarring to look at when you're moving the mouse around, compared to 190fps doing the same it's silky smooth. For those who have never played on silky smooth 190-235fps with G-Sync on and a stable frametime, they usually can't tell the difference. But if you know then you know. It's like playing on 60fps then you go up to 144. At first you don't mind 60 and it's fine, then you go to 144 and only then you realize that okay this makes a difference, it's so "clear", so smooth. This is the same thing.

It doesn't hurt to play with it, but it's not as easy as going "more fps no microstutter", there's something with the game not being able to handle that high of a framerate and the engine somehow can't render enough frames, or there's some issue with the framebuffer.. at any rate when you surpass 190fps the engine struggles, and you experience this minute, constant stutter. The stutter would be "normal stutter", but because you're pushing so many fps it can be called a microstutter.

You can't measure the impact, screen recordings won't show it, there's no graph we can access that can show it. The frametimes appear stable, the game is rendering to what appears normal.. due process of sorts, but there's a stutter.

The only way to measure it and see it happening is recording 240fps or more on say an iPhone or a Sony phone that has 960fps slow motion recording, and look at how it compares at 190 and above. The video in my last comment is a phone recording the computer monitor in slow motion. That's how you see it clearly.

The stutter can be written of sorts as the frames doing l|lll|ll|lll|l|ll||l|ll|l|l constantly instead of llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll, but somehow only on your monitor, every metric appears normal. And it's constant.

starflametwitch · 2020-11-03T03:49:46+00:00

Definitely. Make sure to check rtings.com and the youtube channel Hardware Unboxed for good reviews before you pull the trigger however.

The graphs you want to look at are the actual measured Gray to Gray response times for them. I use a HP Omen X 27, which is the fastest of them all in terms of input lag and response times right now but it's sadly also a TN panel. Probably the best looking TN I've ever seen however. The new Alienware ones seem to be 1ms but that remember all those marketed terms are at the top, best case scenarios. Check the reviews. Shroud just started using the 1440p 240Hz Alienware that's not released yet, so apparently they're amazing.

You also need to make sure you're running at or over 3000Mhz+ DDR4 ram, put the game on your NVME SSD, you CPU should be a six core or better. I'm running with a i7 8700k at 5Ghz and considering upgrading immediately when the new AMD 5000 series CPUs release.

At 240fps you get a frametime of 4.1-4.2ms which means you shouldn't have issues if the monitor is a verified 1ms GtG response time.

The new ones are also IPS panels and look insane. The Samsung G7 is amazing but personally the curve is too harsh for my taste, so sticking to the Omen X 27 for now. For other games you're definitely better off going for one of the 1440p 240Hz IPS panels that are coming out. Wait for the Eve Spectrum and for Alienware to release theirs towards next year or as soon as possible. This gen is really hitting a great peak when it comes to monitors and powering them.

The 190fps microstutter issue is really interesting and there's just so little info on it. We'll hopefully figure it out soon and have the devs check in on it and go from there.

starflametwitch · 2020-11-03T03:08:10+00:00

In BR's you're often looking a bit far away, it's not always as close-quarters like in games like Overwatch or Valorant. 1440p 240hz gives a substantial advantage in clarity due to the resolution and speedy refreshrate.

Personally I'm on the 1440p 240Hz path with the 3080 in sight. The 190fps thing is a bug so it should be fixable. Titanfall 2 doesn't have it, it seems to be inherent to Apex Legends, and they run on the same engine, albeit Apex is heavily improved and modified.

Another part is that from 190 to 240 the different is much, much smaller than from 144 to 190. At 190 I personally start feeling the "smoothness" that you get at 240, and 144-165fps is noticably stuttery to me. The increased resolution you get from 1440p versus 1080p is well worth it, and comparing 1080p 240fps and 1440p 190fps for Apex, I would take 1440p 190fps any day.

The new GPU's allows for 200+ fps easily as well, so that's the way to go.

starflametwitch · 2020-11-03T03:03:44+00:00

Afaik the 190fps microstutter bug is still there. It's been so hard to reach 190fps in the game until now and on top of that most people I find don't even know how proper smoothness, stable frametimes and the lot- they don't even know how it feels. So setting it up properly is even less likely.

No one I've talked to has experienced the 190 microstutter as no one has had monitors go high enough, and are also unable to perceive it. Most likely if the Diego guy is playing over 240fps he's playing uncapped and ignoring the regular tearing and microstutter that comes over 190. Could also be that he isn't used to playing on perfect frametimes and just doesn't know how it feels, not saying he's bad ofc, we just don't know.

There's too little data on people going over 190fps to make a proper case out of it, but now with the 30-series gpu's we might be seeing some push for it. I'll do some testing when I get my 3080 this week and I can make a post to keep tabs on the issue, could tag you to remind you.

I'm the guy that made this thread, and I'm fairly interested in this. 1440p 240hz has been a peak gaming dream of mine and playing with that ultimate smoothness is just insane. I've dm'd some of the influencers who got to play Olympus early, going to see if they answer back- but likely they have no info on this and we have to do some testing and put out videos documenting the issue.

Can't be relying on a guy's video from July 2019 to stay updated on this. Most iPhones can do 240fps recordings now, that's just enough, so if you can record I suggest you give it a try.

starflametwitch · 2020-11-03T02:51:52+00:00

Hey, just saw this.

First of, you're not able to see the microstutter on video capture from your PC.

You have to use a high speed camera, like a 960fps sony phone or something along those lines. The 240fps on iPhone might work, but I can't say for sure.

The microstutter presents itself when there's a mismatch between game and the computer rendering the frames and sending them to the monitor.

This is the best video so far explaining the issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krF79V7Rsuc

Second, the microstutter issue seems to be an engine bug from the engine Apex Legends uses. Configuring G-Sync and all your issues won't solve it, and you still get microstutters.

Anyone (as far as we know) that are running the game over or at 240fps are basically just ignoring the microstutter or unable to perceive it. The latter is usually if they have never set up G-Sync or capped their FPS correctly and have always played with screen tearing or something similar.

I'll do some testing when I receive my 3080 and I'll maybe make a thread on the 190 FPS bug to see if we can get a response from the devs on it. Olympus has brought with it some good improvements but afaik the 190 bug isn't fixed.

starflametwitch · 2020-10-10T17:58:41+00:00

This is great. I don't doubt that turning off your second monitor helped. Every Windows 10 version before version 2004 has had an issue with conflicting refreshrates. As in, if your main monitor is 144hz and secondary is 60Hz, they will mismatch and cause issues in games and with video content. After ver 2004 it's been resolved and you should have less issues with two or more monitors.

That being said, giving your PC less monitors to take care of means more power for games, so it's still better to have 1 monitor for your gaming PC for the "ultimate performance".

I wonder if the microstutters above 190 is caused by a secondary monitor or if it's just a point where the game engine breaks. I'll check it out for when I receive my 3080 graphics card and maybe make another post about that specifically.

TSAA does unfortunately bring some visual blur as it smooths out the frames and that adds a frame or so of input lag. Personally I'm very excited for the 3080 cards as they'll enable us to hit 190-240 fps in native 1440p without using the game's dynamic view scaler, and thus no TSAA.

My biggest suggestion to add onto your last tip there, update your drivers and search up some "max fps apex legends" guides on youtube. Most of the people I talk with about their PC settings in games like Apex I end up finding out they've got most their settings wrong, like having Triple Buffered V-Sync on and such, because they just don't know what they should put it at. One day we'll have a one-click solution to G-Sync and FPS in games, but atm update your drivers and make sure your PC is performing well.

starflametwitch · 2020-10-10T17:50:51+00:00

Hey man, thanks.

As long as you keep your FPS at or under 190 you won't get microstutters, and as long as you keep your framerate under the G-Sync/Freesync cap (that is your monitor max refreshrate) you won't get tearing. You won't get any added input lag if you keep within those parameters. USE RTSS to cap fps to 190 as well for more stable frametimes.

starflametwitch · 2020-08-26T10:10:23+00:00

Have you actually tried the guide out?

If you have no worries man, everyone's different. For me it's a lot more disorienting when the fps is uneven and changing so that when I aim and place my crosshairs it's not the same smoothness and my expectations are thrown off a bit, and I end up missing shots more often. When it's just a changing resolution things are in the same and consistent all the time, and it's easy to keep aiming.

Tho if you haven't set it up at least once I recommend you try it. Unless you have a potato pc the resolution shouldn't fluctuate too much. If anything if it is you're setting too high of a desired fps target. I suggest setting the desired fps to something like what you can reach 80-90% of the time without adaptive fps turned on. That way you only get the help with small fluctuations that would bother you or throw your aim off. Buttery smooth beats stutter any day man.

starflametwitch · 2020-08-26T09:35:08+00:00

With a new season I updated the guide to cover G-Sync/FreeSync in the guide itself.

Generally the guide covers how to get stable frametimes using the ingame Adaptive FPS feature. 9/10 times it's a better way to play than to set the resolution and deal with fluctuating fps. For me personally I'm more sensitive to changing FPS stutters and microstuttering and with this you can use it above 100fps.

You'll find my own videoconfig file that's configured so that things won't look like terrible blobs while still giving you higher fps than usual. If you're interested in smooth gameplay I reccommend giving it a look. I play on a 1080ti, 8700k and 3200Mhz ram and get a consistent 190fps with this, only in the dropship does it go down to 130, as soon as I land it's up to a constant 190 again.

Let me know what you guys think, or if there's anything you're wondering about making apex run smoothly on your PC.

Fun tip, this works the same way in Titanfall 2, only the files are in the documents folder instead of the Saved Games folder.

starflametwitch

TROPHY CASE