Fighting sound effects, poorer quality

[zanzibar]

One of the changes was that the game was changed to allow for higher quality sound effects, supposedly.

The sounds during battles are definately different, but I\'m not sure that it\'s an improvement.  They\'re more metallic sounding and harsh.

May I ask, what exactly was done to them?  Why are they supposed to sound better, even though the opposite is true to my ears?

[AryHann]

I think that more than higher quality sound effects with the new sound renderer we were aiming at having a working sound renderer.
If you remember, it has been almost an year since a lot of people could turn on the sound in pssetup and load the game without getting a crash.
What has been done? Well, I would recommend you to check out CS history and read around September when the new renderer was introduced. Basically, the way the sound streams and sources are handled is different from before. There is not any longer a different way of taking in .ogg or .wav files as far as I have understood, for example.

If it would be also rendering better, I wouldn\'t complain, but I don\'t think we and CS were aiming at such at all.

Who told you that they should sound better?

It might be that there is some rendering problem, depending also from sound card to sound card. May I ask you what sound card do you have?

I hope that Rhad - who did the change - will read this message, but I am pretty sure that the probabilities are rather low.

[zanzibar]

Sound has always worked for me without crashing my machine....



I\'m using an Audigy 2.

[AryHann]

The fact that it was working for you before, doesn\'t mean that it was working for everybody ;-)))))

What I meant was that the main aim of the new sound renderer was to avoid the crashes for the 80% of the people, not for getting a better sound quality!

[zanzibar]

*Many fixes to the sound system. Sounds should be much better, and play when they\'re supposed to. Switched to new renderer, which is more stable.






It says so right there:  Sounds should be much better.  So whether or not it was the primary focus, it was still something that was done.



So, back to my question... if battle sounds are supposed to sound better, why do they sound more metallic and harsh?

[AryHann]

I don\'t read actually \"sound should play much better\".
I am rather sure that the expression is not the clearer but it doesn\'t mean that the \"quality\" would be better. It means that the sounds will play and not make everything crashes, that they should play when they should and stop when they should, and so on.

I think I have answered already on why the quality is different.

And yes, I have been the one doing a lot of fixes on PS side, so I know quite well what I am talking about

[neko kyouran]

Zanzi, I\'m sure you are aware that the word \'better\' is categorized as an opinion based word.

As such, what sounds \'better\' to you, may not sound \'better\' to some one else, and vise versa.

So as counterpoint, I do think they sound better now than before.  Also, I\'m sure many would agree that being able just to hear sounds now, is better than before when they were not able to do that at all.

As for the metallicy (yep, thats a word, maybe) sounding err sounds, you are using a metal based weapon in combat are you not?  And if you say you\'re a melee guy, well, Fists of steel baby!

[zanzibar]

Trust me, you don\'t have to tell me that what is or isn\'t a good sound is something which is highly subjective.

Nonetheless, the sounds are now harsh and metalic, and not like the clashing of metal.  Actual clashing of metal is a rather pure sound with a fundamental followed by a series of overtones and harmonics.  This is a different \"metalic\".  It\'s more to do with missing \"mid\" frequencies perhaps.  I\'d have to fool around with the sounds and look at them graphically to speak intelligently on what exactly is making them sound they way they do.

[GeorgeD]

Originally posted by zanzibar
Trust me, you don\'t have to tell me that what is or isn\'t a good sound is something which is highly subjective.

Nonetheless, the sounds are now harsh and metalic, and not like the clashing of metal.  Actual clashing of metal is a rather pure sound with a fundamental followed by a series of overtones and harmonics.  This is a different \"metalic\".  It\'s more to do with missing \"mid\" frequencies perhaps.  I\'d have to fool around with the sounds and look at them graphically to speak intelligently on what exactly is making them sound they way they do.

No sounds were changed lately, just the renderer. If it sounds different, it\'s the engine. And from what you\'re saying, it seems it\'s not working well.
I briefly checked the samples, all of them are 22kHz, which means there\'s plenty mid-range and not enough high-range. And most of them are just plain \'thuds\', no metal involved, since we don\'t really have a system to recognize what weapons are being used against what material.
Gotta check in-game too, just for sure.

Edit: sounds ok here. The only problem is quite heavy low-pass filter used on the sound positioning, but that doesn\'t create anything similar to the problem you are experiencing. Could be related to the fact the sounds are 22kHz, check your drivers, maybe try different version *shrugs*

Anybody else having this problem?

[DaveG]

Originally posted by zanzibar
*Many fixes to the sound system. Sounds should be much better, and play when they\'re supposed to. Switched to new renderer, which is more stable.

Yeah, I just was witting a simple vague comment.  Way to over-anylize...    \"Sounds\" are better in that there\'s been a pile of fixes, and we should have more playing now and more to play at that.  (there was also a bug making many not play at all)  Sound has always been annoying for us, and I\'m hoping that can begin to change now.  However, there are still issues.  I get a crackling noise for the combat music and fanfare, and others get blips with other things.  It\'ll get fixed at some point.  I\'m just glad it doesn\'t crash anymore.  

[AryHann]

Thank you DaveG for confirming my statement above ;-)
At least, I interpreted you right for once!

[zanzibar]

Ok, I went in game and did some fighting tonight, and it\'s not the same as I remember. :|  I\'m using a different computer this time.  I\'ll make a post if I can replicate the problem.  Until then... nevermind.