When we all think about the next-generation of consoles we always picture, well, the picture. That is improved visual fidelity, resolution, frame-rates, and fancy effects like real-time ray-tracing. Microsoft's Xbox Series X will of course have all of that, but as confirmed in an interview with first-party studio Ninja Theory - the console will also have a dedicated audio chip.

This is big news for a number of reasons, the main one being that modern consoles haven't really opted for dedicated audio hardware in recent times. This means sound and music processing has been kept in the realm of the CPU alongside things like AI, and other processor-heavy tasks.

With the Series X's dedicated audio, as per Ninja Theory sound designer Daniele Galante, "we finally won’t have to fight with programmers and artists for memory and CPU power". This is great because as per the recent hardware breakdown for the Xbox Series X the console will support ray-traced audio - that is positional 3D audio at a fidelity, accuracy, and quality far beyond anything we can currently hear on the Xbox One.

"We take for granted that graphics are powered by their own video cards," Galante added. "But in audio, we haven’t had anything like that. Now we have some power dedicated to us." No doubt we'll hear the benefits from this approach in Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2.

For a basic idea of what ray-traced audio can do, check out the following brief NVIDIA demonstration that alters audio based on player positioning.



Source: VGC.