Setting Up An Immersive Gaming Experience
Video gaming has changed rapidly even in the last decade, becoming a medium that challenges film and literature in terms of cultural impact. Stunning visuals, compelling storylines, and engaging gameplay are a few ingredients in a groundbreaking gaming experience, but many gamers skimp on the audio simply because arranging sound systems is a difficult art and science. If you have songs, scenes, and experiences that have truly shaken your emotions, consider a few sound system and environment improvements to make your next great game experience truly epic.
What Is An Epic Gaming Experience?
The term epic is overused in gaming, especially in roleplaying games where the once hard to find epic quality items have been nearly guaranteed to the average player. Even so, an awe-inspiring experience can be enhanced by making every facet of the game developer's design as crystal clear as possible.
It starts with graphics rendering. Gamers either use a gaming console such as Playstation, Xbox, or Wii to play their games, and each system has a standard experience for each gamer—barring some unfortunate errors. For computer gamers, graphics cards and memory are needed to make the visual spectacle and game performance as fluid as possible.
You'll also need a display that can take in the majesty of the performance. Getting the biggest screen to sate the biggest ego isn't enough; some companies may use deceptive technology to lower quality in places that aren't apparent until your game is compared with a game studio's demo. Although the current trend is to have a 4k display (4000 horizontal pixels, 2000 vertical pixels), it's up to the game companies to take advantage of the newest technology to be worth your investment.
After the display and gaming machine are taken care of, audio is a major part of what it means to be a gamer. Even though some gamers will mute or replace game audio for their own music, there are entire musical communities separate from simple game fandom. Game companies invest a lot of talent into not only music, but the sound effects that deliver everything from amazing explosions to inspiring spell effects or deeply troubling accuracy in ambient noises.
A Sound System Professional Can Perfect Your Experience
Although game developers create a lowest quality setting that will still deliver a great experience on basic television or computer speakers, there's a lot of sound complexity that you're missing without the proper sound setup.
Many game developers create sound environment in 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound, meaning that 5 or 7 speakers are playing different types of sounds along with a subwoofer for the .1 part of the category.
The sounds are developed in a studio with industry-standard speaker configurations to make the player feel as if the wind is howling at different areas around their body instead of just hearing noise in the left or right side. A character walking behind your player will have footsteps, breathing, and all of the indicators of movement playing not only from the rear speakers, but with echoes in all of the other speakers to get a realistic delivery of sound.
Unfortunately, putting the speakers in a rough pattern around your chair is not good enough. The speakers are designed to be at specific distances away, and their echo from walls can change the delivery depending on the type of paint, the amount of decorations, or even a lamp sitting in the way.
Contact a sound system installation professional to arrange a precise, high-performance speaker placement to get the most out of your game.
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