List of games Pre 6th Generation with Surround Sound

[austin532]

Indiana Jones has the Dolby Logo in game, Secret of Mana, Super Castlevania IV, Star Fox, and Star Ocean have supposedly been tested. Nothing is 100% yet although they certainly sound like they are in surround sound.

The rest are games that sound like they have surround sound support to me despite not having an option or Dolby logo for it.

Have you been able to 100% confirm if any game has surround sound whether it be true 3.0/4.0/5.0 or phase mixing? If so I will edit the list by putting confirmed next to the game as well as the method used.

I can confirm that any channel volume settings in the range 80-FF produce out-of-phase sound that the Pro Logic algorithm interprets as being for the rear speakers.
I cannot confirm what games use those volume ranges without a different program, but I haven't gotten any suggestions on what I can use. I don't mind digging through songs for all the theorized games, but I'd like a more objective way of doing it.

Same here, I don't mind going through each game. Which method are you currently using?

[bobrocks95]

Same here, I don't mind going through each game. Which method are you currently using?

I'm using the SPC Player named SPC700 Player, since it's the first one I found that reports volume values. It doesn't seem to update each channel's volume levels in real-time though, and of course you have to sit and listen to each song and watch all the channels to see if one of them spikes higher than 80. I'd much prefer something that can just spit out the full song in some form with all the information needed, but whether or not that exists depends on if someone else found a need for the same thing.

Also, as I've said a couple times in the thread, the only song where I've noticed the volumes spiking above 80 was Stickerbrush Symphony from DKC2. Games that clearly seem to have nice surround mixing through my receiver don't report any of those values, but I've seen close enough values to suspect that the program isn't as accurate as it needs to be for this stuff.

[Einzelherz]

You can add "Tactics Ogre: Let us cling together" to the list. It has a menu option and it produces surround on my setup.

Which version? original Super Famicom, Saturn, or Playstation version?

Yeah that would've been important to mention. SFC.

[jopopoe]

Hello everyone.
Thanks for the info on this topic, it's very useful.

But I am wondering how can you know if a game truly support Dolby Surround or not ?

If I activate Dolby Pro Logic II, I will have sound on my rear speaker, whether the game I play supports Dolby surround or not, no ? Wikipedia seems to indicate that the Dolby Pro Logic II treatment will be applied on any stereo source, not just on sources that contain the matrixes.

(I just tried to activate Dolby Pro Logic II with a stereo CD player plugged into my home-theatre and indeed I had music coming from my rear speakers).

For example, I own Resident Evil 2, a Playstation 1, a dolby pro Logic II compatible home-theatre system. Is there a way to test the game to see if it has indeed "real" dolby surround sound ?

I've chosen this example because the fact that Resident Evil 2 is announced as Dolby Surround compatible on PS1 seems fishy (even if it is also indicated by Mobygames), given that they marketed the Dolby Surround sound as being a novelty of the N64 version.

[austin532]

Not sure how I missed this post but...

I don't think you can without the help of some kind of device or maybe if you digging through the games data. DS, PL, and PL II don't carry "flags" that let the receiver automatically do the decoding as they are just matrixed Stereo.

Yes, but if the game doesn't support any type of surround sound and only supports Stereo it will not sound as good in PL II. At least for me it doesn't. It's like trying take a very tiny piece of pie and splitting it 6 ways. Yes it can be done but it won't be as satisfying.

No, I'm not 100% sure if the PS1 version supports DS. It looks like the N64 version does which is strange.

[jopopoe]

Thank you for your answer

I understand what you are saying, unfortunately I'm not very good at deciding if a game "truly" sounds like a Dolby Surround game or not !

Too bad there is no sure method to know if a game is dolby surround compatible with a 100% certainty !

[BazookaBen]

Yeah, as far as I know, pro-logic receivers will always play some sounds on the rear speakers, even if you just play something that's definitely stereo, like a CD.

So I'm curious about the methodology used to determine whether certain games are in surround sound. Like with Castlevania 4, just because some of the sound effects trigger the rear speakers doesn't mean it's in surround sound.

[austin532]

Thank you for your answer

I understand what you are saying, unfortunately I'm not very good at deciding if a game "truly" sounds like a Dolby Surround game or not !

Too bad there is no sure method to know if a game is dolby surround compatible with a 100% certainty !

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Even if a game supports DS, it won't make that much of a difference compaird to if you were to just turn on PL while playing a Stereo game. DS was pretty neat in it's day but newer surround sound technology like Dolby True HD and DTS Master Audio blow it away.

[Joelepain]

If some of you have already seen some THX calibration tests on DVDs or calibration tests on recent AV receiver, you may have noticed that these tests are doing some phase tests of the speakers.
And you may have noticed that when two speakers are in anti-phase, you can't tell where the sound is coming from, it's diffuse.
The problem is that Dolby Surround/Pro-Logic I/II/a-like technologies are based on this same phenomenom : when the same sound is played on both the left and right channel, but in anti-phase, the decoder redirects this sound on the rear channel.

So I believe that for some old games, maybe the developers tried to do some "cool" sound effect with the little possibilities they had (like producing some anti-phase sounds to make them sound weird), but not necessarily with Dolby Surround in mind. But this effects happened to work with Pro-logic technologies some time later.

I think games that advertise to be "Dolby Surround" compatible have either a soundtrack or cinematics that were specifically mixed with Dolby surround in mind (maybe late snes games and ps1 games), or have a game engine which computes sound localization in 3d and is able to apply some filters to produce a "Dolby Surround compatible" stereo signal (I'm thinking N64 and PS2/GC era).
Don't forget that the n64 has the particularity to not having a sound chip, and sound was computed on it's cpu or "gpu", that's why developpers were able to do "whatever" they could. I don't know if the ps1 sound chip is enough versatile to do this sorts of thing in realtime.

newer surround sound technology like Dolby True HD and DTS Master Audio blow it away.

...and are completely useless for gaming.

[kamiboy]

Personally, if I had an old system hooked up to a surround receiver I would never even consider turning on any ProLogic mode or the like, even if the game supports it. 5 channel stereo would be my only choice.

[BONKERS]

What would define a game as having surround sound if there is no option for it or Dolby Logo present?

The aforementioned back speaker panning, I suppose? I've never experienced this, but I'd imagine it would not always be obvious or even very useful in sidescrolling games. Shouldn't the receiver be able to determine what surround standard was used and display it, anyway?

I've also noticed that FFVIII and FFIX do have that Dolby logo on the packaging, but FFX doesn't have it. Supposedly the game has 5.1 in the FMVs (through S/PDIF), so the lack of a logo could have been a royalty related thing indeed.

AFIK Surround sound back in these days was quadrophonic, 4 channels.

Two Front,two rear. And in the case of FFVIII*IX, I think it was only for the FMVs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadraphonic_sound

[Xan]

I don't think that's correct. The rear channel on DS/DPL was mono (and frequency limited at that).

Since I've recently read conflicting information on this, might as well ask here, does DPLII have a dedicated subwoofer channel or not? Some say it's a 5.0 system, Wikipedia says it's 5.1.

[BazookaBen]

As a person who is currently using a Pro-logic receiver from the mid-90's (my newer receiver died), I can cofirm that Pro-logic is in fact four channels, with three fronts, one rear. There are two rear speakers, but they play the same sound.

Interestingly, it seems to be forwards-compatible, because I've played a few PL2 games from GCN and Wii that play correctly (without the rear separation of course).

As far as the subwoofer channel, I would guess they use a simple crossover circuit, I don't think they have it encoded in any way. I could be wrong about that.

But yeah, I'll also add that i think we shouldn't put any game on the list unless we can find documentation that it does in fact support surround sound. Because, like I said, any stereo source will have some sounds that are sent to the rear speakers in PL2 mode, what matters is whether it was on purpose (play an audio CD in one of your game consoles and you'll see what I mean). So going by whether you hear something come from the rear speakers is not a definitive test.

[Xan]

I could see the two rear speakers being useful if the receiver has analog surround inputs, for hooking up a PC for instance, but other than that it seems pretty pointless for a DPL receiver. I could imagine that some later units did upmixing that went beyond the DPL standard and were capable of outputting stereo on those rear speakers, though, especially for stereo material without already encoded rear channel.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Omega Boost (PSX)? I use stereo headphones and it sounds nearly as "3D" to me as EAX-endowed computer games (I know some of the latter combine hardware and software 3D sound processing).
I don't think Twisted Metal: Black boasts about any surround sound, but it sounds ahead of its time too.
It has to be said in console games where something like DPLII is optional it does make some difference with mere stereo headphones.

[Unseen]

I could see the two rear speakers being useful if the receiver has analog surround inputs, for hooking up a PC for instance, but other than that it seems pretty pointless for a DPL receiver.

A single speaker would be very noticable as a single point audio source, so the Dolby recommendation was to use two (or more) surround speakers, even though they were playing the same signal. See for example the Dolby Surround Mixing Manual for recommended speaker layouts.

[Xan]

Didn't know that, makes sense. I guess besides that a 5-channel setup would have also been simply more future-proof for later standards.

Omega Boost (PSX)? I use stereo headphones and it sounds nearly as "3D" to me as EAX-endowed computer games (I know some of the latter combine hardware and software 3D sound processing).
I don't think Twisted Metal: Black boasts about any surround sound, but it sounds ahead of its time too.
It has to be said in console games where something like DPLII is optional it does make some difference with mere stereo headphones.

These games probably just use good stereo panning and clever mixing. There also was QSound, but on 5th gen consoles it supposedly was only usable on prerecorded redbook tracks.

I've never noticed any difference on my stereo setup when enabling DPLII in games that support it, but on that note, there are headphones with actual Dolby decoders, such as the Sony MDR-DS6500.

[Obiwanshinobi]

First game where I enabled DPLII was Ōkami and I liked the difference. Another one was, I think, RE4 where it made some difference too. Two games where I think it's botched up are: Burnout 2 and Black (both on PS2). Apparently Criterion tried to do something new with Black, but using stereo headphones (my preferred way of playing FPP games) I'm, like, whatever.

[austin532]

I've never noticed any difference on my stereo setup when enabling DPLII in games that support it, but on that note, there are headphones with actual Dolby decoders, such as the Sony MDR-DS6500.

1) Supposedly some people say games can sound better in PLII Movie mode rather than PLII Music mode or PLII Game mode. While I haven't really messed around with this it kind of makes sense. The 6th generation is when games really started to feel more like movies in terms of the way they look and sound. This probably won't matter if you only have a 2.0 setup.

2) The majority of games that support PLII seem to be poorly mixed and rarely give you that complete surround sound feeling like you are in a circle and there are speakers all around you.

3) I think a lot of it has to do with that we are spoiled by newer surround sound technology.

[Xan]

Some people say that these surround headphones actually feature quite good positioning of sounds with DPLII titles, and I've considered them myself as they are pretty affordable compared to a real surround setup, but ultimately decided against it as wearing headphones for hours tends to get too tiresome for me. They also obviously lack bass compared to a subwoofer, and that's an important factor in some games.

[BazookaBen]

1) Supposedly some people say games can sound better in PLII Movie mode rather than PLII Music mode or PLII Game mode. .

I've noticed this too. I think it's because Game Mode was created retroactively, after the PS2 generation was mostly over, in order to give a greater sense of separation. But the thing is, all those games were mixed with Movie Mode in mind. So I think Game Mode might be a sort of gimmick that exaggerates the separation, whereas Movie Mode is a little more natural.

Would love to hear from anybody that's tried A/B tests though.

[austin532]

Not sure what you mean by A/B tests but after trying both I can say Movie mode might actually be the better of the two. It tends to pick up minor pieces of music sound effects better than Music mode.

[austin532]

Been awhile since I posted anything here but made a small update to the list. After working on another project I discovered that Colony Wars Vengeance and Colony Wars III Red Sun also support Dolby Surround.

[bobrocks95]

I missed some posts as well, but I'd like to say that I did very extensive research on Pro Logic II when I was buying my first 5.1 receiver, and the movie mode is what you should use for games or anything else that specifically mentions it was mixed for PLII. The music and I think the game mode allow you to customize the soundstage in various ways, and the game mode was as BazookaBen said, added later (I've also read that it's for upmixing old games without any PLII mixing). Since movie mode is the only constant, engineers would mix to that mode, at least if they're getting/paying for official Dolby PLII certification

[austin532]

4 more PS1 games added.

Cool Boarders 3
Final Fantasy Tactics (Wide Mode)
Moto Racer
Sled Storm

[FBX]

You shouldn't add games that don't officially advertise they support analogue Dolby surround . This is because the matrix coding used by Dolby will often play SOMETHING in the rear channels if the source is stereo. For example, just because Super Castlevania IV 'works' with Dolby surround doesn't mean it actually intends or supports the use of it. The game is simply coded for stereo.

[BazookaBen]

You shouldn't add games that don't officially advertise they support analogue Dolby surround . This is because the matrix coding used by Dolby will often play SOMETHING in the rear channels if the source is stereo. For example, just because Super Castlevania IV 'works' with Dolby surround doesn't mean it actually intends or supports the use of it. The game is simply coded for stereo.

Exactly, you can take a stereo CD or stereo TV broadcast and get sound out of the rear channels in PL2 mode. Doesn't mean they're in surround sound.

[austin532]

Cool Boarders 3, Moto Racer, Sled Storm and all 3 Colony Wars games have Surround Sound options. As for the huge list most of them supposedly have surround sound support. That's why I listed them.

[bobrocks95]

There's lots of talk about this earlier in the thread.

In the Super Nintendo's case, I believe you can invert the polarity of a voice or something along those lines and it will be fed to rear speakers very deliberately (a built-in hardware function), but in most cases it just takes whatever pans really far to the left or right and wraps those sounds to the rear speakers.

In my short experience of hooking my SNES up to my surround sound system, I could easily distinguish games that were just wrapping panned sounds around to the rear and games that appeared to actually be mixed with surround sound in mind. Maybe panning was just used very sparingly in most games and I'm being fooled? I know that DKC2 sounds amazing with it on, since environmental sound effects are the only thing playing through the rear speakers (ship creaking in Pirate Panic, wind in Mainbrace Mayhem).

It's definitely a debatable situation without some outside verification, but I wouldn't be surprised if at least a handful of games did this but didn't want to pay Dolby licensing fees to advertise Dolby Surround as a feature. Just my two cents.

[BazookaBen]

It's definitely a debatable situation without some outside verification, but I wouldn't be surprised if at least a handful of games did this but didn't want to pay Dolby licensing fees to advertise Dolby Surround as a feature. Just my two cents.

Interesting theory, but I still would be careful about putting those sorts of games on a definitive list. At least make a second category for "unconfirmed" surround sound.