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PS5 and 3D sound: Tempest Engine will be hardware accelerated and easy to use

PS5 and 3D sound: Tempest Engine will be hardware accelerated and easy to use

The Sony console will arrive this Christmas with technological innovations. Apart from their new SSD or DualSense, they will take a step forward in sound.

The 3D sound of PlayStation 5 will be one of the great technological innovations of the next Sony home console. The so-called Tempest Engine is the name to which we will get used to soon as it is a tool not only translated into a better experience of standard sound, but also because it is a tool that will facilitate the improvement of audio when developing video games for PS5. Now we know that it will be accelerated by the hardware itself.

In a meeting with GamingBolt, Marc-André Jutras, technical director of Cradle Games, in charge of Hellpoint, has assured that it will not be a technology emulated by PlayStation 5 software, but that the hardware of the machine will be in charge of this improvement. "3D Audio has been out there for a long time," he begins by saying. “We could have it on today's consoles easily… but not many games do it, precisely because it requires a lot of CPU time. Until now, I did it by software. ” And he continues: “But now it will be hardware accelerated. This means that there will be no reason not to use it. For us, that almost means that PS5 will sound better as easy as pressing a switch. "

PS5 | Five main features highlighted by Sony at CES 2020.
PS5 | Five main features highlighted by Sony at CES 2020.

For Jutras, the fact that hardware speeds up audio quality improvement will also relieve the CPU of computing load because one specific task will be that, without colliding with the others. Everything will be advantages in this regard.

What is the PS5 Tempest Engine

According to Sony itself in its different explanations officially, the Tempest Engine will be a modified AMD GPU computing unit that has had the caches removed to use only DMA transfers. Broadly speaking, all PlayStation 5 units will be able to make the console's audio unit use only a fraction of a Jaguar core to achieve 7.1 surround sound quality. The Tempest Engine can be subjected to hundreds of sound sources in "excellent" quality.

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Specialized media like Digital Foundry see the Tempest Engine as a possible big leap in quality of life for gamers who want great sound quality without the need for high-priced sound bars or high-end headphones. They call it "a revolution in sound on consoles."

PlayStation 5 will go on sale worldwide in late 2020 with an unconfirmed launch price and a catalog of outgoing games yet to be revealed. In this report we tell you everything we know about PS5 and all the games confirmed for the console.

About author

Chris Watson is a gaming expert and writer. He has loved video games since childhood and has been writing about them for over 15 years. Chris has worked for major gaming magazines where he reviewed new games and wrote strategy guides. He started his own gaming website to share insider tips and in-depth commentary about his favorite games. When he's not gaming or writing, Chris enjoys travel and hiking. His passion is helping other gamers master new games.

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