Audio Tweaking (dev branch)

[seba1976 98]

Hahaha, oh boy, that video... So true. I can't enjoy a firefight in Arma anymore because of the sound too. I saw older videos of me using the scripted SP version of DrangoFyre and cry. I understand there's some WIP going on right now, and I hope that ends well, but today it sounds awfull and I fear the distance it will have to go from what it sounds now to how it should have to sound.

[djotacon 190]

 

Hahaha, oh boy, that video... So true. I can't enjoy a firefight in Arma anymore because of the sound too. I saw older videos of me using the scripted SP version of DrangoFyre and cry. I understand there's some WIP going on right now, and I hope that ends well, but today it sounds awfull and I fear the distance it will have to go from what it sounds now to how it should have to sound.

 

 

Some day our beloved devs understand that we like other players in the world not only uses the sight to find the enemy.

 

Right now all the weapons sounds too low and is near to impossible find the where is coming the shots.

 

And I find very strange listening the bullets impacts around me even with surfaces with grass, I think isnt very difficult raise the volume enoght to listen the shot and the bullet cracker spread too.

 

Instead enter in a battle against "LOUD" to me is useful pointing the problem in the game right now.

[djotacon 190]

Heh, now thats a funny post. Not going to bite the bait though. :)

 

 

Some day when you work with 1500 W PA sound and a mp3 compressed to low quality and the speakers are thrasing the ears people do you understand what I'm talking about.

 

Meanwhile I prefer speaking about sound with a professional with 11 years of expertise.

[Fushko 59]

Instead enter in a battle against "LOUD" to me is useful pointing the problem in the game right now.

 

That's funny, because everything is loud as shit right now and it goes completely against megagoth's philosophy on sound (which is a similiar philosphy of some random unknown sound team that makes the sounds for Battlefield).

 

What you are complaining about is exactly the bullet cracks being too loud and drowning out everything else, which ironically is what megagoth addresses in his lowered bullet cracks mod.

 

Right now all the weapons sounds too low and is near to impossible find the where is coming the shots.

 

That's an issue with the sound falloff, but the volume itself is very high. Listen to a couple Mk200s firing in close proximity at appropriately high volume and tell me if you don't want to rip your ears out.

[megagoth1702 252]

Some day when you work with 1500 W PA sound and a mp3 compressed to low quality and the speakers are thrasing the ears people do you understand what I'm talking about.

 

Meanwhile I prefer speaking about sound with a professional with 11 years of expertise.

I know my way around PAs. Why would you use low quality MP3 at all? Due to frequency masking used in MP3s you can't even EQ the room properly. And why would using it make me "understand what you're talking about"? I really have issues understanding your points/arguments. Please try to write proper, gramatically correct and easy to understand english mate. I expect that from a professional.

 

If you want to talk to one though, go ahead and talk to Audiocustoms (15+ years experience), Jan "doosh" (A3 audio lead who I visited april this year, god knows how much this guy got under his hood), Mark Winter (Insurgency sound designer), Mark XIII (HiFi sound mods, arma1/2 days, big name back in the day), Laxemann (DynaSound creator, active music producer) and ask them about my audio knowledge/skills. :)

 

That's funny, because everything is loud as shit right now and it goes completely against megagoth's philosophy on sound (which is a similiar philosphy of some random unknown sound team that makes the sounds for Battlefield).

 

What you are complaining about is exactly the bullet cracks being too loud and drowning out everything else, which ironically is what megagoth addresses in his lowered bullet cracks mod.

 

 

That's an issue with the sound falloff, but the volume itself is very high. Listen to a couple Mk200s firing in close proximity at appropriately high volume and tell me if you don't want to rip your ears out.

Yeah I feel like there is a misunderstanding there somewhere, hehe. :) Thanks for the support. I am not even sure he means the bullet cracks. Anyway. I bit the bait and now I'm done replying to the guy.

 

Yeah the volume was raised extremely to try and battle the new, strong volume fall off a few months back. It was a dirty hack, sounds like shit and I smell a possible big "whole-game" remix somewhere in the near future. :)

 

 

 Awwww.... Why not? i was hoping for it (Popcorn already done...)  :D

Happy now? ;p

[taumargin 13]

Everyone I know who works in the 'Live' music sector is now deaf.  Most can't hear over 8 KHz. Hope this helps  :P

 

Cue the golden ears crowd with the lecture of how important it is to protect your ears.

[megagoth1702 252]

Everyone I know who works in the 'Live' music sector is now deaf. Most can't hear over 8 KHz. Hope this helps

Cue the golden ears crowd with the lecture of how important it is to protect your ears.

Yeah also it's very mean that the effects of hearing damage only show themselves YEARS after the damage has been dealt. So yeah, hearing protection at live gigs is a must.

So good that there are these things for your ear that you can customize the form on and hey fit perfectly into your ear without coloring the soundscape. A bit expensive but worth it.

/audionerd off.

[audiocustoms 375]

I heared (still way above 8kHz) that smb wants to talk to a professional?  :lol:

[djotacon 190]

"about my audio knowledge/skills"...

 

Audio skills?...Who is talking about your "unbelievable" audio skill?...

 

I'm speaking the "feel" when someone is trying to find the source of a shoot and feeling of the combat "audio theater".

 

This debate isn't about yout "awesome" skills (that to me are inverse related to your arrogance)

 

Right now is impossible to the players find properly the source of a shoot in medium/short distance clearly (at long distance is impossible).

 

Now we can only find an enemy using our vision, if the enemy is using a cover is impossible to find.

 

Instead try to force an idiotic war against "loudness???" when the weapons sound are so lowered that sound like a firecrackers in a children party, I prefer focused in the main problem, the game right now is only playable if you see clearly the enemy - or using a "framework" that gives to you a proper radar -

 

Very sad for a game that try to mimic a real war.

 

Speaking about the feeling of using "toy guns" instead a proper gun, even using a LMG the feeling of the sound is poor that I cant imagine that I'm using a strong weapon.

 

Well really isn't my problem, I dont have any compensation giving feedback to the devs about something so obvious and fighting agains a "think" tank of "some" auto-medallist that are posting every day trying to force his vision of sound inside the game, but right now the game rigth now is losing the half of enjoyment with this type of sound.

 

But I know that arguing with a guy that called "piece of shit" the others opinions like "megagoth" do in an another post is a losing battle.

[x3kj 1247]

 

Instead try to force an idiotic war against "loudness???" when the weapons sound are so lowered that sound like a firecrackers in a children party

to me that is proof that he has no idea what he is talking about.

so let's all just ignore this ignorant person.

 

The problems with locating shots has nothing to do with volume. It's because supersonic cracks do not have speed of sound simulation.

[St. Jimmy 272]

Yeah and like Fushko said it's volume falloff issue. There's now confusion between actual volume of the samples and the end volume because of distance attentuation and so on.

[audiocustoms 375]

It is not "forcing" ideas, it is about knowing what they talk about and busting inrealistic (in real life and on a technical level) ideas...
And if beeing right and standing his ground for ideas is called "arrogance", a lot of highly respected people in this community are. Including me.
Also, this game and even the sound of it can be considered as some kind of "art". Some people like Picasso, others like van Gogh. You'll never make everybody happy or not feeling offended.

[teabagginpeople 398]

"about my audio knowledge/skills"...

 

Audio skills?...Who is talking about your "unbelievable" audio skill?...

 

I'm speaking the "feel" when someone is trying to find the source of a shoot and feeling of the combat "audio theater".

 

This debate isn't about yout "awesome" skills (that to me are inverse related to your arrogance)

 

Right now is impossible to the players find properly the source of a shoot in medium/short distance clearly (at long distance is impossible).

 

Now we can only find an enemy using our vision, if the enemy is using a cover is impossible to find.

 

Instead try to force an idiotic war against "loudness???" when the weapons sound are so lowered that sound like a firecrackers in a children party, I prefer focused in the main problem, the game right now is only playable if you see clearly the enemy - or using a "framework" that gives to you a proper radar -

 

Very sad for a game that try to mimic a real war.

 

Speaking about the feeling of using "toy guns" instead a proper gun, even using a LMG the feeling of the sound is poor that I cant imagine that I'm using a strong weapon.

 

Well really isn't my problem, I dont have any compensation giving feedback to the devs about something so obvious and fighting agains a "think" tank of "some" auto-medallist that are posting every day trying to force his vision of sound inside the game, but right now the game rigth now is losing the half of enjoyment with this type of sound.

 

But I know that arguing with a guy that called "piece of shit" the others opinions like "megagoth" do in an another post is a losing battle.

Who's talking about his audio skills? You.. You were the one that brought it up. or have you forgotten already.

You're not arguing against some form of group think here. I'm not oblivious to the state of sounds "as they're in this transition phase" and I'm sure as shit not the only one. I'm being realistic. Giving the sound devs time for the bigger picture overhaul.

You would seriously rather go back to the basic sound package arma had for the last few years. Just because you are too impatient to give the devs time. Time to pull together all the pieces to make a proper landscape of sound.

you have problems seeing what is trying to be achieved because you're shortsighted . thinking it is not worthwhile just because because of the short term issues.

[Fushko 59]

to me that is proof that he has no idea what he is talking about.

so let's all just ignore this ignorant person.

 

The problems with locating shots has nothing to do with volume. It's because supersonic cracks do not have speed of sound simulation.

 

This is a massive problem. Absolutely breaks the soundscape in any kind of firefight. I wonder if the developers are planning to address this issue.

[megagoth1702 252]

This is a massive problem. Absolutely breaks the soundscape in any kind of firefight. I wonder if the developers are planning to address this issue.

Full speed of sound simulation for everything is planned.

[toysoldier 35]

This sound tails of guns and explosions on vanilla arma would be a AWESOME!

The vanilla sound tail are way to short for my opinion.

 

 

[R3vo 2654]

The vanilla sound tail are way to short for my opinion.

They are not necessarily too short, but rather to weak. Sometimes they are so quited or subtle that you simply doesn't notice them, it's like the audio devs are trying to hide what they created there.

 

 

One thing I am missing right now is something that megagoth1702 mentioned in one of his videos. Right now it seems that far away explosions or gun shot sounds don't lose any of their frequencies. So far I understand, one should only hear the low frequencies of a distant explosion.

I hear that nearly everyday because I have a Bundeswehr gun range nearby.

 

https://youtu.be/FQ-uBeTPhos?t=1m10s

 

Please correct me if I am wrong.

[x3kj 1247]

There is some filtering, for example on the Artillery/Tank HE explosion. Right next to you it sounds different then from 500m. I just think the explosion sound is weird. For autocannon it's almost perfect imo (repeating myself, i know).

Not sure about firing sounds. Remember that distance is a big factor... How large is the hearing radius for sounds in A3 ? 1km to 2Km at best ? In reality it would be far further then that, therefore the change is more obvious. In Arma the sounds would cut out before the frequency changes that low. So it's not directly comparable

[jumpinghubert 49]

-more echo

-larger hearing radius

-far more dampening of higher frequencies at distance

-less volume reduction at distance!

 

That would be more realistic. Dynasound goes in the right direction in my opinion. Sound at distance is really a big factor like k3kj write. Do you all remember sylvester how explosions changes the soundcharacteristics at distance? The same tendency in r3vo´s video with real explosives and gunshots.

[R3vo 2654]

-more echo

-larger hearing radius

-far more dampening of higher frequencies at distance

-less volume reduction at distance!

 

That would be more realistic. Dynasound goes in the right direction in my opinion. Sound at distance is really a big factor like k3kj write. Do you all remember sylvester how explosions changes the soundcharacteristics at distance? The same tendency in r3vo´s video with real explosives and gunshots.

 

I totally agree with that.

 

I've just installed DynaSound today and damn, that's sexy. The dampening of the frequencies together with the louder echo sounds perfect to me. The current ingame sound is by far too flat. If you duck down infront of your PC because of nearby explosion, then you know it's perfect.

 

When the audio devs are back next week, it would be nice to get some info, or more details of what's going to change. They announced all those new features(changing sounds via config etc.) and I don't even know whether they are ingame yet or not.

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

Not only that but BI's whole work around for the soundscape reverb thing, still isn't near as good as Dynasound's. There seems to be a lot to work on in that section.

 

On a side note though, regarding silenced sounds. A few months ago i had come across this company who makes professional Silencers. No idea who they are, but here's a few clips of them shooting some of their weapons, and surely recorded with some professional gear too. This is some really interesting stuff.

 

 

and second clip

 

 

While it's obviously not 1-1 as far as sounds go, you can hear the sharpness of the shots, and how clean they are, no where near as loud and messy as un-suppressed shots. Each with it's own characteristics. A handful of the vanilla Suppressed shots sounds exactly the same, with no character to them. I think this needs to be worked on too. Also, notice they show exactly how much dB each suppressor makes for the round fired. Some super interesting stuff.

[R3vo 2654]

That's some great footage there, really like the sounds.

[megagoth1702 252]

EDIT: I don't know why this post has become so big but I am big on clearing up audio misconseptions so here is another one.

 

Erhm. Nope. These are ADVERTISEMENT videos. How can one think these are real recordings? The soundscape is designed from the ground up! I am 99.9% sure that not a single sound in these videos is from the actual gun shootings in the video. Not even the magazine-loading and the other foley. I mean it's ridiculous. First of all you don't see a single microphone in the shots. If this were a recording it would look like this, microphones and cables everywhere.

 

"But hey mega, they could have recorded the sounds somewhere else and put them in the video!"

 

I don't think so. What they did is they hired a sound designer to design the sound for the video (you have no idea how much money is in doing sound for ads) which is standard business when making ads. He then used good quality libraries and designed the sound of every and each shot. Pretty good job I must say, the sounds are sexy and punchy. But they are not from the guns fired in the video.

 

Again, listen carefully.

First video 0:18, listen to that rapid fire carefully with headphones. It's a LOOPED sound, easier to hear in the end of the burst. Also, I took the audio and counted around 89 shots in that burst. 89 bullets? In order to show that the clip you would have to re-use footage by recording it from different angles and then cutting in a smart way, which is what they did. But if the sound was "real" you would also hear changes in the audio - but you don't. Because the designer just took a great sounding burst sound and looped it at a certain point.

 

The 2nd video's pistol supressor, really? With that bassy low end? Also in slo-mo? And with that loud mechanics sound? Or the second video at 0:47, slow motion shots sounding like "real time"? I don't think so.

 

Nothing in this video is real but the visual material.

 

I agree though, the silenced weapons sound very sexy and it would be nice to have such things in Arma. For now the DynaSound sounds will have to do. ;)

 

Anyway. Since we are posting videos with cool sound design, check this.

 

[St. Jimmy 272]

Each with it's own characteristics. A handful of the vanilla Suppressed shots sounds exactly the same, with no character to them. I think this needs to be worked on too.

This is what I agree. Every gun sounds different, even when they're silenced. Different silencers makes the sound different and different gun mechanics and calibers/bullets make different noises. That's really a only thing those videos can tell. Just too much edited stuff.

[megagoth1702 252]

This is what I agree. Every gun sounds different, even when they're silenced. Different silencers makes the sound different and different gun mechanics and calibers/bullets make different noises. That's really a only thing those videos can tell. Just too much edited stuff.

I'd argue against that, except for model specific mechanics all guns sound relatively the same. Even supressed ones. I have not heard them in real life but based on my knowledge, experience with non silenced guns and the libraries by The Recordist the biggest factors for US as end users are - environment, mic & pre-amp choice, position of mic. That's that. Everything else is just a more or less loud initial "bang" with some mechanics. There is a video linked on the recordist's page, listen to that. He shows the same firing bursts with different audio -> different microphone. Would you not agree that many many sounds there are very very similiar?

 

Final point: Just because guns sound the same in real life does not mean sound designers (even for a simulation game) should not make them "cool" and give them character. At the end of the day the player has to feel cool and the gun has to sound authentic, powerful. I would also wish for some diversity in the arma samples.

 

By the way - audiocustoms said firecrackers are boring. I disagree. Polish people have some crazy things in their arsenal that I had the pleasure to experience and record on new years eve and once you process them into something cool, it sounds like this.