I had bookmarked this AVS thread about Vista audio processing sometime with the thought of posting it on MR.com. Here we are a few months later, and I finally remember:). Amir, a MS rep, took the time to detail the audio capabilities of Vista. With the mess that was XP audio, it is a nice change to see Vista getting this one right.
AVS Forum Some of you know about expensive room correction hardware which in some cases, costs as much as $10,000. Well, in Vista, we have a perceptually tuned version of room correction. Because we don't expect everyone to own an instrumentation microphone, we have designed it so that you can use a cheap cardioid or omnidirectional microphone costing a few dollars to do an excellent job. IF you have a more expensive microphone, you can calibrate your room very accurately. All of this is implemented in in-box Vista software, using less than 5% on 3GHz CPU. Our room correction will equalize frequency response, time delay, and gain between all of your main channels, as well as build a first-reflection-cancellation filter if one or more of your speakers are near a reflective surface. If you do have a high-quality microphone, the room correction system will also flatten the overall frequency response and adjust the subwoofer delay accordingly. All of our adjustments are done as to capture the most obvious problems from the point of view of human hearing, allowing us to do a very effective job with a few machine cycles.
