News Sony showcases the PlayStation 5

So you managed to not even mention the one game that most people seem to agree looks the most interesting?

 

New new Playstation and XBox consoles pale in comparison:

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Compared they would "pail" in comparison.

 

Looking forward to the Horizon sequel. Hoping '3D Audio' is actually going to include atmos

edit: did some reading and it seems atmos is being rejected for PS5... May have to finally jump ship to xbox if the PS5 doesn't support atmos at all :/

 

The digital edition is much more interesting if they can get it priced correctly

 

Sounds like the audio will be better than atmos and continually worked on which is a good thing, also seems like it will support any setup, obviously remains to be seen/heard

 

You mean more expensive than the one with a drive? I mean, this is Sony we're talking about.

It will be shipped with generic setups for headphones and "later on" it will be brought to more setups. You can send in your head measurements, apparently. Veeeery sceptical about this, tbh.

 

There's always space for better formats but not including established formats is crazy. Nobody is going to have a receiver that understands Sony's new format (because they don't exist, not even from Sony) so it doesn't matter how good it is if it can't be heard. Also, there are no films being released with the new format so the inclusion of the 4k blu ray drive is far less interesting than it had been. Anyone not using the proprietary headphones is going to be stuck outputting sound using PCM, which is what we've had since PS3.

It'll be interesting to see what new details emerge but it's not what I was hoping for so far

 

3D Audio has always required proprietary hardware/software regardless of who it is from, that's just the way it goes another compete standard is an issue, so long as that standard is bringing something then great, your point on bluray though is a fair one, if they don't support the existing standards then they won't be doing bluray movies, so not much point for their new media controller, therefore I'd imagine these standards are going to be there as a matter of course, probably not been validated yet.

Personally I am interested in the headphone/VR side of things for gaming, so I'd but up for their hardware, I am a sucker though, I have been buying all sorts of 3d tech for audio for decades

 

The PS6 probably won't launch until say 2027, plenty of time to launch speakers that support some of the more advanced audio features of the PS5.

 

AIUI Sony's 'format' is not a format.
What they're doing is performing the dowmmix onboard the PS5 itself (as is done with every other surround format already) as well as all the environmental audio processing. The 'clever bit' is that they are also 'onloading' the additional processing for local room audio (or HRTF for headphones) onto the PS5 as well rather than 'offloading' it to the AV receiver as with Atmos, making the Atmos processing redundant.

 

Which is great, it makes a lot of sense to use all that processing power in the PS5 to do the legwork but the audio output still needs to be in some format that receivers, or even soundbars can understand. As far as I am aware, there is nothing better than LPCM for outputting pre-processed multi channel audio but that is limited to 8 channels so 3D audio won't be possible.

Indeed, but why would anyone bother? Film studios are already backing Atmos and DTS:X with hundreds of films already released in these formats and many cinemas upgrading to Atmos standard. A new format from Sony is hardly going to gain traction, particularly if it is does actually require significant processing power. Even if the Sony format did take off, why not include established formats that people can actually make use of now?

To me, this is very cynical feature stripping by Sony to promote their headphones as the only way to enjoy the PS5. Similar to removing the ability to play CD's in the PS4 but actually worse because they are leaving out a burgeoning technology that would widen the appeal.

Probably seems petty to most but unless Sony do a u-turn on this I will likely go xbox for next gen

 

Assuming the PS5 uses HDMI 2.0, you have up to 32 channels of LPCM to play with, as well as on-device compressed streams as with previous consoles.

Atmos at home and Atmos in cinemas are two very different beasts indeed. Home Atmos is effectivel a 7.1 channel downmix with extra offset data (a bit similar to the original Dolby Stareo that used a matrix surround channel form a stereo mix).

The entire point of onboard processing is for it to be output mix agnostic: Whatever number of channels from stereo (or headphones) to My Wallpaper Is Speakers is the mix that gets output. You can output that mix as PCM or as a compressed stream, makes no difference.