SoundStorm
Encyclopedia
NVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
for the nForce
NForce
The nForce is a motherboard chipset created by Nvidia for AMD Athlon and Duron microprocessors. The chipset shipped in 3 varieties; 220, 415, and 420. 220 and 420 are very similar with each having the integrated GPU, but the 220 only has a single channel of memory available whereas 420 has the...
and nForce2
NForce2
The nForce2 chipset was released by Nvidia in July 2002 as a refresh to the original nForce product offering. The nForce2 chipset was a platform for motherboards supporting AMD's Socket A CPUs along with DDR SDRAM...
platforms based on the nForce audio processing unit (APU).
Certification
To achieve SoundStorm certification, a motherboard manufacturer had to include the nForce APU and include the necessary discrete outputs. It was also necessary to meet certain sound quality levels as tested by Dolby DigitalDolby Digital
Dolby Digital is the name for audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories. It was originally called Dolby Stereo Digital until 1994. Except for Dolby TrueHD, the audio compression is lossy. The first use of Dolby Digital was to provide digital sound in cinemas from 35mm film prints...
sound labs.
The SoundStorm certification ensured that many manufacturers produced solutions with high quality sound output. For this reason, SoundStorm achieved significant popularity in the hardware enthusiast community, offering high quality for a bargain price. It was also, at the time, the only PC sound card capable of producing real Dolby Digital 5.1 output (a technology called Dolby Digital Live), which was important for home theater PC
Home theater PC
A Home Theater PC or Media Center appliance is a convergence device that combines some or all the capabilities of a personal computer with a software application that supports video, photo, music playback, and sometimes video recording functionality...
s.
Hardware
It is often referred to as an audio chip but this is a misconception. The audio 'chip' component of SoundStorm is the nForce APU, which is included in the MCP-D and MCP-T southbridgesSouthbridge (computing)
The southbridge is one of the two chips in the core logic chipset on a personal computer motherboard, the other being the northbridge. The southbridge typically implements the slower capabilities of the motherboard in a northbridge/southbridge chipset computer architecture. In Intel chipset...
of the nForce and nForce2 chipset
Chipset
A chipset, PC chipset, or chip set refers to a group of integrated circuits, or chips, that are designed to work together. They are usually marketed as a single product.- Computers :...
s respectively. A series of fixed-function and general-purpose processing units provide a combined total of reportedly 4 billion operations per second. A fully programmable, Motorola 56300
Motorola 56000
The Motorola DSP56000 is a family of digital signal processor chips produced by Motorola Semiconductor starting in the 1980s and is still being produced in more advanced models in the 2000s. The 56k series was quite popular for a time in a number of computers, including the NeXT, Atari Falcon,...
-based digital signal processor is provided for effects processing but with very limited support under DirectX on the PC.
The DSP on the APU was normally driven by code largely derived from the 3D audio middleware company Sensaura
Sensaura
Sensaura, a division of Creative Technology, provides sophisticated 3D audio technology for the interactive entertainment industry.Following its origin as a research project at THORN EMI Central Research Laboratories in 1991, Sensaura evolved to become the leading worldwide supplier of 3D audio...
. The Sensaura middleware was also used by the Windows drivers of nearly every sound card and audio codec
Sound card
A sound card is an internal computer expansion card that facilitates the input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under control of computer programs. The term sound card is also applied to external audio interfaces that use software to generate sound, as opposed to using hardware...
other than those by Creative
Creative Technology
Creative Technology Ltd. is a Singapore-based global company headquartered in Jurong East, Singapore. The principal activities of the company and its subsidiaries consist of the design, manufacture and distribution of digitized sound and video boards, computers and related multimedia, and personal...
. Unlike the usual software implementations of the Sensaura code, the SoundStorm solution ran the same code on a hardware DSP, which resulted in extremely low CPU
Central processing unit
The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
usage. It was also capable of realtime Dolby Digital 5.1
Dolby Digital
Dolby Digital is the name for audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories. It was originally called Dolby Stereo Digital until 1994. Except for Dolby TrueHD, the audio compression is lossy. The first use of Dolby Digital was to provide digital sound in cinemas from 35mm film prints...
encoding. Compared to other audio solutions of the day, the difference in CPU usage when running popular multimedia applications was as much as 10-20%. While the Creative
Creative Technology
Creative Technology Ltd. is a Singapore-based global company headquartered in Jurong East, Singapore. The principal activities of the company and its subsidiaries consist of the design, manufacture and distribution of digitized sound and video boards, computers and related multimedia, and personal...
Audigy
Sound Blaster
The Sound Blaster family of sound cards was the de facto standard for consumer audio on the IBM PC compatible system platform, until the widespread transition to Microsoft Windows 95, which standardized the programming interface at application level , and the evolution in PC design led to onboard...
offers similar performance, it does so at a much higher price point, and only as a discrete add-in solution.
Drivers
Since the SoundStorm solution was a general-purpose DSP where code was uploaded to the card by the device drivers at boot time, this made it easy to add new functionality to the card. However, it also meant that it was not possible to create third-party device drivers for the SoundStorm, since they did not have access to the DSP code. LinuxLinux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
drivers for the SoundStorm actually talk directly to the audio codec (like a RealTek ALC650), bypassing the APU completely and doing all audio operations in software.
The nForce2 APU was a purely digital component, and that motherboard manufacturers still had to use codec chips such as the 650 from Realtek
Realtek
Realtek Semiconductor Corp. , a fabless IC design house situated in the Hsinchu Science Park, Hsinchu, Taiwan, was founded in October 1987, and subsequently approved as a listed company on the Taiwan Stock Exchange in 1998...
for the audio output functions, including the necessary digital to analog conversion
Digital-to-analog converter
In electronics, a digital-to-analog converter is a device that converts a digital code to an analog signal . An analog-to-digital converter performs the reverse operation...
(DAC). After the demise of SoundStorm, codec chips such as the Realtek
Realtek
Realtek Semiconductor Corp. , a fabless IC design house situated in the Hsinchu Science Park, Hsinchu, Taiwan, was founded in October 1987, and subsequently approved as a listed company on the Taiwan Stock Exchange in 1998...
850 have become standard integrated audio solutions, with audio processing functions offloaded on the host processor. As such, the quality of the device drivers is very important to ensure reasonably low host processor usage, without audio quality issues.
Xbox
SoundStorm development was originally funded by MicrosoftMicrosoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
for use in the Xbox
Xbox
The Xbox is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe and is the predecessor to the Xbox 360. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console...
gaming console. At time of writing reportedly a second generation chip has been developed, this time with funding from Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
, as part of the PlayStation 3
PlayStation 3
The is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment and the successor to the PlayStation 2 as part of the PlayStation series. The PlayStation 3 competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
project. It is hinted SoundStorm may make return to the PC scene, possibly as part of a multimedia graphics card, along the lines of the original NV1
NV1
Nvidia NV1, manufactured by SGS-THOMSON Microelectronics under the model name STG2000, was a multimedia PCI card released in 1995 and sold to retail as the Diamond Edge 3D. It featured a complete 2D/3D graphics core based upon quadratic texture mapping, VRAM or FPM DRAM memory, an integrated...
card, rather than as a discrete or onboard solution. While there did appear to be plans for a discrete product at one point, this never materialised.
Discontinuation
Nvidia decided the cost of manufacturing SoundStorm as an integrated product was too high, and while it was retained on nForce2 Athlon XP boards, nForce3NForce3
The nForce3 chipset was created by Nvidia as a Media and Communications Processor. Specifically, it was designed for use with the Athlon 64 processor.- Features of the nForce3 :...
and beyond dropped it.
Furthermore, in the absence of a formal certification process, there is little incentive for motherboard manufacturers to use the quality of components necessary for high fidelity output. It needs be considered that from a purely technical point of view, there is no reason why onboard sound from motherboards without the nForce APU and SoundStorm certification cannot reproduce non-processed sound such as an MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
or CD without effects applied, as well as can a SoundStorm certified nForce2 motherboard.
Alternatives
Other manufacturers have since produced standalone sound cards based on C-MediaC-Media
C-Media Electronics, Inc. is a Taiwanese computer hardware company that manufactures processors for PC audio and USB storage, and wireless audio devices.-Products:-PCI audio:*CMI8338*CMI8738-SX*CMI8738-LX*CMI8738-MX*CMI8768...
chips such as the CMI8788 which also provide Dolby Digital and DTS encoding features. These manufacturers include Turtle Beach
Turtle Beach Systems
Turtle Beach Systems is a sound card and headphone manufacturer and direct competitor with Creative Labs-branded Sound Blaster. In 1995, the company merged with Voyetra, a company that made custom software for sound cards, to form Voyetra Turtle Beach Inc which is headquartered in Elmsford, New...
and Auzentech
Auzentech
Auzentech is a Korean computer hardware manufacturer, specialized in high-definition audio equipment, and in particular PC sound cards.Auzentech has its origins in March 2005, when under the company name HDA , they launched the X-Mystique 7.1, the first consumer add-in sound card to feature Dolby...
. A software alternative is redocneXk, which provides real-time AC3 encoding comparable to SoundStorm or Creative's Audigy2 and later sound cards. However, early versions of these alternatives may still be lagging behind the SoundStorm in terms of reliability, ease of use, and CPU usage.