Streaming audio in video games

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In video games, music can be sequenced, where the game includes instructions for the generation of music, or streamed, where the audio is pre-recorded and played back when required. While early video games were restricted to sequenced music, streaming music has become a more viable option as technology has improved.

1 History
2 Benefits and drawbacks
3 References
4 External links
- 4.1 Stream players

[edit] History

[edit] Arcade games

Several arcade games in the 1980s featured streamed audio, some along with streamed video, as in the case of FMV games or interactive movies, like 1983's Dragon's Lair, which used the laserdisc format. However, the continued reliance of arcade games on solid-state memory as opposed to optical media has resulted in less streaming audio than typical of games for home consoles and computers. Exceptions to this rule do exist, particularly in the genre of rhythm games, which, by their nature, number music as an integral feature.

[edit] Computer games

Streaming audio in computer games came about with the advent of improved sound cards. Early sound cards had support for playing back sequenced but not streamed audio. It wasn't until Creative Labs's Sound Blaster series, introduced in 1989, that PCs became capable of playing back pre-recorded audio. However, the early Sound Blasters' streaming audio support was not widely made use of, and only with the 1992 release of the Sound Blaster 16, did the use of pre-recorded audio begin to catch on.

[edit] Console games

Early console games with streaming audio were on CD-based systems like the Philips CD-i or Sega's Mega CD. With their increased storage size over previous media such as cartridges, streaming audio and video could be added to games. These games typically used Red Book audio, as used in audio CDs, on a Mixed Mode CD, where data and CD audio can coexist. Because of this, many early games with streaming audio can be played in any CD player, although the first track, which typically makes up the game itself, will either not play or result in an unpleasant screeching noise which can damage the listener's speakers.

By the fifth generation of video game consoles, the majority of games with streaming audio adopted audio formats other than CD audio, which offered flexibility in sound quality and looping, where a track can repeat seamlessly until it is no longer needed, for example, until the end of a stage.

[edit] Benefits and drawbacks

The most obvious advantage of streaming audio is its lack of limitations on sound quality. Where sequenced music is limited by the number of synthesized voices available, the instrumentation of streaming audio is limited only by a developer's capacity to record and master the audio. However, this complexity requires that audio streams be much larger in file size than sequences. Also, where sequenced audio can include dynamic shifts, such as additional orchestration during battle scenes, etc., streamed audio cannot. Some games, such as Super Mario Galaxy^[1], work around this by synchronising sequenced and streaming audio so that additional effects can be added to the streamed music.