The sound thread

[Smurf 12]

I figured this one was missing (there are some about problems with it but those are another history) and there is little to no discussion on this subject.

Probably now is way too late but what are your thoughts on it?

___________

Dynamic filters: Any news on those?

Radio and voices: good, no comments on those. Huge improvement over A2, will be one of those "pro" points in reviews.

Vehicles in general: I'm kind of disappointed, was expecting something similar to what we had in sound mods, louder, beefier, terrifying sometimes. Look at the panther (Namer), very menacing look beast but it sound isn't "huge", no turbine sounds or roar from the engine that could be heard from a good distance*. Same for helos and trucks.

But isn't all bad, most samples are very nice. The actual sound of tracks and tires in contact with the ground is good but too low.

Weapons: In general are good too, could be better with....

*Distant sounds: Probably what makes the overall sounds feel so weak, from small weapons to vehicles, there isn't a sense of something happening "over there". or I got too used to PR and soundmods. :j:

Explosions: Again, not bad but could be better, more beefier and could use some more samples.

@Modders: How are things "under the hood"?

Edited July 31, 2013 by Smurf

[tremanarch 6]

also there are some bugs:: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?160047-Minor-but-distracting-Sound-Bug

[2nd ranger 282]

The weapon sounds are a massive leap forward from previous games. But yeah, it seems like vehicles are being neglected. As in every game since OFP, they're all far too quiet. I'm more concerned about weapons though. Some things that bother me a little:

• 
  
• The MX sounded great in the Alpha. Now it's been changed a couple of times, most notably with the sounds of the working parts and such added to all rifles. Now I find it quite jarring. I'm talking specifically about the 'bolt' sound. There's a weird sort of 'laggy' feeling when firing on full auto. It's hard to explain but I remember seeing at least one other person posting something similar.
  
• Katiba is too quiet compared to other rifles.
  
• Pistols sound too weak.
  
• Explosions are way better than previous games but they still need more punch.
  
• Alot of sounds are simply not loud enough. I'm sure it's being worked on (as seen in dev branch with character sounds), but all sounds dissipate over far too short a distance, with the known exceptions of the reload and placing explosive sounds. Sometimes I can barely hear the weapon of a guy shooting at me from 100m away.
  

[St. Jimmy 272]

The weapon sounds are a massive leap forward from previous games. But yeah, it seems like vehicles are being neglected. As in every game since OFP, they're all far too quiet. I'm more concerned about weapons though. Some things that bother me a little:

• Alot of sounds are simply not loud enough. I'm sure it's being worked on (as seen in dev branch with character sounds), but all sounds dissipate over far too short a distance, with the known exceptions of the reload and placing explosive sounds. Sometimes I can barely hear the weapon of a guy shooting at me from 100m away.
  

These two things really bothers me. The sound engine seems to feel much better from previous games but these things are really badly done and kills the total immersion. Things can be loud to couple meters but then they just fade too quickly.

[Thumtac 1]

It's funny that I can hear my foot steps over what should be beastly idle engines running ingame. From my experience I had the change of witnessing a start up of a IAV Stryker and hear the idle engine sound, you really need to pick up your voice if you wanna be heard, and forget about footsteps. That thing purrs loudly :)

[EuroSlave 1]

Weapons are ok but still need some improvement. I struggle to hear firefights >500m? Same with vehicles. Not only that but I don't think the engine takes into account if you are in a building or whatever? So if I fire a gun in a house it's the same as on open terrain. That is pretty poor tbh.

While I don't want the game to sound like Bad Company 2 on war tapes, it could at least change the sound up a little when being inside a building and even being in a town compared to being on open terrain.

[doln 10]

The distant firing sounds are too deep. Distant gunfire sounds like high pitch 'pops'.

And the firing sound for the cannons on the IFV's doesn't sound very good, and the coax MG sounds bad too. Though in regards to the cannon, I have a friend in the Army who is a gunner on a LAV-3 who says they sound really good. So I don't know what I'm talking about :v

Vehicles need to louder and rumblier. Bad company, while a bit overzealous, was certainly in the right direction.

In fact Bohemia should just headhunt the sound team for the battlefield series, battlefield has the best sound design I've ever heard in a military shooter.

[bigpickle 0]

I think all of the sound is bad/wrong very disappointing tbh, samples as an example get destroyed by bass or are over driven by volume, this leads to a whole heck load of clipping and artifacts, go fire the vermin full auto with headphones on. I would expect this for a low budget game not form BIS who know what they are doing.

Audio limiter that was billed clearly isn't doing its job.

As people have said the doppler is all wrong too, on firing and vehicles it seems not too bad but explosions are definitely just outright bad, the doppler as over done an example of this is a 40mm explosion near you sounds muffled.

Weapons wise my opinion there is the idea is wrong again, it seems now the sample plays the entirety of each sample for each shot rather than looping the first few seconds, meaning the overdone reverb of each sample becomes drowning as you fire more rounds.

99% of this is easily rectified, but currently the audio=poor.

[tinter 184]

Since they added the sounds being lower while in the vehicle, I now have to drive in 3rd person so I can notice when I get shot at. I had an APC shoot at me yesterday and I only noticed because one of my teammates said it.

[surfer 42]

Obviously the modern battlefield has a very high dynamic range. The player wants to hear the wind as well as gunshots which need to be so much louder. Atm the only solution is to turn your volume up until gunshots impair your hearing. As with many aspects of Arma also the sound department would do good to use a little common sense here and there instead of physically correct calculated loudness levels.

Or they should give us sliders so we can adjust the volumes of gunshots/vehicles/conversations/ambient to our likings.

I have the feeling the falloff of distance sounds might even be realistic db-wise, but I still dislike it.

[instagoat 133]

Explosions don't sound like explosions. They sound like what action movie writers think explosions sound like, but they´ve never heard an explosion.

A handgrenade doesn't go "pew", it goes "BANG". And a rocket impact isn´t a low, rolling thunder like some sort of avalanche, it is a pretty sharp and LOUD bang too. And the reach of sounds is too low, too. You can hear rifle fire over miles irl. Tank guns are heard out to 50 kilometers in clear weather. If there is a battle anywhere on the map, and it´s not raining or snowing heavily or something, you should be able to hear it.

The sounds also go dull very rapidly, and the audio filter doesn´t sound like actual distance filtering, it rather more sounds like rattling tincans. The Idea is there with the sounds for the rifles, but the rifles are unfortunately about the only things along with the voiceovers and some engine sounds from the vehicles that sound good. Explosions and Rocket sounds are particularily weak.

Note, none of these go "rumble". They go "boom". And in Arma, the bigger the explosion, the more it sounds like an earthquake rumble or a very, very, very distant volcano or something, not an explosion. Bang. Bang bang bang. Not rumble. The sound only gets lower over distance. Big distances, not 700 meters, but rather at distances of 1 - 2km ish, depending on the size of the explosion. The louder the bang, the further the high pitched frequencies in the bang will carry.

Edited July 31, 2013 by InstaGoat

[Tyl3r99 41]

lets just wait for JSRS for arma 3 ;) they know exactly what it should sound like

Explosions don't sound like explosions. They sound like what action movie writers think explosions sound like, but they´ve never heard an explosion.

A handgrenade doesn't go "pew", it goes "BANG". And a rocket impact isn´t a low, rolling thunder like some sort of avalanche, it is a pretty sharp and LOUD bang too. And the reach of sounds is too low, too. You can hear rifle fire over miles irl. Tank guns are heard out to 50 kilometers in clear weather. If there is a battle anywhere on the map, and it´s not raining or snowing heavily or something, you should be able to hear it.

The sounds also go dull very rapidly, and the audio filter doesn´t sound like actual distance filtering, it rather more sounds like rattling tincans. The Idea is there with the sounds for the rifles, but the rifles are unfortunately about the only things along with the voiceovers and some engine sounds from the vehicles that sound good. Explosions and Rocket sounds are particularily weak.

Note, none of these go "rumble". They go "boom". And in Arma, the bigger the explosion, the more it sounds like an earthquake rumble or a very, very, very distant volcano or something, not an explosion. Bang. Bang bang bang. Not rumble.

---------- Post added at 12:32 ---------- Previous post was at 12:27 ----------

i just watched that clip from instagoat... HOLY SHI...!!

BIS watch that video its a must see and a MUST do!! thats what explosion effects should look like!

wooo im watching that video again!

[metalcraze 290]

Sound sources are still not affected by objects between them and listener.

[Kemeros 1]

Explosions don't sound like explosions. They sound like what action movie writers think explosions sound like, but they´ve never heard an explosion.

A handgrenade doesn't go "pew", it goes "BANG". And a rocket impact isn´t a low, rolling thunder like some sort of avalanche, it is a pretty sharp and LOUD bang too. And the reach of sounds is too low, too. You can hear rifle fire over miles irl. Tank guns are heard out to 50 kilometers in clear weather. If there is a battle anywhere on the map, and it´s not raining or snowing heavily or something, you should be able to hear it.

The sounds also go dull very rapidly, and the audio filter doesn´t sound like actual distance filtering, it rather more sounds like rattling tincans. The Idea is there with the sounds for the rifles, but the rifles are unfortunately about the only things along with the voiceovers and some engine sounds from the vehicles that sound good. Explosions and Rocket sounds are particularily weak.

Note, none of these go "rumble". They go "boom". And in Arma, the bigger the explosion, the more it sounds like an earthquake rumble or a very, very, very distant volcano or something, not an explosion. Bang. Bang bang bang. Not rumble. The sound only gets lower over distance. Big distances, not 700 meters, but rather at distances of 1 - 2km ish, depending on the size of the explosion. The louder the bang, the further the high pitched frequencies in the bang will carry.

Damn.. at 2:13. That's a proper explosion right there. Even has shrapnel and rounds flying all over the place. Dangerous stuff.

[sasha013 225]

Bullet impacts, particularly on bodies/corpses... unless my hearing is poor it seems it's missing? Are we going to see it implemented in the final version?

[spanishsurfer 58]

Check out Jarheads site, his ongoing work is available to watch.

http://www.jsrs-studios.com/

It sounds very good.

[Ezcoo 47]

Explosions don't sound like explosions. They sound like what action movie writers think explosions sound like, but they´ve never heard an explosion.

A handgrenade doesn't go "pew", it goes "BANG". And a rocket impact isn´t a low, rolling thunder like some sort of avalanche, it is a pretty sharp and LOUD bang too. And the reach of sounds is too low, too. You can hear rifle fire over miles irl. Tank guns are heard out to 50 kilometers in clear weather. If there is a battle anywhere on the map, and it´s not raining or snowing heavily or something, you should be able to hear it.

The sounds also go dull very rapidly, and the audio filter doesn´t sound like actual distance filtering, it rather more sounds like rattling tincans. The Idea is there with the sounds for the rifles, but the rifles are unfortunately about the only things along with the voiceovers and some engine sounds from the vehicles that sound good. Explosions and Rocket sounds are particularily weak.

Note, none of these go "rumble". They go "boom". And in Arma, the bigger the explosion, the more it sounds like an earthquake rumble or a very, very, very distant volcano or something, not an explosion. Bang. Bang bang bang. Not rumble. The sound only gets lower over distance. Big distances, not 700 meters, but rather at distances of 1 - 2km ish, depending on the size of the explosion. The louder the bang, the further the high pitched frequencies in the bang will carry.

Fully agreed. Couldn't have summed it up any better.

[BigBoss 10]

I wish BiS just hired Jarhead.

[metalcraze 290]

I wish BIS just added reverberation post-processing that would've solved a lot of issues that JSRS will bandaid

[Zorg_DK 10]

For me the main issue with the audio is that sound of gun fire can't be heard very far away, and also that ambient sound is too low.

[Bee8190 10]

I agree sounds need more work, I always liked Hi-Fi mod for environment and 50 Cal and JSRS for explosions and other stuff. Nice video btw

[Tonci87 163]

I'm on vacation and can't check this myself, have the 5.1 issues been fixed?

Edited August 1, 2013 by Tonci87

[roberthammer 582]

I'm on vacation and can't check this myself, have the 5.1 issues been fixed?

So far i know - nope , not yet

[Dwarden 1124]

i linked all possible Sound issue tickets to 'hub' ticket http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=3663 , in case something isn't yet, tell me

[dale0404 5]

It might just be me but when you walk through bushes does it sound as though the sound of the bush rustling is behind you? Surely the rustling "sound" should be heard as you are walking through the bush?