Winter Update: New Audio System

First of all thank you for your amazing job with the winter update! Really enjoying it! :)

But there is one BIG thing that is giving me a headache since the update.
The new, more directional system for the park-music-speakers is really nice to have, but why is there SO much reverb and delay going on now?
I built a pretty big,open station building for a coaster and placed some speakers in it and it is just one heck of an echo-fest.
I love the concept of calculating the sounds so they fit to the environments but this just went wrong and it does not work.
A marketplace-type-area in my park is not affected as much as the station building but it is still an annoying change to before the update because of all the echo going on. [ugh]
 
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First of all thank you for your amazing job with the winter update! Really enjoying it! :)

But there is one BIG thing that is giving me a headache since the update.
The new, more directional system for the park-music-speakers is really nice to have, but why is there SO much reverb and delay going on now?
I built a pretty big,open station building for a coaster and placed some speakers in it and it is just one heck of an echo-fest.
I love the concept of calculating the sounds so they fit to the environments but this just went wrong and it does not work.
A marketplace-type-area in my park is not affected as much as the station building but it is still an annoying change to before the update because of all the echo going on. [ugh]
.
Its because they are JBLs... ;)
Wish we could pick a higher quality speaker!.. lol.
 

Matthew Florianz

Senior Audio Designer- Elite: Dangerous
Frontier
I'll have a look and a listen; it might be deliberate or two seperate systems (distance speaker effect and obstruction plus early reflections) might be partying a little too enthousiastically together ; )

Would you mind sharing your park on steam and supply a link?

Thanks for letting us know : )
 
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Matthew Florianz

Senior Audio Designer- Elite: Dangerous
Frontier
Just had a listen in a fairly open station and indeed there are a few problems. Sorry for letting that one slip : (

We'll reduce the early reflections on speakers (when in an enclosed area) and we'll also have a look at filtering them a little less when looking away.

I agree they are also a tad too loud.

Thanks for listening and reporting, unfortunately we can't solve this in time for the holiday update though.
 
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Just had a listen in a fairly open station and indeed there are a few problems. Sorry for letting that one slip : (

We'll reduce the early reflections on speakers (when in an enclosed area) and we'll also have a look at filtering them off a little less when looking away.

Generally speaking I think they are also a tad little too loud.

Thanks for listening and reporting, unfortunately we can't solve this for the holiday update though.

No thank you for taking the time to check it and reporting back. Great info and things happen, its xmas so happy faces are compulsory now :) ;)
 
I had this problem before but it was because when you place multiple speakers, they start playing at different times. Not sure if that is supposed to happen or not. It also persisted through saves.

So if I place a speaker and then duplicate it and place it again 5 seconds later, the second one is always 5 seconds delayed off the first one.
 
You should always pause when your building

I don't think that is the correct solution here though. I often don't build with it paused. Plus I want to hear the sound in real time and then place a second speaker and hear the affect as it happens if that makes sense.
 
I am also having hugh problems with audio.

Sometimes it sounds normal and then it fades to like hearing it thought a smartphone-speaker, or like you are standing in an orcane and the wind changes direction. Mostly mid-range-frequencies are disapearing.
I dont move anything, just standing still in front of the new bumper-cars, the sound changes itself ...

Also with the chair-swing, there was nothing around it (no reflections possible) and sound changes ...
 
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Matthew, this is Sean from the Facebook group. Here is a video of the problem I am facing. [video=youtube;2v-i-XiruqI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v-i-XiruqI&feature=youtu.be[/video]

I can post some screens from the top down if you want to see the layout and positioning of everything.

The scenario: speakers in an enclosed dark ride are echoing like crazy. I have not closed in all the rooms yet, but I have placed speakers so I could get an idea of the pacing of it all. I found that the speakers in rooms that do not yet have a roof on them are a bit clearer, and the speaker in the last room which does not have walls or a roof on it is almost completely clear with no echo (presumably because it has no walls to bounce off). The rooms are three walls high made of the smooth concrete material and the roof completely covers the building made of one of the metals.

A few things I tried: I added more speakers because I noticed that the song is synched up between all the speakers (that's a neat feature and saved this ride!). However doing that just added more echoes because there were more sources of audio and compounded the problem. I tried removing all but one speaker for each room, and that's what you hear in the video.

What is strange to me is that when I am in edit mode, everything is fine. I can post a video of that if you like, but I don't get all the echoes in edit and the sound is differentiated enough. I don't know if it's because the physics are off in edit mode or what.

I appreciate you looking into this and I also appreciate the tough problem it must be to figure out on your end. If you turn off the audio physics altogether, it will get rid of the echo but then walls and roofs will no longer muffle the sound and that will take away the ability for us to make compartmentalized rooms with audio. In that way, I suspect that honestly everything is working, as the echo is a product of the amazing hard work you have all put into the audio physics engine. It did not work as expected, though.

If you want those screenshots showing positioning or anything else, please let me now. Thanks and Merry Christmas!
 

Matthew Florianz

Senior Audio Designer- Elite: Dangerous
Frontier
What is strange to me is that when I am in edit mode, everything is fine. I can post a video of that if you like, but I don't get all the echoes in edit and the sound is differentiated enough. I don't know if it's because the physics are off in edit mode or what.

Hi!

So As said before, there is a bit much echo (=early reflection) going on with speakers in enclosed spaces. This is a cumulative effect of speakers becoming more "speaker-ified" at distance and enclosed areas adding early reflections. We're not getting rid of early reflections (=e.r.) entirely, but we also don't want so much of it as in the video, it's mental : )

"Edit mode" is an interesting one, it could be that while editing, the building is not registered as an object that obstructs/occludes. So temporarily we don't appear to be enclosed. I'll invetigate this further as this too I can't fully reproduce with the steps given. A video of this in action could be very handy.

Music out of sync: When I place multiple speakers using duplication, they are all synced. Same for speakers attached to building. I cannot make them go five seconds out of sync as per FMX's report. It is also not how the system should work, otherwise we'd quickly get into memory problems creating multiple instances of the same piece of music. Spend about an hour trying to make this happen but failed : ( Could you give me exact steps, or even better, a video reproducing the problem? That would be very helpful as I think you may have discovered an edge case : )

Finally, Multiple speakers should help with your e.r. as that means a speaker will generally always be closer to the camera and thus the effect of distance (we look at the closest speaker of the same piece of music) is generally less. Again this seems to be the opposite of experience, so having a video of this happening could help us a great deal.

Sorry we are relying so much on you guys and gals, but it can be a difficult/complex thing to reproduce your amazing creativity with our tools : )

As said, we are removing the echo (=early reflection) to reign in this problem a little.
 
Music out of sync: When I place multiple speakers using duplication, they are all synced. Same for speakers attached to building. I cannot make them go five seconds out of sync as per FMX's report. It is also not how the system should work, otherwise we'd quickly get into memory problems creating multiple instances of the same piece of music. Spend about an hour trying to make this happen but failed : ( Could you give me exact steps, or even better, a video reproducing the problem? That would be very helpful as I think you may have discovered an edge case : )

Just to confirm, because I think you were talking to someone else, I had perfect sync with my speakers. I made them via duplicating and the music was playing in sync from each of them. Maybe they sounded out of sync to the other person because of the echo?


Finally, Multiple speakers should help with your e.r. as that means a speaker will generally always be closer to the camera and thus the effect of distance (we look at the closest speaker of the same piece of music) is generally less. Again this seems to be the opposite of experience, so having a video of this happening could help us a great deal.


I have video of the attraction both in edit mode and a run through with more speakers. When I get home, I can put them together to try and show you what I am experiencing. I did not feel that having more speakers closer to the track helped, but I will gladly revisit the idea to see if it helped.
 

Matthew Florianz

Senior Audio Designer- Elite: Dangerous
Frontier
The video would certainly help, thanks for all the effort!

And it was indeed someone else, sorry to make that not more clear. FinalMantasyX specifically said 5 seconds which I did try to replicate for an hour, but couldn't reproduce. Must be some specific way of doing things : )
 
The video would certainly help, thanks for all the effort!


[video=youtube;f73JZXwQUAA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f73JZXwQUAA&feature=youtu.be[/video]

Here's the video. Let me know if I can help any more.

The first clip is in regular camera mode. The sound in this example is pretty much ideal; good separation between the speakers, the sound fades as you get farther, excellent acoustic setup. The second clip is the dark ride with multiple speakers in each room synced to the same song, all near the track and pointed toward the rider. Note: the first room does not have a roof and the acoustics are noticeably different. The third and final clip is the same ride with only one speaker per track in each room.
 
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First of all thank you for your amazing job with the winter update! Really enjoying it! :)

But there is one BIG thing that is giving me a headache since the update.
The new, more directional system for the park-music-speakers is really nice to have, but why is there SO much reverb and delay going on now?
I built a pretty big,open station building for a coaster and placed some speakers in it and it is just one heck of an echo-fest.
I love the concept of calculating the sounds so they fit to the environments but this just went wrong and it does not work.
A marketplace-type-area in my park is not affected as much as the station building but it is still an annoying change to before the update because of all the echo going on. [ugh]

I was about to open a thread about this exact same thing. Glad i'm not the only one being put off by the new speaker settings.
I mean it would have been great if it was either available to you via an optional/additional item or have some settings implemented to control the range and loudness. Also, if a speaker is part of a building group, it STILL isn't modifiable (can't choose sounds or music until the speaker is separated from a group.)

I didn't notice the change was so drastic until i ride-cammed through my Wipeout construction site. ( ^i^ )
I have one scene that's already finished with all audio effects, but now you can hear them outside of the scene as well, making it much harder to separate my ride scenes in terms of sound, unless i use a workaround. It kinda put me off PC, together with the new support structures (i had the pre-update ones neatly implemented into the scenery [sad] (would have been cool if you could choose between the support structure type. (as i can't take them out, would make the ride look silly. [weird]
 
Something I do not see mentioned here is the way ambient speakers work after the winter update.

I do have an underground dark-ride in my park with some underground, ambient speakers. When I walk in the park above this ride, I do here the sounds of those speakers very, very well. Seems they are in no way occluded. I have searched for a slider to adjust just the soundvolume of those speakers, but it seems there is no such thing, not in the settings nor in the specific speaker menu's. The volume of almost everything else is adjustable. Am I missing something?

To reproduce this: the easiest way is to download the park I am working on 'My Middle Earth Park WIP (updated 15-12-2016)' http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=803534730
The dark-ride in question is called 'Barrow Downs Grave Robbers' , the sounds can be heard when on the terrain/paths above this ride. The speakers are placed under the track of the darkride.

PS: This seemed the logical place to post this. If you want me to make a different thread for this in the bug reports section, please let me now.
 
Something I do not see mentioned here is the way ambient speakers work after the winter update.

I do have an underground dark-ride in my park with some underground, ambient speakers. When I walk in the park above this ride, I do here the sounds of those speakers very, very well. Seems they are in no way occluded. I have searched for a slider to adjust just the soundvolume of those speakers, but it seems there is no such thing, not in the settings nor in the specific speaker menu's. The volume of almost everything else is adjustable. Am I missing something?

To reproduce this: the easiest way is to download the park I am working on 'My Middle Earth Park WIP (updated 15-12-2016)' http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=803534730
The dark-ride in question is called 'Barrow Downs Grave Robbers' , the sounds can be heard when on the terrain/paths above this ride. The speakers are placed under the track of the darkride.

PS: This seemed the logical place to post this. If you want me to make a different thread for this in the bug reports section, please let me now.
The most recent mention of the ambience speakers having waay too much range is right above above your post ^^ [big grin]

I think this thread is about all the speaker changes, not just particular ones, imo [happy]
 
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