(59857) - Sound Issues - Please Fix/To Be Done >>

[mrcash2009 0]

Ok,

There are many splinter threads around the forums all about the odd issues with sound panning etc.

So I have used the latest beta today and although some vehicle sounds are fixed (as the patch states and that's great) we still have 2 to fix (or maybe 3) ...

1. Please fix first person gun firing that when moving head is always stuck mono centered, never pans, this happened in arma1 fine.

2. Please fix the explosion & grenade sound issue with "sound sticking to ear position/head position where it was triggered". This one for me is the most annoying and non immersion sound issue.

3. Where exactly is the 3d pan accelerated hardware effect gone since arma1? Where is the 3d panning doppler effect (behind and in front filter effect) in aram2, no matter what settings I cant get it to work fully.

Sorry to repeat this but I thought seeing as attempts are made in this new patch it could go a little further, plus its a request now sourced in the right place, being the beta thread specifically.

EDIT: Ok after looking at every thread in this forum section I failed to spot (once I posted this one) the bloody "broken sound" thread that this may as well be for. Sorry moderators, maybe merge it? I thought that thread was elsewhere ... :pet2:

Edited October 30, 2009 by mrcash2009

[oktane 0]

Doppler effects work fine, they are a part of the sound engine. Put choppers in the air and fly around them with camera.sqs or a spectator script.. you will hear it pitch up or down. Or use my sound test program.

Saying 'this happened in arma1 fine' isn't helpful because the audio engine is totally rewritten in ArmA2. OFP/Res/ArmA1 all used the same base engine, ArmA1 only added openal extensions. ArmA2 uses a new standardized XAudio2 engine in DirectX. No more eax, no more hardware acceleration. If you set these settings in the cfg file, they are ignored.. someone just forgot to remove them.

There is no hardware acceleration, this is not used anymore in modern games. It is only a bullet point on creative cards to help sell them.

My positional audio seems to work great, aside from the annoying 'drop outs' as in, when a chopper fires FFAR's, all the other sounds stop for the SHOO SHOO bang bang noise, even the rotor noise stops. I think this is a max number of channels played at one time issue though.

If you make some example videos or screenshots, and post them to the community issue tracker, I'm sure the devs will take a look at it and be able to fix it.

[zeep 3]

3. Where exactly is the 3d pan accelerated hardware effect gone since arma1? ... (behind and in front filter effect) in aram2, no matter what settings I cant get it to work fully.

Same here. In ARMA2 i don't hear a difference if something is right in front of me or right behind me. I have an Audigy soundcard with the latest drivers and 3D sound in all games on Unreal, Source, BF and Quake engines.

How can i get 3D sound working in ARMA2 please?! BIS?!?

[MehMan 0]

Well it is in a way realistic, because if a sound source is DIRECTLY infront or behind you, and I mean your head is locked in one position and the sound is coming from either behind or infront of you, you supposedly wouldn't know where it's coming from. But because that's rather rare and hardly possible since you're always moving your head and just the slightest deviance makes it easier to pinpoint noise direction, it can be counted as a bug. In a way.

[zeep 3]

Well it is in a way realistic, because if a sound source is DIRECTLY infront or behind you, and I mean your head is locked in one position and the sound is coming from either behind or infront of you, you supposedly wouldn't know where it's coming from. But because that's rather rare and hardly possible since you're always moving your head and just the slightest deviance makes it easier to pinpoint noise direction, it can be counted as a bug. In a way.

You're wrong. It is realistic to hear the difference, even with your head completely still. I'm not sure if you know and understand this but because of the shape and density of the human ear, your brain learns where a sound is coming from. The density and shape of the ear filters and colors the sound in such a way that makes the differences apparent. The learning process begins when you're a baby. :)

As you grow older your brain adds reflective factors etc to the audibly locational awareness.

Briefly, 3D sound is very real.

[Dwarden 1125]

noted ...

[Raidar 1]

Speed of sound simulation of rifles firing seems to be gone again, but with it most of the problems with missing machinegun/rifle sounds. I played Armed Assault recently and the sound there is much better because of the 3D EAX stuff. I think they made a step back with the ArmA2 sound engine.

[mrcash2009 0]

Doppler effects work fine, they are a part of the sound engine. Put choppers in the air and fly around them with camera.sqs or a spectator script.. you will hear it pitch up or down. Or use my sound test program.

Saying 'this happened in arma1 fine' isn't helpful because the audio engine is totally rewritten in ArmA2. OFP/Res/ArmA1 all used the same base engine, ArmA1 only added openal extensions. ArmA2 uses a new standardized XAudio2 engine in DirectX. No more eax, no more hardware acceleration. If you set these settings in the cfg file, they are ignored.. someone just forgot to remove them.

There is no hardware acceleration, this is not used anymore in modern games. It is only a bullet point on creative cards to help sell them.

My positional audio seems to work great, aside from the annoying 'drop outs' as in, when a chopper fires FFAR's, all the other sounds stop for the SHOO SHOO bang bang noise, even the rotor noise stops. I think this is a max number of channels played at one time issue though.

If you make some example videos or screenshots, and post them to the community issue tracker, I'm sure the devs will take a look at it and be able to fix it.

This is only answering 3 so whats your view on 2 & 1?

Also I said doppler and thats my mistake, its true that works, I realty meant the 3d filter effect to fake behind, top, corner, left corner .. etc.

But i guess thats not for things now or Arma2 ... so cool, thanks for info, but my main things are point 1 &2.

But because that's rather rare and hardly possible since you're always moving your head and just the slightest deviance makes it easier to pinpoint noise direction, it can be counted as a bug. In a way.

Its a bug ... throw a grenade, turn so it explodes to your right hand side of hearing, then spin around realy fast ... the explosion will carry on to its end in the same position (in this example always directly in your right hand side even if you turn and face it while its exploding).

I played Armed Assault recently and the sound there is much better because of the 3D EAX stuff. I think they made a step back with the ArmA2 sound engine.

I agree and that's my reference with point 3. Anyway as long as its noted then thats my point realy.

Edited October 31, 2009 by mrcash2009

[CarlGustaffa 4]

A sublime difference in realtime EQ'ing would suffice for difference between sounds in front of you and behind you, on a stereo only system. That being said, the way the sound doesn't update while turning your head is more problematic. If that worked, behind or in front could be determined simply by turning your head.

[Alex72 1]

Totally agree with you mrcrash.

The mono thing when firing in 1st person would be nice to get fixed, but im even more concerned about the explosions (and later on i think even some rifle/weapon sounds do the same at times) that wont stick to their source but follow the ear it goes off on.

There is also a very wide sound arc around weapons that are being fired - this makes it hard to distinguish where it is being fired. You have to move your head left to right a lot to pinpoint the sound. Normally i get killed in this process so i learned to move around and turn my head a lot to pinpoint it wich isnt really good. There is confusions in real wars im 100% sure of, but you got more senses and other aids IRL.

Anyway, yes i also hope these things gets fixed one day. So far fixing the vehicle startup/shutdown sounds is a good way forward, and it tells us BIS is aware of the problems. Would love to be able to hear an explosion and turn my head to it - and it stays where the explosion went off. This issue needs to be fixed as it is such a big problem gameplay wise.

Artillery, SOM arty, Trigger bombs etc is what usually are the " ear stickiest" ones. They stick the same way the startup/shutdown of vehicles was.

Edited November 3, 2009 by Alex72

[bangtail 0]

This is only answering 3 so whats your view on 2 & 1?

Also I said doppler and thats my mistake, its true that works, I realty meant the 3d filter effect to fake behind, top, corner, left corner .. etc.

But i guess thats not for things now or Arma2 ... so cool, thanks for info, but my main things are point 1 &2.

Its a bug ... throw a grenade, turn so it explodes to your right hand side of hearing, then spin around realy fast ... the explosion will carry on to its end in the same position (in this example always directly in your right hand side even if you turn and face it while its exploding).

I agree and that's my reference with point 3. Anyway as long as its noted then thats my point realy.

You are of course, 100% right.

EAX/HS is not a "bullet point" to sell cards. The fact that companies have stopped using it does not diminish it's CLEAR superiority in older games that do use it. Play Bioshock with a decent set of cans on an X-Fi card and then try it with ASUS GX emulation. The difference is night and day.

As much as GX does emulate EAX 5.0 it does NOT emulate a lot of the hardware effects that the X-Fi is capable of.

I've had more than a few ASUS cards and as much as they are excellent cards, they always come up short in the gaming department when compared to the X-Fi (This is the reason that the ASUS cards never last long in my boxes).

A1's hardware sound is vastly superior to A2's software sound. The panning, occlusion and accuracy over distance (to name a few things) are nowhere near as good using the XA2 engine.

It's almost always Xonar/HDAV/Essence owners (and this isn't directed at you Oktane, just a general observation) who are trying to justify their purchases who discount HS/EAX as a "selling point" or try to claim GX emulation is "just as good" which I can assure you after many hours of testing, it isn't.

Hopefully we will get better sound support (and not just in A2) in the future and there are some interesting projects underway. For now, XA2 doesn't compare to the HS/EAX engine used in OFP/A1. It's a shame that so many developers have chosen to drop HS/EAX in favour of software, as although software sound may be easier to develop, hardware accelerated sound is vastly superior when implemented properly.

I use ASUS as an example because they are the main competitor. Obviously, there are other choices :)

Edited November 3, 2009 by BangTail

[zeep 3]

The sticking sounds issue is very bad and leads me in wrong directions alot. 40mm's also stick.. :(

[bangtail 0]

The sticking sounds issue is very bad and leads me in wrong directions alot. 40mm's also stick.. :(

Yep, I often have a lot of trouble determining the origin of a specific sound in A2 and that never happens in A1. In A1, I can zero in on sounds very easily.

[Alex72 1]

[59898] Fixed: Spatial explosions sounds

Time to test this out! :)

[Scrub 0]

Hey Alex! they fixed 'your' problem! lol. (how does it feel to have a dev team listen like that?)

[Alex72 1]

Hey Alex! they fixed 'your' problem! lol. (how does it feel to have a dev team listen like that?)

Yeah isnt it awesome?! :) The greatest dev team that ever walked the planet.

[Dwarden 1125]

it was on schedule for quite some time :) and yes we do listen ...

anyway alex72 about that other sound issue more videos are always welcome :)

[Alex72 1]

Hey Dwarden. Oh you meant the distortion screetch i presume? Yes i have a video on it. Will upload and have it done by tomorrow.

The game plays so damn well now with the 2 latest betas, and having a sound issue that haunted me since day one fixed just makes me so happy. :)

Thanks a lot guys.

[oktane 0]

EAX/HS is not a "bullet point" to sell cards. The fact that companies have stopped using it does not diminish it's CLEAR superiority in older games that do use it. Play Bioshock with a decent set of cans on an X-Fi card and then try it with ASUS GX emulation. The difference is night and day.

I said nothing about emulation. In general I agree that 3rd parties 'emulation' of eax is crap. Usually because it can only emulate EAX 2 and such. I agree it is superior to 'nothing', in old games.. nobody is debating that. Of course its better, there was no alternative then. (alternative now: software based, multicore cpus, new DX, etc)

But EAX in these days itself is crap, for the simple reason that it is a closed system that cannot be used by other manufacturers. (without poor emulation, why add more layers?) You may stick to your guns about EAX but game developers know better.. unless they have a deal with Creative (that does happen frequently, hardware vendors pay to have features added to help sell their wares) But hardware acceleration has been dead imo since Vista and the new audio pipeline came out. (you can still use openAL to get back HW accel) For effects, you can do a lot more with software and the cpu power is there to spare these days, and a non hardware effect solution works on all platforms. What is a good reason they should support an outdated and proprietary thing like EAX? Just the same, while I would like native ambx support, there isn't a good reason they should put that in either, its niche in the grand scheme.

Implementing closed, hardware bound effects like EAX, properly or not, is a waste of any developers time at this point in time and into the future. DirectSound is now Xaudio2, which is what BIS is using. And it simpifies a lot of things, including *gasp* console porting.

This new OS pipline is for the best, it is long overdue. Now we have almost perfectly uniform sound across all platforms (when drivers are up to snuff). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Audio_Architecture

Also, just because XYZ sounds better, is not an indication of the pipeline chosen. Consider that BIS retooled their whole audio engine.. it is more likely that your issue is their growing pains with their new sound implementation. Comparing the two engines is apples to oranges, they needed to modernize it for modern OS (and console) support and they did so. If they had two separate sound engines in the codebase, that would be a nightmare. At some point they just needed to make a choice and sever the limb. :D

So old games sound better on your card with (old) EAX, that's a given. You will still see the majority of newer games using XAudio2.. that's just the way it is now. :( If you have a complaint, you can't really blame BIS for updating their code to make the most of the new DirectX and getting rid of the OpenAL. Creative has been slow to update OpenAL among other issues. Devs are corralled, along with other developers, to use what MS says 'will be' and has already become the new standard since Vista/7, not to mention what makes logical sense to a dev that had planned a console version. You do have a complaint if there are bugs in BIS's sound engine, but they have been fixing them promptly. (give them a break already?)

EAX and inconsistent HW acceleration and buggy creative drivers are all dead hopefully. Long live, UAA/DirectX, which provides great 3d audio and effects for ALL people.. not just people with Creative cards.

Not to mention, from what I've personally seen and has been echoed by many: Creative treats its users and developers like garbage.

PS: I don't mean to jump around a lot, but I want to make clear EAX != Hardware Acceleration (old DirectSound3d). Two separate things, but both not supported by ArmA2. They are a little wound around each other though, because without Creatives openAL library, no HW acceleration on modern os. OpenAL also allows for EAX.

AND, I don't want to start a flame war, I am just sounding off from a different perspective. And yes I have owned many creative products since my first sound blaster ISA card and still do. But UAA/XA2 is a really good thing for developers and users alike.

Here is infos about XA2 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3525/sponsored_feature_an_introduction_.php?print=1 and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee415813%28VS.85%29.aspx

And some evidence:

from http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

Audio Devices

Realtek HD Audio output

40.14%

Realtek HD Audio output

(+20.24%) 40.14%

Realtek AC97 Audio

(-0.31%) 6.32%

Speakers (High Definition Audio

(+0.79%) 5.23%

SoundMAX HD Audio

(-0.20%) 2.57%

SoundMAX Digital Audio

(-0.15%) 2.19%

Speakers (Creative SB X-Fi)

(+0.17%) 1.94%

SB X-Fi Audio

(-0.20%) 1.68%

C-Media Wave Device

(-0.12%) 1.63%

SigmaTel Audio

(-0.08%) 1.58%

Speakers (SoundMAX Integrated D

(+0.01%) 1.18%

Realtek HD Audio rear output

(-0.11%) 1.12%

Other

(-3.81%) 34.43%

Edited November 5, 2009 by oktane
added steam hw survey

[Dwarden 1125]

just to debunk some stuff about OpenAL ...

since Creative Labs moved toward opensourced linux driver, public beta tests of drivers

they also updated several times OpenAL

new OpenAL covers latest EAX effects and now EFX which allows non creative hardware to do most/all special effects w/o need to have CL hardware ...

like some developer said latency wise the hardware 3D mixing is excelent i just wish it was same for the software part ...

i know several projects which used FMOD software mixing pipeline instead hardware one , just to prevent issues with drivers ...

YET if the CL drivers works and OpenAL works and game sound code works == result is excelent positional audio ...

but for many developers that's too much hassle and too small % of market

XA2 is better in viewpoint of unifcation and simplicity

but it is not exactly crushing miles ahead (no hw aceleration support at all, no extensions or modularity for 'bonus')

Edited November 5, 2009 by Dwarden

[=wfl= sgt bilko 10]

It can not be in anyones interest to not have hardware acceleration. It'd be the same as saying that we don't need any fancy GPU's because the CPU could do all for us (which btw Intel has been trying to feed us several times over the years)

However I do agree that there has to be a common ground for how HW acc is implemented. The Creative old fashioned way of locking it down to their own hardware is stupid in the long run.

[Dwarden 1125]

i think the major mistake was to keep OpenAL under hood of CL and more 'closed' than open (even tho it's 'open' with SDK and some sources available)

for example under oversight of body similar to Khronos group it would progress way more ...

in meanwhile Khronos released own 'media' API (sure it's target are embedded devices yet it's good start)

http://www.khronos.org/opensles/

...

[suma 8]

It can not be in anyones interest to not have hardware acceleration. It'd be the same as saying that we don't need any fancy GPU's because the CPU could do all for us (which btw Intel has been trying to feed us several times over the years)

We evaluated various options and the result of the evaluation was it is not in our interest to have HW acceleration support in game. We had this support before and it was a cause of repeated and hard to debug issues because of buggy implementation on the driver side.

You can search ArmA troubleshooting forums and you will find many posts by users complaining about various strange sound artifacts - ironically mostly on the cards produced by the exact company who defined the API.

I have to admit OpenAL was somewhat better than DirectSound in this respect and I really liked the API architecture, it was clean and neat, however real life implementation was terrible.

[=wfl= sgt bilko 10]

I understand Suma and my critics is not for ArmA2 in specific but rather the lack of working real life implemented standards in general. What I'm saying is that with a better standard/implementation for HW acceleration, it would be preferred compared to SW Acc.

However I do agree that there has to be a common ground for how HW acc is implemented. The Creative old fashioned way of locking it down to their own hardware is stupid in the long run.

[suma 8]

It can not be in anyones interest to not have hardware acceleration. It'd be the same as saying that we don't need any fancy GPU's because the CPU could do all for us (which btw Intel has been trying to feed us several times over the years)

There is one significant difference between graphics and sound - graphics require way more bandwidth. A quick back of the envelope computation for a moderate quality graphics and extreme audio quality:

1280x720x32b frame buffer, 30 Hz gives approx. 10^9 bps

96 kHz / 24b / 6 channels gives approx. 10^7 bps

Even this extreme audio is only 1/100 of data required for a moderate graphics.

I agree current SW implementations are too simplistic, but I predict we shall see a more advanced modelling (including HRTF functions and distance based filtering) in the years to come implemented in SW models. CPU power to do this is already here, you only need some manpower to implement this.

Edited November 5, 2009 by Suma
Fixed typos