Dolby Podcast Episode 3, December 7, 2006
What surround sound brings to video games: Matt Tullis from Dolby’s Games group talks about how surround sound works in video games, how gamers can best experience surround sound and a little about the history of video gaming surround sound. Listener, Aaron, finds out how to connect his Toshiba HD DVD player to his AV receiver.
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Mentioned in this Episode
Jack Buser: Hello, and welcome to Dolbycast, the insider's guide to entertainment technology from the experts at Dolby Laboratories. I'm Jack Buser...
Craig Eggers: And I'm Craig Eggers...
Jack: And we're here to give you the straight talk on everything you need to please your ears.
[music]
Jack: And we're back again. Welcome, listeners, to Dolbycast...
Craig: Dolbycast...
Jack: So, Craig, how are you doing today? It has been a while.
Craig: It's been a while, Jack. How you doing, man?
Jack: I'm doing great. Actually, I've been doing my holiday shopping. As we record this particular episode, it is right before the holiday season. The shopping rush is on, and there's tons of new gear out there. I've got to tell you...
Craig: Lots of new gear. I had a great Thanksgiving weekend. We went up to Yosemite, and it was absolutely incredible.
Jack: That sounds fantastic.
Craig: The stars up there are just so bright, and the only thing we missed was the snow. That would have gotten us in the holiday spirit big time.
Jack: That's one thing about San Francisco . It doesn't really snow here...
Craig: We don't really get that. Snow and thunderstorms; those are the 2 things I miss from the Midwest .
Jack: I went to the University of Illinois for 4 years. I got my fair share of snow there, so...
Craig: And tornadoes.
Jack: That is true.
Craig: [whoosh]
Jack: We're back to the Dolbycast, and let me tell you, it is an exciting time; tons of new gear. We've been getting some great listener questions in. Today's topic is actually going to be focused around the new game consoles coming out. We're going to be talking about Xbox 360, Playstation 3...
Craig: And we'll be talking to Matt Tullis of our game department, who will also be talking about the new Nintendo product.
Jack: That's right, the Nintendo Wii. We shouldn't forget that. In fact, most of my Thanksgiving break was spent playing the Nintendo Wii.
Craig: You know I believe that.
Jack: Oh, let me tell you, that thing is a lot of fun.
Craig: Cool.
Jack: Before we go there, let's answer our listener question like we always do at...
Craig: We have a listener question?
Jack: We have a listener question. This is actually one of my favorite questions.
Craig: People write in to us!
Jack: Yes! All right!
Craig: That's so cool.
Jack: So here we go. A listener question that comes from Aaron; he says, "I just bought a Toshiba HD DVD player. What is the best way to connect it to my receiver?"
Craig: Great question, Aaron. As you probably know already, because you're already invested in the format, the HD DVD format features Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby True HD. Dolby True HD being our lossless technology, Dolby Digital Plus being our high resolution lossy technology.
In the case of the Toshiba player, it actually performs decoding inside the player of both technologies. To get the very best performance out of your player, you'll want to connect it one of two ways. Directly out the HDMI output of the player to your connected AV receiver...
Jack: If you have HDMI on your receiver.
Craig: Precisely. And it could be HDMI 1.1, 1.2, or some future HDMI that's coming out. If you do that, you have the advantage of being able to utilize the resources inside your AV receiver, particularly bass management, which we talked about in a prior podcast, as well as DSP functionality. If you've got a 5.1 signal, you can apply Dolby Pro Logic IIX to that and actually have an immersive 7.1 sound field.
Jack: HDMI is really the best way to go, if you have the choice. If you have the luxury of having HDMI on your receiver, and you have one of these new Toshiba HD DVD players, you definitely want to go HDMI, if you can.
Craig: The second best choice is to utilize the analog audio outputs on the back of the Toshiba. Connect them to the external audio input on your AV receiver. Most AV receivers built in the last 3 or 4 years actually have a 5.1 or 7.1 external audio input.
Jack: It will look like 5 or 6 RCA jacks.
Craig: Exactly. So, you go directly from the Toshiba “in” to your external in on your AV receiver. You select the external “in” on your AV receiver. The only negative of that, if there is a negative, because you're getting full bandwidth performance... The only real negative is traditionally, when you go into the external in on an AV receiver, you don't have bass management at your disposal, or the other DSP functionality.
Jack: Some receivers will; some receivers won't. It really is luck of the draw, depending on what your receiver is. But for folks with older receivers, I always drive home the point; it's just fine to connect those multi-channel analog “outs” on one of these new HD DVD players because you're going to be able to experience the full bandwidth, the full resolution of both Dolby True HD and Dolby Digital Plus.
Craig: Exactly, and some of the new next generation players actually do bass management inside the player before they send the signal out the external “outs”.
Jack: So there you have it Aaron; the best way to connect it—HDMI. If you don't have HDMI you always can connect to multi-channel analog “outs”. If you don't have that, of course there is always S/PDIF, the TOSLINK or optical output of your player. You can connect it just the same way you connected your old DVD player way back when. But only do that if you can't do the multi-channel analog or the HDMI.
Craig: Precisely. The best performance is going to come out the analog or the HDMI.
Jack: All Right. Well we're going to go to a musical break. When we come back we're going to have Matt Tullis from Dolby's ame group. We're going to be talking about the new Sony PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii. We'll be right back.
[music]
Announcer: If you have questions for the experts at Dolby Laboratories, email us at dolbycast@dolby.com. For more information and links pertaining to today's topic, be sure to log on to dolby.com/dolbycast.
Craig: And back at Dolbycast we're here with a very, very special guest today—Mr. Matthew Tullis, who is our Product Manager for our Games group here in Dolby Laboratories. Welcome, Matthew.
Matt Tullis: Well, thank you very much. Hello Craig, hello Jack. How are you guys doing today?
Jack: Doing great.
Craig: We're doing great. I think it should be noted for our audience, Jack, that you we're actually one of the founding members of the Games group here at Dolby, and you had a lot of influence in getting Dolby technologies into games.
Jack: I spent lots of years in the game group. Actually, Matt and I worked together for quite a long time. Now I'm doing a lot of other stuff along with games. I've got to say though, there'll always be a special place in my heart for games and surround sound, and I've got to say.
Craig: So let me tell you guys something. I'm the original gamer. I am the original gamer. I remember when I was a little kid sneaking into the rock and roll bars back in Cincinnati, and I actually played Pong. I'm sure none of you guys here have never played Pong.
Jack: I've played Pong!
Matt: I played Pong.
Jack: I dominated Pong.
[laughter]
Craig: Then I remember in the rock and roll days when I was actually on stage and playing and taking breaks, all of my quarters went into the Centipede machine.
Jack: Oh, I love Centipede. Oh yeah.
Craig: That was big. But the capitalist dream, the game that I just admired the most was a game called Lunar Lander.
Jack: Oh, yeah.
Craig: Because as you advanced in this game, the gravity became stronger. And the only way you could counteract the effects of the gravity was to put more quarters into the machine to get more fuel! And now you burn more fuel, so, you know.
Jack: Craig, I got to tell you, some time has passed since those days.
Craig: Just a little time.
Jack: Today's games are supporting 1080p video resolution, Dolby Digital surround sound. I tell you what; you of course have been playing some recent games on Xbox 360 yourself.
Craig: I have to tell you something—a little secret. Mr. Tullis is like Mr. Gamer here at Dolby, but yours truly beat him the first time I ever played Madden football.
[laughter]
Jack: Is that right. All right, here it is.
Matt: Yeah, we played a little Madden back at CEDIA, Craig. I was taking it easy on him but then he came through in the end, and he ended up winning.
Craig: That was my first exposure to really the promise of Dolby in games. I mean sitting in that theater at CEDIA was like sitting in a stadium. With the whole 5.1 surround sound and the subwoofer, when these guys hit each other, you could actually feel it. But it was like being down in the stadium playing with these guys.
Matt: Yeah, that's really what Dolby surround sound brings to the video games. It puts you in the middle of the action. When you're playing a game like Madden you feel like you're out there on the field, the crowd's going crazy around you, you've got the bone-crunching hits. You play basketball, you play any sports game, you really feel like you're going to be in the middle of the action. It's one of the truly great things about surround sound in sports games.
Jack: I remember back when we first started really doing Dolby sound in games, we spent a lot of time really evangelizing the importance of sound in games and what sound could bring. But do you feel that gamers' attitudes have really changed towards sound in games these days?
Matt: Yeah. Initially it was something new for the game space—surround sound. And now, as you've seen over the past generation, between the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox, and the Gamecube, you really saw surround sound become kind of the de facto standard for all video games. It was originally only first-person shooters, certain cinematic games wanted to take advantage of surround sound, and now, you'll see that all 10 of the top 10-selling games of the past year supported Dolby surround sound in some way.
Craig: Here's something I'm fascinated by, and Jack, you've said this before many times to me: a video game is like a movie, only the ending changes every time -
Jack: [laughs] Yeah, that's right.
Craig: - and what I'm fascinated by is, when you create a movie, you've got basically a linear production. It seems to me that when you put surround sound in video games that you really have to put a lot of work into it, because there's a tremendous amount of interactivity and a lot of branching that actually goes on when you're playing a video game. Is that right?
Matt: Yeah, definitely. I mean, when you watch a movie, you have a director who's going to say, “OK, we want this flyover, and this helicopter to come from here to here, at this time”, and then your sound engineer can go do that, right there, as the director wants him to do it. When you're playing a video game, the director now is the player, the guy with the controller in his hand -
Jack: That's right.
Matt: - and really, you don't know until that player looks to the right or looks to the left - you can't do that mix. So the way the game developers have done this is they've put in some really intelligent mixers in the game that are able to pan real-time sound effects all around you.
Jack: It's as if you have an artificially intelligent mixing engineer written in code inside these game consoles. It's actually mixing the game on the fly.
Matt: Yeah, exactly.
Jack: It's a whole different art form.
Craig: It is.
Jack: But it's just amazing to me how much they can get these games to actually sound like Hollywood movies today.
Matt: Yeah, I mean, as you see now, the budgets are getting bigger in video games, a lot more is being spent on the audio as game publishers realize how much the gamers themselves demand this high-quality audio. Games like Halo 2 have been given rave reviews based upon the audio. You even have audio-based games now like Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero 2.
Jack: Oh yeah, Guitar Hero, love that game!
Craig: Is it good? Cool?
Jack: Oh man, it's cool.
Craig: So anyway, I understand a big thing in the gaming community now is this online thing. I've got a bunch of friends that spend whole evenings fighting battles with people, I guess, around the world, doing online stuff, and from what I understand, if you're playing online, if you've got surround sound, and if you've got a surround sound system, you've actually got an advantage over some of your competitors.
Matt: That is right on, Craig.
Jack: [laughs]
Matt: I can say for myself that I've been playing a lot of Gears of War lately; it's the hot new game out for the XBox 360 -
Jack: Love that game.
Matt: The game's incredible. I play online, and really, when that guy starts up his chainsaw gun from behind you, you hear it on your surround speakers; you hear that "vroom, vroom, vroom" -
Jack: You don't even see it on TV.
Matt: You can't even see it, but all of a sudden you hear that surround sound - that chainsaw is coming for you, you better be ready for it.
Jack: That's right!
Matt: So it gives you a definite advantage, that you can hear people coming up from behind you. That's the point we point out a lot about first-person shooters, you get ultra-competitive people out there want to do as best as they can, and they have their ranks on the various leader boards, and really, if you're playing on a stereo TV, you're not going to get that advantage of hearing other people trying to sneak up on you from behind.
Jack: G ot to get that Dolby sound!
Craig: Cool. So there's a lot of Dolby technology that's within the games, and we'll talk about that in a future segment coming up here, but before we even go there, how did you get involved in all this?
Matt: Well, I basically started working for my good friend here, Jack Buser, almost directly out of school, in the Games group - I was handling -
Craig: I should know, Jack's got a smile from ear to ear -
Jack: [laughs]
Matt: Yeah, so I basically started out doing developer support, and just working with the developers, helping them implement surround sound, because at the beginning, it was kind of like, "What do we do with the center channel?”, “what do we do with the other feed?"; there was a lot of questioning. So it was working with the developers, so they understand the tools that surround sound can provide them, and then I worked with them to get the best possible experience.
Jack: Man, those early days of when Matt first came in, we spent a lot of time actually working with the people that made the games themselves, and today you actually have game consoles themselves have the Dolby technology actually built into the console, and that's what we're going to talk about when we come back, we're going to talk about the Sony PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii, we're going to be talking about all the great audio technology that's actually built into these consoles today.
[music starts up]
Craig: Back in just a moment.
[music]
Craig: Back here at Dolbycast, I'm Craig Eggers.
Jack: And I'm Jack Buser.
Craig: And we have a special guest with us, Mr. Matthew Tullis of our Games division here at Dolby.
Matt: That's right, what's going on?
Jack: "Wii" are back! [laughter] And that's actually our first topic -
Craig: [in background] He stole my line.
[laughter]
Jack: I know I couldn't help it.
[laughter]
Craig: I told him, I said, "That's how I'm going to open up the podcast" and you stole my line.
Matt: I couldn't help it, it was too good.
Craig: I don't believe it.
Jack: "Wii" are back! And I got to tell you, that's what I spent my entire Thanksgiving break doing, playing the new Nintendo Wii! How fun is the Wii?
Matt: It's pretty cool, it's pretty cool. It's got the innovative new controller, you know, it's the talk of the town right now, selling out -
Jack: It really is?
Matt: - 6,000 already sold.
Jack: So, Craig, I don't know if you've played the Wii yet, but let me describe it: Nintendo Wii is a little bit of a different game console, in that it doesn't use the standard game controllers that you might be used to. It actually has something that looks a little bit like a remote control, and you wave this remote control in front of your TV -
Craig: I heard about that.
Jack: Yeah, that's right, so if you're playing baseball, you swing it like a baseball bat -
Craig: - or golf?
Jack: - golf, yeah, exactly, or bowling even, I got to tell you, it is a lot of fun.
Craig: Interesting.
Matt: The interesting thing about that controller is that it also has a speaker inside, so it brings this whole new added dimension of the audio into the game -
Jack: I noticed that! That's exactly right! So if you hit the tennis ball with the controller, your controller actually makes a sound as if the tennis ball's hitting it - very cool stuff.
Craig: Very cool. Now I understand that some of the controllers actually vibrate in some of the video games -
Jack: That's exactly right. And again, it's bringing this idea of total immersion, where you really lose yourself in the game, you really forget that you're playing a video game, you feel like you're actually there, and one of the things that we've been talking about this episode is actually Dolby surround sound in these game consoles, and maybe we should just start with the Nintendo Wii, since, you know, it's fresh on everybody's mind; what kind of surround sound is included in the Nintendo?
Matt: So the Nintendo Wii supports Dolby Pro Logic II. That's our matrix surround sound format. And what that allows is, since the Nintendo Wii has an analogue out, it doesn't have a digital out -
Jack: What do you mean, "Analogue out"? You mean an analogue audio out, specifically.
Matt: Yeah, analogue audio out.
Craig: So, left and right stereo.
Matt: Yeah, left and right stereo. So what that allows us to do is encode the games in Dolby Pro Logic II, and then they can be transmitted over a connection receiver and you can get that whole 5.1 experience from your Nintendo Wii.
Craig: So the actual audio starts out as 4 channels. And it's encoded as a 2-channel left-and-right matrix.
Matt: Well, you got to remember this is a little bit different, because it's the video game, so it's actually, we start out with mono sound effects -
Craig: OK.
Matt: - and then the game engine itself, kind of like how we talked about that mixer previously, that game engine actually, on the fly, encodes the audio into a Dolby Pro Logic II signal.
Jack: Yeah, so the games themselves are actually in 3-D space. And then that 3-D sound is then mixed down to the stereo Pro Logic II signal. And then when it gets to the receiver -
Craig: It unlocks it.
Jack: - it's unwrapped into 5.1, or 7.1, or whatever you happen to have. So Pro Logic II, one thing that listeners might want to know about when playing games, you want to make sure your receiver is set up properly - how would you go about doing that?
Matt: Yeah, so Pro Logic II has, in newer receivers, three different modes: it has Movie mode, Music mode, and Game mode. Some of the older Pro Logic II receivers have Movie and Music. What you want to do is, if you have Game mode, seems pretty straightforward -
[laughter]
Matt: - use the Game mode, that's what you want to go with.
Craig: What does the Game mode give you?
Matt: What the Game mode does is, it adds in a - well, let's go back. So the Movie mode - because we started out with Movie and Music - what Movie does - what Movie mode is - that's the most realistic, it -
Craig: It's the widest surround stage.
Matt: Yeah, it's the widest surround stage. It's supposed to represent, you know, what the actual is. The Music mode is more about spreading stereo content and expanding it to the back. The Game mode, what it does, is - because the Movie mode actually drops some of the bass redirection - I know that you guys talked about bass redirection in the previous podcast - usually the sound effects, the low-frequency sound effects from your surround channels, aren't actually redirected to your subwoofer in Movie mode. What Game mode does is, now it actually takes those low-frequency sound effects from that grenade that explodes behind you and it sends it to your subwoofer and really gives you that high level of impact.
Jack: Cool. That's because in games, you have so many sound effects behind you that create bass. Remember, a game, as far as it's concerned, somebody throws a grenade in front of you or behind you, it just depends on where you're standing as to whether it's in your front channels or in your surround channels. So with Game mode, you'll notice when you activate, you'll get a heck of a lot more base, and that's because you have bass coming from all directions actually getting redirected.
[break]
Matt: Yeah, exactly.
Craig: So we've got Pro Logic II in Nintendo. Let's talk about a product that's been out there for almost a year now—Xbox 360.
Jack: Xbox 360! Gears of War! Yeah!
Matt: That's right. That's what I've been playing lately, using that chainsaw. So yeah, so the Xbox 360...
Craig: Wait a minute, so there's a gun with a chainsaw on it? How does that work?
Jack: Don't go there. Don't even go there.
Matt: Yeah.
Jack: Listeners, you're just going to have to play Gears of War if you want to find out what we're talking about.
Craig: A gun with a chain saw.
Jack: Oh man-o-man, I love video games. [laughs]
Matt: That's right. So you've got the Xbox 360. It's kind of a successor to the Xbox. The Xbox was the original console that had Dolby Digital interactive encoding.
Jack: So, what's that mean—Dolby Digital interactive encoding?
Matt: What it does, it takes, as we said earlier, you have these audio assets in the game, the 3D space, and on the fly the Xbox and the Xbox 360 are actually encoding all your assets into a Dolby Digital bitstream. So out the back of your Xbox or Xbox 360 it's just like coming out the back of your DVD player. You're going to get a true Dolby Digital bitstream.
Jack: True Dolby Digital, wow.
Craig: So now if I move to the right and somebody is shooting at me, my whole game perspective changes, doesn't it?
Matt: Yeah, exactly.
Craig: From an audio stage perspective.
Matt: Oh, yeah. Once again, the guy with the controller or the girl with the controller is the director. That's the person who's designing how the scene is going to unfold. So if you look to the left and there's a guy shooting you from the right, now those bullets are going to be whizzing at you from the right-hand side. If you spin around, once again, those bullets are going to start spinning around your room.
Craig: Interesting.
Jack: I've got to say, that's one of the coolest things about playing games with a surround sound system. You know, I had a 5.1 system for years and years and years before the Xbox came out. And when the Xbox came out originally, and now the Xbox 360, when you plug these systems into your home theater system, it really changes what that surround sound system is all about.
Before I hooked up the game system, it was a passive listening experience. You'd put in a movie, you'd watch the movie and it'd sound like a movie theater. But once you plug a game system into a 5.1 system, suddenly it's as if your 5.1 system becomes an interactive sound machine, if you will. I mean it's just really amazing. The first time you turn your character around in a game you hear the entire sound field switch around your head. It's like it's a whole new dimension to home theater. It's totally different than what you're used to.
Craig: Let's not forget the fact that video games are about video. And the reality that is now being brought to that screen with 1080i.
Jack: 1080p, in some cases.
Craig: Precisely.
Jack: Absolutely.
I've got to tell you, the combination of those high definition graphics—1080i, 720p, even 1080p today—and 5.1-channel Dolby sound. I tell you what; you really forget that you're playing a video game.
Matt: This isn't Pong no more.
[laughter]
Jack: Yeah, this isn't Pong no more.
Craig: Yeah, this isn't your father's Pong. OK.
Jack: That's right. So, Xbox 360, obviously we've been talking about Dolby Digital 5.1. Really one of the newest consoles out there right now, and it's getting a lot of coverage out there, is the Sony PlayStation 3.
Craig: Now I have to tell our listeners that a certain person in this room, without standing in line outside for 20 hours in the freezing cold, a certain person in this room walked into a retail store, put on this face that must have been the most agonizing thing I've ever seen, and managed to walk out with a what?
Jack: That's right. That's right. I managed to walk into a retail store.
Craig: A retail store.
Jack: Not too far away from here.
Craig: The manager shall remain nameless.
Jack: And I put on a face like you've never seen before, Craig. I looked so sad. I said, "Do you guys have a PlayStation 3?"
Craig: Yeah, "My child's at home with the flu..."
[laughter]
Jack: He says, "Don't move!" And before I knew it, I was holding a PlayStation 3. I got it just straightforward walking in. So folks, if you're out there looking for a PlayStation 3, don't give up hope. They can be found.
Craig: You know what, Jack. We just lost half of our listeners with that comment. I'm sure they're all mad at you.
Jack: Well listen, the moral of the story is they can be found. So if you're out there looking for one...
Craig: The moral of the story is going in and look like a Sad Sack.
Jack: [laughs]
Craig: And you're going to do well.
Jack: Let's talk a little bit about PlayStation 3. I have been spending a lot of time with it. Matt and I just got done messing around with it some more. They are very powerful machines, supports a variety of different Dolby technologies. This truly does represent a sort of a new level in home theater, if you will.
Matt: The PlayStation 3 is the latest, greatest box out there. It takes in and it has almost every Dolby technology that we have. If you look at it, we have Dolby Digital interactive encoding for the game play. We have a Dolby ProLogic II downmix, if in case you connect it via stereo. We have Dolby TrueHD for the Blu-ray playback. We got Dolby Digital Plus. So this thing is like — look at the side of it, and it has got all these...
Jack: [laughs]
Matt: It looks like a race car. It's got everything that we can throw at it.
Jack: It is fantastic. Really they are positioning this thing as a supercomputer. I hear people talking about, "Man, this thing really is a supercomputer!" And certainly from an audio perspective, this is possibly one of the more powerful devices that have ever been released in terms of sound.
Craig: In a sense, like versatile. I mean, if I have got — basically if I've got a stereo television set, I am going to get 2-channel output. If I have got an older AV receiver with just ProLogic in it, I get surround sound. I got a newer receiver with Dolby Digital decoding inside of it, that's how I get this whole interactive thing.
Jack: That's right.
Craig: And if I invested in Blu-ray movies...
Jack: Dolby TrueHD. You know, this is actually the first Blu-ray player out on the market which supports Dolby TrueHD. It is full 7.1 channel decoding inside the PlayStation 3. So if you buy a receiver today, that just has HDMI, you are good to go, because this player actually does the decoding inside the PlayStation 3.
Craig: And let's remind our listeners what Dolby TrueHD is. It is a 100% lossless audio technology. When you are listening to Dolby TrueHD, you are hearing through your home theater system exactly what the engineer in the studio that was mixing all that sound, actually heard when he or she was performing that task.
Jack: Absolutely identical to the studio master. But since today's topic is games, why don't I talk to our good friend, Matt, here, a little bit about the games and how is the audio performance in these first generation games that are coming out?
Matt: You know the audio in these games is outstanding. I was playing a little bit of Genji, little bit of Resistance: Fall of Man on the PlayStation 3, these games are sounding fantastic. Genji, I have to say, is my personal favorite of the first group of PlayStation 3 games coming out. It sounds great, looks great, really the sound in the game is beautiful; just beautiful sound.
Craig: What's the theme of Genji?
Matt: Genji is an ancient samurai tale, basically. So you are an old guy that... Actually they have a guy with these huge weapons, big clubs. You can switch characters.
Jack: This samurai guy, a big strong guy, with a big old pole that he can whack people with.
Craig: Can he jump over walls and fly through the sky and does all that stuff?
Matt: He can't fly, but he can jump over walls. [laughs]
Jack: This game actually has a very interesting in that you can change the audio perspective inside the game. That is a very interesting idea. Let's talk a little bit about that.
Matt: Yes, one of the things that always comes up when they are designing games; game developers are trying to determine where the microphone will be, so to speak. They are trying to figure out the listener's angle. In a third person game, you have a player that's out in front of the camera and you have the camera. Something can be behind the player, but in front of the camera and you are getting into this grey area of where should the sound pan, should that go behind the player, because it is off the camera or not? So what Genji does is, they put that control in your hands actually, and they allow you to choose the listening point for the game.
Jack: You can actually remix the game, as it were.
Matt: Yeah, exactly. The game is being mixed once again. Now you are stepping a little beyond being the director. You are actually getting to be the sound designer as well. You got to choose how your games going to be...
Jack: Yes, very cool stuff. Matt, thanks so much for coming on today and talking about these great new consoles, it's all really exciting stuff. And I got to say, either of you guys can come over to my house any time, to check out my PlayStation 3. Oh yeah! [laughs]
Matt: Well, thank you, Jack and Craig, it has been a pleasure.
Jack: Alright.
Matt: Truly.
Jack: This is Dolbycast, and this is a bi-weekly podcast brought to you by Dolby Laboratories. We will be back in a couple of weeks with our latest topic. Please, again, send in your questions...
Craig:... to dolbycast@dolby.com.
Jack: That's right, that's Dolbycast, d-o-l-b-y-c-a-s-t...
Craig: One word.
Jack:... at dolby.com, d-o-l-b-y-c-a-s-t@dolby.com. Send in your comments, send in your questions, we will try to answer as many of them on air, as we possibly can, and we will see you in a couple of weeks.
[music]
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