Audio Tweaking (dev branch)

[Variable 322]

In case anyone thinks that the rant comes from audiofil people only, be aware that yours truly knows nothing about sound and still thinks the levels of sound in the stable branch are all messed up. Feels like a heap of too high and too low volumes.

[Brisse 78]

Sound levels have become better, but still not perfect.

Also, I want to thank megagoth1702 for the amazing feedback, and the way you explain things using both text and video. I'm confident that the developers take it in, but we might not see changes in the blink of an eye. I'm certain it will help in the long run though.

[Fushko 60]

Got it. That can be really annoying. Especially if there is nothing in the world that "explains" why there is any reverb coming from the right, like a wall or something.

Basic stuff that BIs is missing here. :-/ But they were under pressure so I get it.

I produced a video explaining the "pop" at the end of certain sounds.

---------- Post added at 02:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:34 PM ----------

I looked at the configs and for example the MX had it's volume INCREASED by 10 decibels! That's more than twice the volume! And it instantly runs into the arma3 limiter and distorts sound. Oh boy, I could rant forever. But why was this done?

A few days ago it was reported, that weapons sound too quiet over distance. This is because BI changed volume envelopes, how quiet stuff becomes over distance basically. They created a much more agressive curve, stuff becomes quieter waay to much.

So I assume instead of re-doing the volume fall off curve they just did a dirty hack - they just INCREASED the volume of everything so that the stuff in the distance would not be as silent. And since the arma3 limiter limits everything at 0dB the first person sound would not be thaaat much louder.

But as you noticed - it does not work at all like that. First person is overkill and stuff in the distance does not sound convincing.

Yep yep yep... They are struggeling with sound heh.

The volume of sonic cracks has been increased in the configs. But it runs into the limiter and if there is a sonic crack happening near you the distant shot will be turned down in volume. Basically what they do currently - instead of turning sounds down and creating a properly mixed sound stage they just raise volumes of things they think are too queit. This is a destructive approach.

Excellent detailed feedback as always mega. It's pretty frustrating that after all the good advice you have provided about volume levels, they still seem to raise the volume and fight against the limiter.

But at the end of the day, I'm still optimistic: they've probably done this as a quick workaround, given the deadline set by the Marksmen DLC. As they've confirmed, sound will be still improved upon.

About the "pop" sounds: these are very present in vehicles since the very first Alpha release; the worst offender of them all being the Ifrit. Just try driving that MRAP and notice the ridicolous pop-fest.

Edited April 9, 2015 by FrankHH

[almanzo 144]

What were you guys doing inviting LJ and then learning absolutely nothing and implementing some of the great concepts he had in the laziest manner possible? I wouldn't even be annoyed here if it weren't for the fact that I'm not even able to play a build that allows me to circumvent this, hence why I'm posting this here.

I don't even know if LJ will be able to re-implement the features that set his mod apart from others at this point. I'd really like to know how the devs could get such a great concept so completely and utterly wrong. They would have been better off simply adding new sounds and leaving the rest alone if they couldn't do it properly.

I've been saying it since HL2 came out, SEPARATE samples for separate instances of fire, it's the only way, software modulation is completely inadequate.

Have you even payed attention to the JSRS Dragonfyre thread at all?

Jarhead has very clearly stated that the new sound system makes his mod much less resource hungry, and that he things the new system is great. I'm not a big fan of the vanilla samples either, but I think the new system is a big step in the right direction. It makes the life of sound modders a hell of a lot easier, and I can assure you that LJ will reimplement his features, he himself has stated quite clearly that it will make JSRS run significantly better and have a much smaller impact on performance.

And it does make sense, instead of relying on scripts and a lot of shortcuts, he can now take advantage of the ingame system that provides features he had to script in before, reducing the amounts of scripts he needs to use to achieve what he did with previous releases.

[Sandy* 10]

You were not forced to update. If you don't want auto-updates you should disable them.

Even if this was still possible, what would you tell people who needed to reinstall the game, not to mention entirely new customers? Not that I have a problem with autoupdates myself, but Steam never really supported playing older builds so smug comments like these don't really have any value.

[infiltrator_2k 29]

Have you even payed attention to the JSRS Dragonfyre thread at all?

Jarhead has very clearly stated that the new sound system makes his mod much less resource hungry, and that he things the new system is great. I'm not a big fan of the vanilla samples either, but I think the new system is a big step in the right direction. It makes the life of sound modders a hell of a lot easier, and I can assure you that LJ will reimplement his features, he himself has stated quite clearly that it will make JSRS run significantly better and have a much smaller impact on performance.

And it does make sense, instead of relying on scripts and a lot of shortcuts, he can now take advantage of the ingame system that provides features he had to script in before, reducing the amounts of scripts he needs to use to achieve what he did with previous releases.

I used DragonFyre the other night and was blown away how much better Jarhead's mod is and how much more immersive the game feels.

[toysoldier 35]

I know this is a dev specific thread but the 1.42 stable audio is all over the place in terms of levels.

I feel like they wanted to mass drop the volume on everything (which is good!) but they managed to add volume to the first person perspective rather than scale it back with everything else.

If I run my in-game audio at 50-70% now it sounds pretty decent, till I fire and I'm completely deaf. It's basically a trade off between hearing the enemy shoot at you but going deaf when firing or hearing nothing at all. This seems most noticeable with vehicles, couldn't even pin point an IFV mid fight fire even though it was less than 100m away as I couldn't hear it firing.

Yes totally agree, 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.

[probad 44]

I hope they'll look at making the Cyrus feel bigger as they have tweaked the MAR10.

[rekkless 240]

I'd have to agree to some level.

The sounds are much better than what they had. So if the existing platform was the bar then BI nailed it.

BUT the new sounds are not better than JSRS Dragonfyre + Laxmann's Enhanced Soundscape. Not by a long way.

[PTV-Jobo 820]

Kinda funny, because both Dennis and I were talking about the DLC today and how impressed we were. It's not perfect, but the changes were for the better--especially for modders. DFyre was chaotic with scripting and a lot of people were running into performance issues. We're hoping with these new changes and future tweaks from BIS it'll mean less scripts needed to do things. But yeah, it's just kind of funny to me and LJ hearing people say these are the worst sounds/changes they have heard yet people like the person they are chanting to to fix them actually don't think they are as bad as people make them out to be, heh.

[pd3 25]

You were not forced to update. If you don't want auto-updates you should disable them.

There is no option to disable updates, only to update the game when launched, which precludes not updating to begin with.

---------- Post added at 00:40 ---------- Previous post was at 00:31 ----------

Kinda funny, because both Dennis and I were talking about the DLC today and how impressed we were. It's not perfect, but the changes were for the better--especially for modders. DFyre was chaotic with scripting and a lot of people were running into performance issues. We're hoping with these new changes and future tweaks from BIS it'll mean less scripts needed to do things. But yeah, it's just kind of funny to me and LJ hearing people say these are the worst sounds/changes they have heard yet people like the person they are chanting to to fix them actually don't think they are as bad as people make them out to be, heh.

I was hoping for LJ's features to essentially be hard-coded, which to an extent they did I suppose, after actually looking into the updated config files, however not making the complete effort to translate the most performance intensive feature of his mod was pretty disappointing, especially considering this may now collide with Dragonfyre at the very worst, resulting in that dropped feature. Or at the very least have no appreciable performance improvement for the one feature that singly added the most unique aspect to the game via Dragonfyre.

I was pretty annoyed when I wrote that post, mainly because I simply wanted to continue playing 1.38, and instead the game had updated when I had no desire for it to.

1.40 was poorly optimized and ran appreciably worse than 1.38 so, that's not much of a consolation.

I will say it does seem as if 1.42, in spite of the headache seems to run considerably better than 1.38 or 1.40, however I'm still somewhat annoyed about the absence of the implementation of sonic echoes for buildings. That feature alone took Arma from being a mere game to having a soundscape that was closely similar to that of any videos you see on the internet of intense MOUT-type fighting.

I don't know if the class "TailHouses" was supposed to accomplish that, however I couldn't tell in-game, and I was annoyed that it only seems to apply to specifically designated objects and not buildings in general, which I think was probably not the best way of going about it. That essentially means that it is incumbent upon the addonmaker to incorporate functionality for "class interior" to work with a custom building, if they're even capable of doing so at all.

My biggest concern is that this update will effectively render certain features of Dragonfyre null and void due to some hamfisted implementation, with no alternative.

It's great if they take an idea and implement it well, it does the opposite of good if it effectively breaks the work of the individual they're emulating without even implementing all of the features.

Edited April 10, 2015 by Pd3

[defused 10]

New sounds are a mess, sometimes it sounds im inside a bathroom, other times it sounds im inside a arena, they are a big shit for me, most of the guys that i play to have the same opinion.

I think opinions divide here, but far i talked till now with people online, most of them dont like the new sounds.

And no, i cant disable automatica updates, i play multiplayer.

[pd3 25]

Have you even payed attention to the JSRS Dragonfyre thread at all?

Jarhead has very clearly stated that the new sound system makes his mod much less resource hungry, and that he things the new system is great. I'm not a big fan of the vanilla samples either, but I think the new system is a big step in the right direction. It makes the life of sound modders a hell of a lot easier, and I can assure you that LJ will reimplement his features, he himself has stated quite clearly that it will make JSRS run significantly better and have a much smaller impact on performance.

And it does make sense, instead of relying on scripts and a lot of shortcuts, he can now take advantage of the ingame system that provides features he had to script in before, reducing the amounts of scripts he needs to use to achieve what he did with previous releases.

I'll recant a lot of what I said if he can re-create every feature of his mod with the new hard-coded features, otherwise it's little more than a burnt offering from BI, imo.

I know that's a pretty black and white attitude to have, but I'm sorry, the sonic echoes off of buildings absolutely TRANSFORMED the game, it was no longer a sterile sound environment, but one that advanced a step closer in improving the immersion of the player.

I was 100% for the hard coded implementation of those features, but they're no good if they don't translate seamlessly.

- Discriminating against legacy objects

- No "echoes" when proximally situated to prominent architecture

Call me overly picky or what have you, but that's a bad start. Unfortunately this is one of those things where if it doesn't do everything the scripted mod does, why bother?

Edited April 10, 2015 by Pd3

[chortles 263]

The sounds are much better than what they had. So if the existing platform was the bar then BI nailed it.

The whole answer right here.

[pd3 25]

The whole answer right here.

That's entirely subjective. I actually preferred the old sounds, the new sounds all have a very sterile, painfully over-engineered, anemic feeling to them where the higher frequency sounds were balanced out to sound more like something you'd hear in a hollywood movie from the 90s. At least the old sounds had some weight to them, the current ones are reminiscent of a Co2 powered air gun that's nearly spent.

It's not my cup of tea, however if somebody else enjoyed it, whatever I guess.

My main issue is with the seemingly incomplete translation of LJ's features.

[bullet purveyor 85]

I don't think It's the quality of the sound samples that are the problem. It's positional audio and audio levels thats completely out of whack.

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.

-Sonic cracks sounds like gunshots and the sound seems to arrive from where the bullets impact hit, more than something passing by close to your head. I'm constantly checking my flank in confusion.

-It sounds like the enemy gunfire is close, when they really are far away. You don't get any sense of distance to the shooters.

-The volume levels of different sounds have no consistency.

explosions, helicopters, vehicle engines, footsteps etc, none of them seem to balanced against each other.

I don't care if they use noisy sound samples from old compact cassette tapes, as long as there is some sort of volume balance and directional audio.

[fr33kster 10]

Its mind boggling to me how someone can play with these sounds and say its an improvement. It sounds like everyone is using a pellet gun. Its a joke and should be fixed asap. Seems like the game play gets worse with each update and nothing is ever done about the obvious and more serious issues like Voip and FPS.

[chortles 263]

My main issue is with the seemingly incomplete translation of LJ's features.

Whereas to me it seems like BI wasn't consciously trying to engine-integrate LJ's stuff.

[reluxstudio 11]

DLC Marksman BUG, If the soldier is lying and reload your weapon he can not do anything else, does not recharge, no stands, have to leave the game to fix.

[pd3 25]

Whereas to me it seems like BI wasn't consciously trying to engine-integrate LJ's stuff.

Orly?

class SoundTails

{

class TailInterior

{

sound[] = {"A3\Sounds_F\arsenal\weapons\Pistols\P07\P07_tail_interior",1.0,1,1200};

frequency = 1;

volume = "interior";

};

class TailTrees

{

sound[] = {"A3\Sounds_F\arsenal\weapons\Pistols\P07\P07_tail_trees",1.0,1,1200};

frequency = 1;

volume = "(1-interior/1.4)*trees";

};

class TailForest

{

sound[] = {"A3\Sounds_F\arsenal\weapons\Pistols\P07\P07_tail_forest",1.0,1,1200};

frequency = 1;

volume = "(1-interior/1.4)*forest";

};

class TailMeadows

{

sound[] = {"A3\Sounds_F\arsenal\weapons\Pistols\P07\P07_tail_meadows",1.0,1,1200};

frequency = 1;

volume = "(1-interior/1.4)*(meadows/2 max sea/2)";

};

class TailHouses

{

sound[] = {"A3\Sounds_F\arsenal\weapons\Pistols\P07\P07_tail_houses",1.0,1,1200};

frequency = 1;

volume = "(1-interior/1.4)*houses";

};

They totally were, unless this is one big coincidence.

My main problem here is the external echoes, I didn't notice them when playing in Vanilla mode, which gave me an ominous feeling, that the most prominent new feature to JSRS was notably not hard coded.

It may sound like I'm overstating this, but I'm not.

Seriously, if you used Dragonfyre, you know exactly how different the environment feels when the sounds change based on the environment in which somebody is firing from.

Granted the indoor sound tails were also extremely impressive in Dragonfyre and IMO would be the second most important feature, followed by distant reports and explosions.

You can call me an entitled twit, however the problem here, and as somebody in the Dragonfyre thread had stated, which only confirms some of my ominous feelings - that because BI has not seamlessly ported all of the features, it means that some may now have to be dropped, and that's a horrible, terrible shame. Especially if it's some of the best features of the mod itself.

BI would have literally been better off not doing anything if they weren't prepared to do it properly, that's all I can say.

Thankfully I've managed to shoehorn things to "work" with 1.42, as I'm now very skeptical that I will get the same experience depending on what features are dropped. I'm personally not willing to sacrifice anything, except some performance when it comes to my personal experience with the game.

However it's almost tragic that BI would make the effort only to not take it the whole way, there is no going halfway once something such as DF sets the bar, especially if you've effectively crippled the very thing that set the bar in the first place in doing so.

[roshnak 41]

I've been saying this ever since the old days of OFP, that BI needed to step away from engine based sound modulation and simply go the route that other games had successfully done away with.

The most primitive example from my recollection was Half Life 2, they had separate samples based on distance back in 2004.

Wait - I'm pretty sure HL2's way of doing it is the "old way" and doing this stuff in-engine is the way it's going to be done in the future (and also right now, apparently).

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..

It would be pretty great if Arma 3 had proper 3D/spatialized sound.

Edited April 10, 2015 by roshnak

[pd3 25]

Wait - I'm pretty sure HL2's way of doing it is the "old way" and doing this stuff in-engine is the way it's going to be done in the future (and also right now, apparently).

It would be pretty great if Arma 3 had proper 3D/spatialized sound.

HL2, was one of the first major games to incorporate separate samples for firing at a distance, yes it was primitive, but it was not purely software modulated.

Yes they did include software processing as well for various enclosed environments, however it wasn't as remarkable as the former in terms of creating combat ambience.

What I'm saying is, no amount of software processing and modulation of an existing sound can even come remotely close to a separate sample with an explicitly engineered/recorded purpose.

Granted it does seem that BI did include the potential for actual samples to be played as the "tails" as per what I had found earlier.

However it doesn't bode well that when you actually experience it in-game, it really simply feels as if they took the same sample and ran it through some filters.

It achieves roughly the same effect which is not very good IMO.

I'm really not trying to rip on BI for the sake of it, I'm really not. However it is my belief that this is pretty important, and shouldn't be mucked around.

Creating a convincing soundscape is very important to this game as it's general focus is creating a more immersive combat environment than say... other military-style games in the FP genre.

I really don't think BI can afford to go halfway at least in terms of implementation, less the actual sounds themselves. I suppose I take back what I said about their default sounds except to say that they're not my cup of tea, I really think they make environments feel less convincing, and I think that's a shame considering what some of us have seen (and heard) A3 to be capable of.

[.kju 3239]

More feedback: https://www.reddit.com/r/arma/comments/320d5h/new_arma3_sounds_have_a_pop_at_the_end/

[roshnak 41]

What I'm saying is, no amount of software processing and modulation of an existing sound can even come remotely close to a separate sample with an explicitly engineered/recorded purpose.

Serious question: Why not? I don't know that much about sound editing, but are there not mathmatical principles behind the way sound behaves that can be utilized to make something sound not only good but also (more or less) correct for its environment?

Also, yeah it kinda just sounds like you don't like the sounds rather than the actual sound system, which is a much more subjective criticism.

[roberthammer 582]

Yea , you got the point megagoth - even in some A3 live stream i could hear that popping everywhere , also those supersonic cracks are so weird in 1.42 - dunno if it's because of quality of that sample ,

but in my opinion it doesn't sound anything like weapon's supersonic crack and i get feeling that the A2 had much better supersonic crack than the A3

Edited April 11, 2015 by RobertHammer