Surround Sound on T3k

[megarat]

Greetings, everyone. It's been a while since I've visited. I'm prompted to write because on Sunday night, I fired up the ol' Nuon for the first time in ages, to demo T3k and the VLM for a visiting friend. In the process, I was reminded of how fun T3k was and ended up playing it until something like 2am. (Thankfully the next day was a holiday, or I would've been toast.)

The next day, while in the process of looking up the T3k level codes on nuon-dome, I noticed a reference that T3k can output in surround sound. Right now I have my Nuon/N501 connected via composite video and phono stereo (long story), but if I want to make the effort, I can make component video and optical connections to my AVR and get it in full surround. Right now, I'm using my AVR to rematrix the stereo signal into 9.1 Dolby Digital IIz, so I'm getting an immersive surround experience regardless, but I'm wondering if I have anything substantial to gain by using T3k's original 5.1 source.

Before I spend an hour threading cables through the back of my setup, can anyone vouch for T3k's 5.1 audio capability? Does it add anything to the game, such as have specific sounds/warnings/etc. come from specific channels, or is it just about general environmental immersion? Pretty much everything in the game happens in front of the player, so side/rear channels wouldn't intuitively add anything, but I've been surprised before.

Any thoughts or observations would be appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[megarat]

As a corollary to my above post, I would be curious to know whether any other Nuon games make good use of surround sound. E.g., Merlin Racing could use sound effects in the rear channels to indicate when someone is shelling you from behind.