Audio Tweaking (dev branch)

[megagoth1702 252]

I'm confused. Wasn't everyone in this thread a few pages ago saying that many sounds in the game were far too similar in volume to gunshots? Now people are saying other sounds are too quiet compared to gunshots? Which do people want? Less range or more?

Edit: Megagoth, you're the one that made that video rallying for other sounds in the game to be reduced compared to gunshots. Now people are saying other sounds should be brought back up, and that gunshots are too loud?

The current state of audio is a mess. Believe me, it is a very hot time for the audio dudes right now, there is very cool stuff happening.

Yes, they raised volume for weapons in a sick way, also there is a 1st person volume boost (as if it was ever needed...) that is too strong, this results in too high of a dynamic range. You turn up your volume to hear ambient sounds and get ear damage from weapon sounds. This is overkill and not what I personally meant by "we need more differences in sound volume".

Not near as unbalanced as the vanilla game right now.

What we need is a change in volume dropoff over distance, it may not be realistic, but considering that realism would literally result in physical damage to our bodies i think we can let that slip. It would probably become more realistic because right now no one plays with realistic volume levels, and the result is that gunshots cannot be heard over a long enough distance.

EDIT: Also, HDR for sound is the worst. It sounds horrible, and our brains do not process sound like that. Do not change the volume of things based on the volume of other things, that is not how it works in real life and our brain expects the same volume in such situations, so making it suddenly higher or lower just results in a terrible experience.

They are thinking of specific volume drop off curves right now, it's no where near final at the moment.

HDR sound bad? I think this is a matter of opinion, I think BF3 on "Home Cinema" (highest dynamic range) sounds amazing, with all of it's HDR stuff. But then again there are great sounding games without any HDR for audio. GTA V for example does not seem to have much of a HDR system, I looked at the waveform of a gameplay video once and there were clear differences between ambient sound, engine sound, player sound, shooting and explosions. Explosions were +6dB (twice the volume!) over the general audio mix! Nice! :)

Edited June 24, 2015 by megagoth1702

[Bucic 1]

You turn up your volume to hear ambient sounds and get ear damage from weapon sounds.

Is there a workaround for this? I mean, even a dirty one is fine. Anything! The game is literaly unplayable for me and there are no sound mods compatible with 1.46.

[Brisse 78]

Is there a workaround for this? I mean, even a dirty one is fine. Anything! The game is literaly unplayable for me and there are no sound mods compatible with 1.46.

Some sound card drivers have a feature you can enable that dynamically adjusts volume based on the amplitude. In my Xonar driver it's called SVN, or Smart Volume Normalization. I don't personally use it becouse I like having my gunshots loud, but it might do what you are asking for. It will raise the volume when you are only listening to ambient sounds and it will lower the volume as soon as there is a loud sound like a gunshot. It reacts very fast so it's good for protecting your ears from spontaneous loud sounds.

[Bucic 1]

Thanks, Brisse.

I hope BI stops messing with the sound in stable branch.

[NeMeSiS 11]

HDR sound bad? I think this is a matter of opinion, I think BF3 on "Home Cinema" (highest dynamic range) sounds amazing, with all of it's HDR stuff.

Well, i cant deny that it can be done right, but knowing BI it will probably end up being the sound equivalent of

. They really should get the basics right first.

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

The current state of audio is a mess. Believe me, it is a very hot time for the audio dudes right now, there is very cool stuff happening.

Yes, they raised volume for weapons in a sick way, also there is a 1st person volume boost (as if it was ever needed...) that is too strong, this results in too high of a dynamic range. You turn up your volume to hear ambient sounds and get ear damage from weapon sounds. This is overkill and not what I personally meant by "we need more differences in sound volume".

Not near as unbalanced as the vanilla game right now.

They are thinking of specific volume drop off curves right now, it's no where near final at the moment.

HDR sound bad? I think this is a matter of opinion, I think BF3 on "Home Cinema" (highest dynamic range) sounds amazing, with all of it's HDR stuff. But then again there are great sounding games without any HDR for audio. GTA V for example does not seem to have much of a HDR system, I looked at the waveform of a gameplay video once and there were clear differences between ambient sound, engine sound, player sound, shooting and explosions. Explosions were +6dB (twice the volume!) over the general audio mix! Nice! :)

Funny thing about that, I came across some BF4 info, and as I would have expected, BF4 holds the record for best game Audio. Now of course it's had issues since release, but there's no denying that it's true. When I first played the game I noticed a vast improvement over BF3, especially in a city environment, te sounds bounce and resonate as they should, spending on source and sound direction. It's actually quite impressive how well the sound is done.

Now of course, I don't think BIS is heading for Audio perfection. But we got a glimpse of what BIS wants the game to sound like, which, was previewed in the Tanoa trailer, with the plane flying around, and the dynamic sounds. In fact, if you go to that page right now, I think they recently added in background sounds to their page that feature distant gun shots, and moving water sounds.

[megagoth1702 252]

Funny thing about that, I came across some BF4 info, and as I would have expected, BF4 holds the record for best game Audio. Now of course it's had issues since release, but there's no denying that it's true. When I first played the game I noticed a vast improvement over BF3, especially in a city environment, the sounds bounce and resonate as they should, spending on source and sound direction. It's actually quite impressive how well the sound is done.

I have spent a LOT of time with the battlefield 3/4 sounds and the samples. The reverb is actually baked into the samples, there is no location-thing going on. So if you fire towards a forest, the reverb will not come from the forest. They have multiple tails for environments, just like arma3.

Now of course, I don't think BIS is heading for Audio perfection. But we got a glimpse of what BIS wants the game to sound like, which, was previewed in the Tanoa trailer, with the plane flying around, and the dynamic sounds. In fact, if you go to that page right now, I think they recently added in background sounds to their page that feature distant gun shots, and moving water sounds.

The distant battlefield sounds on the website are actually the "battlefield_firefight*number*" designed sounds that has been in arma forever. :) You can trigger it yourself to listen to it.

The plane sound was designed 100%, yes, the visual footage is in-game but the audio is not. :p At least that is what I think.

Oh man, we're getting OT again. :D

Improvement over BF3? Matter of opinion again. BF4 weapons sounds softer, the weapons have more low rumble to them, there is more volume equalization (less punchyness, especially with revolvers) and more aesthetics to the weapons, which I personally dislike. The battlefield 3 weapons were super clean, lots of mechanics, just a treat for the ears! I created a 5min sound showcase comparing the two where you can clearly hear the differences and decide what you like more. Weapons have been shot in forest environment.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yh39ccgud2g02tu/BF%20guns.mp3?dl=1

[R3vo 2654]

I really love the ambient sounds from the Tanoa homepage. I really hope that's how it will sound when the terrain is out.

[froggyluv 2136]

Always loved the way BF3 sounds felt like they cackled with electricity but haven't played it in years. Actually changed some audio settings, and with Razer audio enabled and headphones, Arma starting to sound pretty damn good to me except those damn noisy snaps.

[x3kj 1247]

I recently noticed a thing that confused me a little.

The bullet crack sound would play earlier then the gun sound.

Picture following situation

o

x--------------------[]

i'm standing at o, and at x a vehicle is shooting at [], minimally in front of the vehicle. The bullet snap is basically instantaneuous with the visual effects, while the weapon sound comes at a delay (because of the distance). This doesn't make sense, because i'm not standing alot closer to bulletpath, then to the weapon itself. Distance from x to o was some 100-200m. Can somebody confirm this?

[Fushko 59]

I recently noticed a thing that confused me a little.

The bullet crack sound would play earlier then the gun sound.

Picture following situation

o

x--------------------[]

i'm standing at o, and at x a vehicle is shooting at [], minimally in front of the vehicle. The bullet snap is basically instantaneuous with the visual effects, while the weapon sound comes at a delay (because of the distance). This doesn't make sense, because i'm not standing alot closer to bulletpath, then to the weapon itself. Distance from x to o was some 100-200m. Can somebody confirm this?

The time at which sonic cracks played never felt right to me. This MIGHT be the cause.

[Sterlingarcherz101 15]

Always loved the way BF3 sounds felt like they cackled with electricity but haven't played it in years. Actually changed some audio settings, and with Razer audio enabled and headphones, Arma starting to sound pretty damn good to me except those damn noisy snaps.

Second the snaps. Don't know if they're repetitive annoying ie no variations or because it makes gun battles sound like everyone is using a silence weapon.

I do realise the snaps might come into their own with other changes. just having trouble imaging how.

[Greenfist 1863]

I can confirm the missing speed of sound on the cracks. In both dev and stable branch. I think it's always been like that, and assume it's for performance reasons.

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

I have spent a LOT of time with the battlefield 3/4 sounds and the samples. The reverb is actually baked into the samples, there is no location-thing going on. So if you fire towards a forest, the reverb will not come from the forest. They have multiple tails for environments, just like arma3.

The distant battlefield sounds on the website are actually the "battlefield_firefight*number*" designed sounds that has been in arma forever. :) You can trigger it yourself to listen to it.

The plane sound was designed 100%, yes, the visual footage is in-game but the audio is not. :p At least that is what I think.

Oh man, we're getting OT again. :D

Improvement over BF3? Matter of opinion again. BF4 weapons sounds softer, the weapons have more low rumble to them, there is more volume equalization (less punchyness, especially with revolvers) and more aesthetics to the weapons, which I personally dislike. The battlefield 3 weapons were super clean, lots of mechanics, just a treat for the ears! I created a 5min sound showcase comparing the two where you can clearly hear the differences and decide what you like more. Weapons have been shot in forest environment.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yh39ccgud2g02tu/BF%20guns.mp3?dl=1

I meant in terms of Vehicle sounds. For example, a helicopter flying around in Shanghai, the sound doesn't come from exactly where the chopper is, it bounces off buildings, and you can kinda tell where it is, if your used to city scape sound alteration. It's a complicated thing to explain. But it works for certain sounds, unless i'm wrong, and everything is baked... But otherwise it is the best sound i've heard in any game. Though, i hope BIS can get the sound the way they want it. As R3vo says, the ambient sounds on the Tanoa homepage is what BIS are trying to achieve. If they can get that sound right, the game would be golden.

[Fushko 59]

I can confirm the missing speed of sound on the cracks. In both dev and stable branch. I think it's always been like that, and assume it's for performance reasons.

Not really, it's just because they haven't figured out yet speed of sound for looped and moving sounds, according to megagoth's interview.

[Greenfist 1863]

Not really, it's just because they haven't figured out yet speed of sound for looped and moving sounds, according to megagoth's interview.

But the crack isn't either looped or moving, right? It's played at a single point where the bullet passes the player. It's just like a gunshot, except it's missing the speed of sound and the source position is different for every player.

[x3kj 1247]

It makes a super confusing/arkward soundscape when one sound set uses different rules then the other.

[Bucic 1]

It makes a super confusing/arkward soundscape when one sound set uses different rules then the other.

Recently I find myself actually looking at my AI squad mates to figure out where the enemy is shooting from...

[sgtpepper 11]

I created a Sound Position Training mission since I often had problems to guess the direction of enemies with the new sound system.

The idea of this mission is to spawn an invisible unit at a random position in your vicinity - it shoots in your direction and you have to guess the direction. During the development I noticed that in many cases it is not hard to guess the direction by ignoring the louder crack and wait for the much more silent boom of the weapon itself. But in some cases this does not work at all - especially when the crack comes from a complete different direction.

So I added a bullet cam to the training mission to see what happens with the bullet. With this cam I noticed that sometimes the crack comes from the impact position of the bullet - in the oprep audio-roadmap-update this case is mentioned:

Currently, we are addressing several special cases, such as if there should be a SC when a bullet does not pass the listener. In reality, a SC is not a point, but a whole trajectory (with 1/r^2 attenuation of sound intensity), which forms a right-angled triangle (bullet-listener-SC, right-angle at the listener) where the listener-bullet line is the shockwave cone. For our simulation, a simplified calculation is considered sufficient because of common bullet speed; since there should be a SC even when bullet does not pass the listener, we simulate this by creating a SC on the impact position.

I think this might be a major problem of the current implementation. I do not understand exactly when this crack is created on the impact position but when this happens it is more or less impossible to estimate the position of the sound source.

[Bucic 1]

I created a Sound Position Training mission since I often had problems to guess the direction of enemies with the new sound system.

The idea of this mission is to spawn an invisible unit at a random position in your vicinity - it shoots in your direction and you have to guess the direction. During the development I noticed that in many cases it is not hard to guess the direction by ignoring the louder crack and wait for the much more silent boom of the weapon itself. But in some cases this does not work at all - especially when the crack comes from a complete different direction.

So I added a bullet cam to the training mission to see what happens with the bullet. With this cam I noticed that sometimes the crack comes from the impact position of the bullet - in the oprep audio-roadmap-update this case is mentioned:

I think this might be a major problem of the current implementation. I do not understand exactly when this crack is created on the impact position but when this happens it is more or less impossible to estimate the position of the sound source.

I didn't think I will come to this but... is there a way to disable the porked sonic cracks completely?

[sgtpepper 11]

I didn't think I will come to this but... is there a way to disable the porked sonic cracks completely?

This mod was released yesterday but I had no time to try it yet.

[Bucic 1]

This mod was released yesterday but I had no time to try it yet.

I knew about this one but thanks anyway. I'll unpack it and try to lower the cracks volume to 0. But since they falsify direction the shots are coming from this is the right volume for this b#$, as far as I'm concerned.

Edited June 27, 2015 by Bucic

[Fushko 59]

But the crack isn't either looped or moving, right? It's played at a single point where the bullet passes the player. It's just like a gunshot, except it's missing the speed of sound and the source position is different for every player.

I'm pretty sure they changed the sonic cracks to be a 3D sound instead of something that is played when a bullet flies past you. Not 100% sure though.

[Bucic 1]

OK, the Xonar's SVN normalizer is the best workaround available. No more on this from me in this topic. Out.

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?192904-Gun-shots-and-sinic-cracks-far-too-loud

Thank you, Brisse!

[Brisse 78]

Glad you like it! :)