I've been doing a lot of thinking about this with Dolphin 4.0's release impending. One of the severe problem on my PC, and the PCs of my friends is the severe audio latency that afflicts their games. The audio latency on my computer is a whopping 200+ms on dsound, the default audio back-end for Windows machines. It's noticeable, annoying, and there's no way to completely fix it without trying out new hardware.
But, I discovered that xaudio2 nearly cuts that latency in half (bringing it to around 115ms of latency) making it far less noticeable when you're not looking for it.
OpenAL, tested later, ended up somewhere between the two, more toward the 200+ms of dsound than xaudio2. Still helps a little, but really doesn't make the problem less noticeable. Now, here's what I want to ask of people. Can you confirm or test that the PCs having these results are not in the minority? I want to see if there is a legitimate cause to change the default back-end rather than the people who have problems to just swap it. Here's what you'd want to test:
If you don't know how to change audio back-end, go into options/DSP Settings and change back-end.
1: Latency in AX-HLE games in HLE
2: Latency in LLE
3: Crashing in Mario Kart: Double Dash with DSP on thread
If you can't notice a difference, one easy way is to go into a game, and use some kind of recording software, and do an action that plays a sound effect. Examining the recording, either by eye/ears or by software, you can check and see how good or bad your audio latency is. If you don't know exactly when the sound is supposed to play, don't fret; you can still compare back-ends and see which one has less latency.
Any kind of result is useful, you can bring in exact numbers, (say, my 200 dsound vs 120 xaudio vs 180 OpenAL) or just say which one sounds like the least latency, if any have latency at all. I just want to get an idea of how many people are afflicted by this, and if xaudio is a consistently better option. Thanks to all those who took the time to read this and test.
But, I discovered that xaudio2 nearly cuts that latency in half (bringing it to around 115ms of latency) making it far less noticeable when you're not looking for it.
OpenAL, tested later, ended up somewhere between the two, more toward the 200+ms of dsound than xaudio2. Still helps a little, but really doesn't make the problem less noticeable. Now, here's what I want to ask of people. Can you confirm or test that the PCs having these results are not in the minority? I want to see if there is a legitimate cause to change the default back-end rather than the people who have problems to just swap it. Here's what you'd want to test:
If you don't know how to change audio back-end, go into options/DSP Settings and change back-end.
1: Latency in AX-HLE games in HLE
2: Latency in LLE
3: Crashing in Mario Kart: Double Dash with DSP on thread
If you can't notice a difference, one easy way is to go into a game, and use some kind of recording software, and do an action that plays a sound effect. Examining the recording, either by eye/ears or by software, you can check and see how good or bad your audio latency is. If you don't know exactly when the sound is supposed to play, don't fret; you can still compare back-ends and see which one has less latency.
Any kind of result is useful, you can bring in exact numbers, (say, my 200 dsound vs 120 xaudio vs 180 OpenAL) or just say which one sounds like the least latency, if any have latency at all. I just want to get an idea of how many people are afflicted by this, and if xaudio is a consistently better option. Thanks to all those who took the time to read this and test.