Working with the new sound engine

[Cosmo]

Thought it may be useful to collate my own thoughts, discoveries and findings re. the new sound engine here.

Opting into the Release Candidate build allows modders to utilise the new engine in ModDev, so by doing this and running a few experiments, I have found the following so far:

- To fully utilise the positional sound system, files must be mono (1 channel) - rF2 will attempt to downscale stereo (2 channel) sounds automatically but modders will likely be best served doing this themselves.
- The EngineSound parameter in the engine.ini now has a pronounced effect on how the car sounds, due to changing the position of the engine sound emitter making far more difference in the positional sound system.
- I haven't yet found a way to circumvent the "aquarium" effect some people seem to be reporting; ie. that the sounds resonate a little too much or sound distant in the cockpit at the moment. Proper engine sound positioning only seems to do so much. I suspect we'll need more documentation (perhaps on the promised "brand new, modern, customisable file format with much more freedom for audio designers") before we can fully solve this.

 

[Cosmo]

Updating this as I seem to have found some good settings.

• When converting files from stereo to mono, I advise raising the bass equalisation to compensate for a lack of perceivable bass in the newly-converted mono files. This helps to alleviate the "aquarium" effect, which was already much less pronounced in current rF2 builds anyway.
• With the new sound engine, I advise that all SFX files remove volume exponents. For example, if a line reads as follows...

VS_OUTSIDE_POWER_ENGINE_1=1.2,SkipBarber\skipb_ex_onidle.wav

• ...then the "1.2," should be removed. This will throw volume ratios out of alignment and make some sounds far too loud or quiet, which is where the second part of this point comes in:
• I advise sounds be normalised to the following volumes with all exponents removed:

• Engine sounds (power/coast, interior/exterior): -0.1dbA
• Gearbox/brake/tyre sounds: -12dbA
• All other sounds (chassis, contact, backfire, shift etc.): -6dbA

This, in my opinion, allows all sounds to sound (relatively) balanced against each other without recourse to exponents. If this is not possible (ie. you don't have access to default sound as they're in encrypted MAS files in your ModDev\Sounds folder) then you can use exponents to reduce these as an alternative method. I can't give definitive values as I haven't really tested this, but as a start, try these:

• Gearbox/brake/tyre sounds: 0.5
  
• All other sounds (chassis, contact, backfire, shift etc.): 0.75

Probably goes without saying this isn't official documentation, just my suggestions, and always back your files up before changing them etc.