Really Quiet RX Voice

[Keith Smith]

Here's a thread on how to set the ATC audio to come out of a separate device:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=962

I disagree with the statement regarding USB audio resulting in diminished frame rates or stutters. PE runs as a separate application, and on top of that, the audio processing happens in an independent thread through the 3rd party audio library that we use.

Running the PE client on a separate machine to the FSX main instance is going to result in VERY choppy movement of aircraft. The PE client works differently than the original Squawkbox client. As it currently operates, PE is designed primarily to run on the SAME MACHINE as the main FSX instance. It updates aircraft locations on a PER FRAME basis, and it does this by subscribing to certain events within the SimConnect environment. If you run it on a separate machine (using SimConnect configuration files), this results in per-frame event notifications being sent over the network. It really doesn't work very well (I tried this not long ago), and FSX appears to throttle the updates being sent via SimConnect. As a result, PE updates aircraft positions much less frequently.

There are certain commercial environments where we have no choice but to run PE on a separate machine, though, so I will be making a modification which actually reverts back to the original logic of sending out position updates at a fixed rate (as determined by that legacy multiplayer update rate slider which is currently inoperative).

For now, I'd recommend running it on the same machine. The PE client uses very little CPU and in most multi-core environments, the performance hit of running the client and a USB headset is going to be negligible.

[Sabre]

I disagree with the statement regarding USB audio resulting in diminished frame rates or stutters. PE runs as a separate application, and on top of that, the audio processing happens in an independent thread through the 3rd party audio library that we use.
For now, I'd recommend running it on the same machine. The PE client uses very little CPU and in most multi-core environments, the performance hit of running the client and a USB headset is going to be negligible.

Keith, thanks for your time explaining this, very enlightening. When I mentioned poor USB audio performance I referred to the USB(audio) & CPU cooperation, PE client was irrelevant in context. This is from the horse's mouth in Santa Clara when we discussed USB headphones:

You don't want to use USB headsets if you can avoid it -- big CPU hogs...not for the amount of time they take per se but for the number of context switches they force...stupid ring buffer polling architecture in USB design.

Any USB audio solution is detrimental to your ingame performance. Have tested it across different games with several usb audio systems, starting from a basic USB audio jack in/out to Soundblaster.

...is right: don't do audio over USB in any form -- bad move for your frame rate...

Sabre.

[Tim Krajcar]

FWIW, I tested a my USB (SB X-Fi Go!) in both XP9 and FSX to make sure it caused no issues and saw absolutely zero drop. I do have a very up-to-date system, but I had that exact concern and was prepared to return the USB unit if it impacted frames at all, and I saw literally no change at all.