Audio Tweaking (dev branch)

[Bouben 3]

If you think that a sound, recorded by an average camera or mobile phone with a microphone frequency response from maybe 80-17.000hz and during recording also compressed to hopefully 192kbit/s MP3, uploaded to a video hoster and again compressed with 128kbit/s mono ACC is still good... Oh my....

If you talk to me, you completely missed my point. I was talking about quality of youtube videos in general and its compression format sound quality. I guess it is quite clear that if you upload garbage to youtube, it will sound like garbage.

Anyway,

1) 192 MP3 is completely fine sound quality for deciding if a sound is generally good or not from a sound-design/mixing standpoint (even 128 could be enough in many situations for rough decision making). You will miss some subtle highs and some sonic nuances here and there but that is about it really. A shit-sounding sound in 192 will still sound shitty in lossless.

2) Even mono sounds carry a lot of fundamental portion of information from sound design/mixing standpoint (but it is true that some transient-heavy stereo sounds can sound drastically different in mono).

3) 80hz HPF is nothing drastic that would really change the first impressions of a overall quality sounding sound (a lot of "consumer" people don't notice/hear these frequencies anyway or have no appropriate system for playback). So it is, again, perfectly usable as a reference for a rough decision-making from a sound-design/mixing standpoint.

4) There is not much information above 17.000 Hz and many people don't even hear/don't notice that high. So, again, nothing that would drastically change the reference from sound-design/mixing standpoint.

5) The only relevant point you have posted is the "average camera or mobile phone" as it is very likely these will have a really curvy overall frequency response and will dramatically affect the final emotion you get from the sounds it recorded.

Are you serious?

Well then, color is also one of the least important things for a painting...

Yes, bitrate (up to some point or rather down to some point) is one of the least important things when considering sound quality from sound-design/mixing standpoint. I am completely serious. Your color reference is completely missing the point (not to mention that even very old paintings with really washed-out/damaged colors are still very valuable from artistic standpoint as they still show the most fundamental parts of the artist's skill and his/her work). Just pick a bitrate/samplerate VST and apply it to some audio. You will have to use really drastic reductions in order to really change the sounds and their fundamental design qualities.

To sum it up. The most important quality factors from sound-design/mixing standpoint are:

- overall frequency spectrum of a sound

- macro and micro dynamics of a sound (and its transients)

- length of a sound

Edited April 12, 2015 by Bouben

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

The Sonic cracks are fine. I think they do have tails like the rifles, but i could be wrong. It'd be amazing if they could add more distinctive tails to the sonic cracks to get them to sound like they would in respective environments, more noticeable. BIS needs to take a step to bringing down volume's that are now killing other sounds, and making everything sound un-balanced. Megagoth knows more. But from what i've experienced, weapon tails are much less noticeable than they used to be. And because so much has been raised volume wise, it's going to take a lot, and i mean... a crap ton of config tweaking, to bring things back down to good volume levels where everything would be balanced... Having seen the config library... But anyhow, i believe the sound will get better. Still wish the Tails for the guns were 3D like Laxemann's Soundscape. Only mod in Arma history to do 3D sound.

[CaptainObvious 95]

I meant that there is more echo in the soundcloud recording than in Arma. But either way, my point is that I don't really see how anyone can hear the bullet cracks in Arma and mistake it for the sound of a bullet colliding with another object.

Yes, the recording has "more" echo, but it's distinctive, comes a little after to boom, and compared to the violent sonic boom itself, quiet.

The current iteration in Arma is neither violent nor distinct, it's a weak clusterfuck of a quiet snip and something remotely echo-like noise.

I never meant it sounds exactly like a bullet hit, but it sure sounds something along that line more than a supersonic bullet flying by.

[audiocustoms 375]

@Bouben

I was talking in general.

And i think we are sort of meaning the same but talk past each other...

I was talking about quality of youtube videos in general and its compression format sound quality. I guess it is quite clear that if you upload garbage to youtube, it will sound like garbage.

THIS is my whole point... Sorry for not getting it right and clear in the first place.

A choir or orchestra recorded with X/Y + A/B Schoeps/Neumann/Sennheiser/whatever setup in 48k 32bit floating WAV and uploaded to YT still sounds damn amazing. No dought about that.

Even it is compressed down to 128kbps mono ACC or 384kbps stero ACC. Those compression formats (even the lossy) are ment to be so good that the average human ear can not tell the difference.

A gun battle recorded with a mobile phone that has taken more s**t than my toilet (sry, but i like that therm ^^) is missing a lot of information in the first place. Uploaded to YT and the

file will loose even more information due compression. That not enough, ripped and uploaded again the file will loose more information every time this is done. So in the end due this massive loss

of informations in the soundfile the result can't be what it was in the first place. The sound/feeling has changed drasticaly.

(For those who don't know what digital audio compression is and does and want to know more, i'm willing to explain but not in this thread... ARMA Soundmaker Skypegroup)

And all the rest you said about frequency bandwith / spectrum, bitrate, dynamics and length you are totally right... For the end product. But i was talking about the source to further work with.

It is very important to get as much information as even possible IMO. Rule #1: what is to much can be cut everytime, but what isn't there in the first place can never be reproduced...

Maybe i'm too oldschool and thinking to much in 24 track Studer tape recorder pattern style and it actually is possible, but this is what i do and how i work.

Edited April 13, 2015 by audiocustoms

[roberthammer 582]

To be honest - the new system is ok , still needs more tail samples than one per area

and i am not a fan of those new weapon sounds at all , dunno it sounds too much artificially generated to me instead of something natural from weapons

and from latest

- that sounds like a totally different game Edited April 13, 2015 by RobertHammer

[St. Jimmy 272]

Why this is in Arma 3 General?

[John Kozak 14]

Don't know, I love the new sounds. There's actually a character in each weapon now. Plus, the new occlusion, though basic, does add immersion.

[Brisse 78]

RH: That first youtube-video was made on dev-branch before the major update that came just before stable release. It does no longer represent the current sound-scape.

And a quick word on JSRS DF: I used to like JSRS up until and including 2.2 but I'm not a fan of DragonFyre at all. The weapons sounds are just so noisy and compressed :/

Edit: Oh sorry! The comment I was replying to was removed while I was writing this. I'll leave it up anyway.

[roberthammer 582]

RH: That first youtube-video was made on dev-branch before the major update that came just before stable release. It does no longer represent the current sound-scape.

Yes , its a "older" video but the result is still the same ...

[Bouben 3]

@Bouben

I was talking in general.

And i think we are sort of meaning the same but talk past each other...

Cool, I am glad we have found a consensus :-)

@ RobertHammer

EDIT: undecided about JSRS and Arma Vanilla

Edited April 13, 2015 by Bouben

[Maxzy 12]

At the moment there is absolutely no sense of a 3d audio space in this game. I have now idea where sounds are coming form or how close or far they are.

Here's what I do - I place a unit in editor for my self and also I place a flying heli with placement radius of 1.5 km so it spawns randomly within 3km circle around me. Next I click on preview and close my eyes. It takes about 2 seconds for me to find exact direction at which heli is situated with a 3-5 degrees deviation. I open my eyes and it takes another couple of seconds to find where this helicopter exactly is. Same goes for enemy soldier shooting at me - only placement radius is much less for him and its not a couple but rather 5-10 seconds. I tried it not only in 5.1 but also in stereo mode - it goes perfect everytime. So maybe it is time for you to go buy yourself a decent audio card or go to an ear doctor, no offence.

[Sterlingarcherz101 15]

Why this is in Arma 3 General?

Think some mod

1 ment to move a comment to general but instead moves a whole thread.

Or B because there was too much slight offrail( talk of YouTube videos) copied tread to general.

[Maxzy 12]

An impact with what? Like, it sounds like ______ hitting ______? Because I have never heard any object hitting any other object make that sound.

Plastic ruler hitting a wooden desk in a very lage hall =)).

[KeyCat 131]

Here, it's in single player, but like I said, it sounds the same to me in MP:

Thanks for taking the time and yes that's the sound I meant and to me it sounds more like an impact than a bullet crack/snap. As CaptainObvious said something of sand or gravelish kinda thing.

Would be fun to see what the majority thinks by a poll since every time I asked in MP many says they are confused by the sound.

I did some recording last night in MP and found some other interesting things.

- I heard the same (or very similar) sound when a big explosion went of +200 m away. I was behind a hill so did not see the explosion but think it was some kind of APC being blown up. It could be a couple of things...

a) It's the sound of shrapnel etc. falling to the ground around you after the explosion but doubt the fly that far in sim.

b) It's the "bullet crack sound" when shrapnel fly past you????

c) Something isn't right.

- I also heard the above "bullet crack sound" around me when a friendly machine gunner was firing S when I was ~100 m W of him and he was firing in a ~90 degree angle from me. There is a theoretical possibility that an enemy very far away was firing in my/our general direction but I could only hear my own MG and the sound was matching his firing pattern.

It will take a while for me to go thru the sound recordings to find the spots so it may have to wait until this weekend but I will post links in this thread when done.

Edit: Just wanted to add that maybe it's the combination of my HW/drivers/setup/etc that is the reason to the above so if anyone else experienced same/similar things in MP please post in this thread to rule out my system.

/KC

Edited April 13, 2015 by KeyCat

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

A different game indeed it does sound like. I far prefer Arma 3 Vanilla now that they've fixed it about 30%. Hopefully it's reaches 100% fixed before the Expansion. DragonFyre isn't for me anymore, in terms of weapon sounds. They're too loud, too Hollywood. The Dynamic, distinctive sounds of Vanilla have now won me over. However, DragonFyre does have great vehicle sounds, they're probably still a tad bit loud. The best par about DragonFyre is the distance scripts and stuff like that. I'm waiting to see what Laxemann is going to do with is 3D Soundscape next though.

[Bouben 3]

So maybe it is time for you to go buy yourself a decent audio card...

No. Audio card is not the culprit in audio spatial issues (unless you have one that is really malfunctioning or has buggy drivers). You have to have a decent headphones/decent speakers (correctly positioned), sufficient room acoustics (if you use speakers) and you have to make sure you disabled any software audio FX in your audio driver. Most of those in-box FXs are cheap gimmicks that do more harm than good and have no use for consumers.

---------- Post added at 17:22 ---------- Previous post was at 17:17 ----------

a) It's the sound of shrapnel etc. falling to the ground around you after the explosion but doubt the fly that far in sim.

/KC

If I am not mistaken, there is no actual shrapnel simulation in Arma 3. It is simply radius-related damage stuff. Correct me if I am wrong.

[Maxzy 12]

No. Audio card is not the culprit in audio spatial issues...

I don't know how that word ended up there =)), I was going to say "audio setup". And yes, if there are really some serious trouble with defining direction to sourse of incoming sound, first thing I would recommend to do is to check that there are no "Super-Ultra-Surround" option enabled in audiocard setup. And that you're not listening to built-in laptop speakers =)).

[toysoldier 35]

At the moment something is wrong on the volume balance, your own shoots are loud as hell and the other ambient sounds, footsteps or enemie shoots are very quiet.

On a firefight though it seems to me that the sound of guns is ending so abruptly which sounds too artificial and the lack of echoes is weird.

[danil-ch 165]

Tails are not working on Katiba (Full Auto only) and Rook 40 when have silencer on

[pils 49]

The Sonic cracks are fine. I think they do have tails like the rifles, but i could be wrong. It'd be amazing if they could add more distinctive tails to the sonic cracks to get them to sound like they would in respective environments, more noticeable. BIS needs to take a step to bringing down volume's that are now killing other sounds, and making everything sound un-balanced. Megagoth knows more. But from what i've experienced, weapon tails are much less noticeable than they used to be. And because so much has been raised volume wise, it's going to take a lot, and i mean... a crap ton of config tweaking, to bring things back down to good volume levels where everything would be balanced... Having seen the config library... But anyhow, i believe the sound will get better. Still wish the Tails for the guns were 3D like Laxemann's Soundscape. Only mod in Arma history to do 3D sound.

The sonic cracks sound like there is someone dropping a plastic pen on concrete ground right beside you. It's ... ridiculous.

Here some examples how it approximately should sound:

And the by far best example here. If you are in a hurry, only watch this:

[laxemann 1673]

The sonic cracks sound like there is someone dropping a plastic pen on concrete ground right beside you. It's ... ridiculous.

Here some examples how it approximately should sound:

And the by far best example here. If you are in a hurry, only watch this:

And another person posts crappy, clipping and distorted YouTube videos as a reference.

[cyruz 103]

Unless you post something recorded with professional sound equipment and not encoded all to hell then generally it's not worth wasting the time to link to Youtube footage.

Youtube breaks sounds so badly that even if you upload some A3 footage the sounds change pretty aggressively.

[audiocustoms 375]

I thouht we left the YT stuff behind?

Whatever, the only thing i can imagine comes pretty close to sonic cracks of a bullet is the crack of a bullwhip. The physics behind it are exact the same. A small object is breaking the sound barrier. Check for yourself, you will be surprised...

To reproduce a bullet sonic crack i would go for a whip. Also good working is easy and almost ridiculous: highly processed pool billard balls gitting each other :D

Edited April 14, 2015 by audiocustoms

[enex 11]

I thouht we left the YT stuff behind?

We all have to learn.I think is fine to post youtube video as a reference.However it shouldn't be posted as how it should be.

Why shouldn't we use youtube as proof?Because of low quality of footage and youtube compression system that lowers quality.

(it's important to state why, so people understand that)

I thouht we left the YT stuff behind?

Whatever, the only thing i can imagine comes pretty close to sonic cracks of a bullet is the crack of a bullwhip. The physics behind it are exact the same. A small object is breaking the sound barrier. Check for yourself, you will be surprised...

To reproduce a bullet sonic crack i would go for a whip. Also good working is easy and almost ridiculous: highly processed pool billard balls gitting each other :D

Good ideas.Or set up microphones on the far side of the range

That or buy samples of someone who did that already.

Edited April 14, 2015 by enex

[audiocustoms 375]

We all have to learn.I think is fine to post youtube video as a reference.However it shouldn't be posted as how it should be.

Why shouldn't we use youtube as proof?Because of low quality of footage and youtube compression system that lowers quality.

(it's important to state why, so people understand that)

Good ideas.Or set up microphones on the far range in shooting place.

That or buy samples of someone who did that already.

Sorry, wasn't clear again. I ment i thought we left the discussion behind ;)