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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Why no audio upgrade for the Wii?

Words Of Wisdom on 06 November 2007
rocketpig said:
Words Of Wisdom said:
What's the cost/benefit ratio of this feature? Is it a major console selling point?

You probably will find the desired answers in the answers to those two questions.

It has to be pennies now. You see cheap-ass sound cards with more features than the Wii selling for just a few dollars.

I was pretty bent that there was no optical out on the Wii. Play a game like Guitar Hero III on 360/PS3 with a nice sound system and you'll see what I mean, when the crowd starts going nuts during songs it really amps you up. The clarity is another huge benefit. And to think what games like SMG or MP3 could have done with just 5.1 makes it even worse.

I wonder how much disk space such sound would take...



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epsilon72 on 06 November 2007

 

double post

epsilon72 on 06 November 2007
Words Of Wisdom said:
rocketpig said:
Words Of Wisdom said:
What's the cost/benefit ratio of this feature? Is it a major console selling point?

You probably will find the desired answers in the answers to those two questions.

It has to be pennies now. You see cheap-ass sound cards with more features than the Wii selling for just a few dollars.

I was pretty bent that there was no optical out on the Wii. Play a game like Guitar Hero III on 360/PS3 with a nice sound system and you'll see what I mean, when the crowd starts going nuts during songs it really amps you up. The clarity is another huge benefit. And to think what games like SMG or MP3 could have done with just 5.1 makes it even worse.

I wonder how much disk space such sound would take...

Not enough to matter, because the Wii has the same disc capacity as the 360.....even so the audio is always compressed so that it doesn't take up that much space.  When Sony's devs decide that they haven't filled up enough space on one of their blu-ray discs, they just put all the audio completely uncompressed onto the disc to take up space (it's unnecessary).

So, audio typically doesn't take up that much space. 

 



tk1797 on 07 November 2007

@epsilon72 and KruzeS

Awesome, so that means my wii will work with my system.

Thanks for the help.



 

ookaze on 07 November 2007

I have no problem with DP II only for the Wii. Actually, the best experience I've had in sound, partly because all the channels were used, was mostly with Gamecube games (ToS) and Wii games (Mario Party 8).
For music, every audiophile will tell you the best is stereo, which is why every audio dedicated set has only stereo. 5.1 or more is a gimmick for audio, and is always considered worse, if the instruments are all over the place.
The Wii is just a game console, and DPII is more than enough for it.
But of course, I would prefer if the Wii had optical or coaxial output for the sound, if only because I wouldn't need to have cables hanging from the front of my AV receiver.
And I think the main reason is cost anyway.



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epsilon72 on 07 November 2007
ookaze said:
I have no problem with DP II only for the Wii. Actually, the best experience I've had in sound, partly because all the channels were used, was mostly with Gamecube games (ToS) and Wii games (Mario Party 8).
For music, every audiophile will tell you the best is stereo, which is why every audio dedicated set has only stereo. 5.1 or more is a gimmick for audio, and is always considered worse, if the instruments are all over the place.
The Wii is just a game console, and DPII is more than enough for it.
But of course, I would prefer if the Wii had optical or coaxial output for the sound, if only because I wouldn't need to have cables hanging from the front of my AV receiver.
And I think the main reason is cost anyway.

Stereo is best for music listening (and I wouldn't listen to music any other way), but not necessarily for all types of audio.

Movies/games are a completely different story. Many audiophiles have seperate setups for music listening and home theater, because their music setups will be two channel and have very wide soundstages while their movie setups will be surround with narrower sound fields so that they don't overlap eachother.

For example, even though it is kind of a lackluster game, Resistance's 7.1 audio completely blows anything the Wii has out of the water. For gaming I'll take surround over two channel any day.

 



BenKenobi88 on 07 November 2007

Surround in gaming is great...I played so many PC games with 4.1 sound...unfortunately my new PC doesn't have surround...I'll have to fix that soon...

As for the Wii...it doesn't bother me...I don't have a surround setup for my TV at home, and even though some of my friends do, we wouldn't bother hooking it up, we just like to plug and play before a movie typically.



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Hawk on 07 November 2007
Soriku said:
1. I do not care.

 I second that



Tag: Hawk - Reluctant Dark Messiah (provided by fkusumot)

Words Of Wisdom on 07 November 2007
epsilon72 said:

Not enough to matter, because the Wii has the same disc capacity as the 360.....even so the audio is always compressed so that it doesn't take up that much space. When Sony's devs decide that they haven't filled up enough space on one of their blu-ray discs, they just put all the audio completely uncompressed onto the disc to take up space (it's unnecessary).

So, audio typically doesn't take up that much space.

 


At a certain level, that's what I figured.

I don't currently have a surround sound setup, though I may look into one in the future.

It's nice and all, but it just isn't a critical factor for me.  I agree that it would be a nice option, but I'm not going to berrate Nintendo for not offering it yet.