Hey audio nerds—DTS on Xbox. (Gaming)

by cheapLEY , Friday, January 08, 2021, 15:14 (1195 days ago)

I bought the license for Dolby Atmos on Xbox whenever it was available, and I’ve been using it ever since. Not enough games truly support it, unfortunately. I’d be lying if I said I understood exactly what it does for games that don’t actually support it (besides changing the profile of some soundscapes—games sounds very different depending on whether I use the base audio codec, Windows Sonic, or Atmos). I know that Atmos for headphones is basically using some trickery to give simulated 3D audio through stereo headphones. It has seemed to work pretty well, even in games without Atmos support (Destiny, for instance), but I don’t have a clue hope it could do that without the game being designed for it.

Well, now there’s another option available on Xbox (has been for a while, apparently, but I just found it)—DTS. It’s $20 for the license. I’m a sucker and an idiot, I guess, because I paid up despite not really understanding exactly what it does.

Despite that ignorance, I do like the sound profile. The Division 2, which has real Atmos support, still sounds better with the new DTS, I think. Destiny also sounds better. I feel like the positional awareness is better, but that may just be wishful thinking. Bass is stronger, but that’s a preference thing for sure. It also has included profiles for something like 500 headsets. I don’t know if that might be enough to explain why it sounds better to me, or if it really is doing something drastically different than Windows Sonic or Atmos.

This is mostly just a post as a heads up for people who might be interested, but I’d also love is someone who knew could actually explain what these things actually do.

I use these both with headphones, but the way, not any real surround sound.