Xbox One offers greatly enhanced audio capabilities compared to the Xbox 360. It adds hardware support for many common audio operations, freeing Xbox One’s CPU to perform custom processing for unique effects. Designers can use Xbox One’s signal processing power and 7.1 surround output to create detailed, immersive, and unique audio environments.
Xbox One offers significant advances in dedicated audio support compared to Xbox 360. A Scalable Hardware Audio Processing Engine (SHAPE) provides built-in support for common audio tasks like mixing, filtering and equalization, as well as dedicated XMA decoding (refer to SHAPE Overview). Xbox One has dedicated hardware support for chat and audio codecs, for decompression of more audio formats, and for Kinect Multichannel Echo Cancellation (MEC). The audio elements are better integrated with the rest of the system, so that real-time DSP programming is easier to create and use. Xbox One also provides modern output capabilities: 7.1 surround, HDMI 1.4a and S/PDIF output.
Refer to the white paper: