Sound effects play back differently between GZDoom versions

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Expand view Topic review: Sound effects play back differently between GZDoom versions

Re: Sound effects play back differently between GZDoom versi

by Chris » Wed Jun 08, 2022 10:48 pm

It seems to be only a couple dB louder from my measurements. The sounds in question seem to be rocket_add1.ogg through rocket_add4.ogg, which are all stereo sounds used with 3D spatialization. I don't remember if it was GZDoom or another OpenAL app someone reported, but there was an issue where a stereo sound using 3D spatialization would have a sudden jump in volume when it moved onto the listener (a local sound), and a sudden dip when it moved off of the listener (a non-local sound). This created an inexplicable spike in volume when the sound position passed through the listener, which was due to the way it handled local vs non-local multichannel sound volumes. So there was a slight adjustment to the volume of non-local multichannel sounds to make the change less abrupt (a small increase for a non-local sound that's going to be attenuated anyway was preferable to a small decrease to a local sound's max volume). It also makes the behavior consistent between the various sound formats.

Re: Sound effects play back differently between GZDoom versi

by A_D_M_E_R_A_L » Tue Jun 07, 2022 9:08 pm

Chris wrote:What sounds? Vanilla sounds, or modded ones, and if the latter, from what mods?
Modded and from the mod I work on: EVP
Here are the 2 volume tests that I did:
4.7.1
4.8.0

Re: Sound effects play back differently between GZDoom versi

by Chris » Tue Jun 07, 2022 9:00 pm

A_D_M_E_R_A_L wrote:Well here I am discovering a similar issue between 4.7.1 and recently dropped 4.8.0. Only in my case it's the volume of some sounds being louder than normal. Swapped the DLL files from 4.7.1 and no volume issues. The culprit is the OpenAL DLL file.
What sounds? Vanilla sounds, or modded ones, and if the latter, from what mods?

Re: Sound effects play back differently between GZDoom versi

by A_D_M_E_R_A_L » Tue Jun 07, 2022 7:55 pm

Well here I am discovering a similar issue between 4.7.1 and recently dropped 4.8.0. Only in my case it's the volume of some sounds being louder than normal. Swapped the DLL files from 4.7.1 and no volume issues. The culprit is the OpenAL DLL file.

Re: Sound effects play back differently between GZDoom versi

by Silentdarkness12 » Thu Jul 12, 2018 10:29 am

I swapped the DLL and no sound played because it was incompatible. Yeah, what phantom said.

Re: Sound effects play back differently between GZDoom versi

by phantombeta » Thu Jul 12, 2018 9:58 am

From what I can see, the dev builds' OpenAL DLL has FINALLY been updated. (7-zip it's the DLL was last modified September 2017 now)
I also can't reproduce this bug. I've tested this with both the slightly outdated OpenAL DLL from 3.4.1 that you packaged incorrectly and with the September 2017 one from the dev builds, and neither of them do this.

(Running 64-bit GZDoom builds on Windows 10 version 1709, testing with the latest release of Hideous Destructor)

Re: Sound effects play back differently between GZDoom versi

by Graf Zahl » Thu Jul 12, 2018 9:48 am

Please swap the OpenAL DLL's and check how that affects playback. Also, what GZDoom binary are you using? 32 bit? 64 bit, or Linux?

Re: Sound effects play back differently between GZDoom versi

by Silentdarkness12 » Thu Jul 12, 2018 9:00 am

Graf Zahl wrote:That doesn't mean much. There's two kinds of channels: The physical ones in the sound backend and the actor channels. If you play two sounds on the same actor channel they will cut off each other.
Thing is, if you pick the current stable release and run with it, the sounds DON'T cut each other off, though. So something's changed in the dev builds that's making the sounds cut each other off when they're not supposed to.

Re: Sound effects play back differently between GZDoom versi

by Graf Zahl » Thu Jul 12, 2018 8:15 am

That doesn't mean much. There's two kinds of channels: The physical ones in the sound backend and the actor channels. If you play two sounds on the same actor channel they will cut off each other.

Re: Sound effects play back differently between GZDoom versi

by Silentdarkness12 » Thu Jul 12, 2018 6:49 am

I've encountered a similar problem while testing out Hideous Destructor with the latest dev build.



The sounds seem to get clipped or cut off, as if there's only like one or two sound channels, even though sound channels in audio are cranked all the way up to maximum.

Re: Sound effects play back differently between GZDoom versi

by Chris » Thu Mar 01, 2018 11:53 am

With OpenAL Soft, you can configure it to use a wave writer backend that provides a device that writes output to a standard .wav file, as _mental_ describes (it can also be done through the alsoft-config GUI app, which is just a front-end to setting those options).

For dumping the wave output as it plays back normally though, not currently. There is a defined extension that would allow it (AL_EXT_FOLDBACK), but it's not currently implemented in OpenAL Soft. It's something I hope to have in for 1.19 though.

Re: Sound effects play back differently between GZDoom versi

by _mental_ » Thu Mar 01, 2018 8:35 am

No, there is no such feature at the moment.

FMOD has an output that writes wave files but it wasn't used in (G)ZDoom.
Probably something similar exists in OpenAL Soft.
It's possible to save raw output to a file with OpenAL Soft.

Create alsoft.ini file in GZDoom folder with the following content

Code: Select all

drivers=wave
[wave]
file=output.wav
Sound and music will be saved to output.wav file in the same folder.
Delete/rename alsoft.ini to switch to regular sound output.

Re: Sound effects play back differently between GZDoom versi

by Nash » Thu Mar 01, 2018 7:35 am

I've mentioned this briefly a while ago but is it possible to get get a raw wave output dumper in GZDoom? I can run through the waveforms in spectral analyzers and other audio tools to try and find the problem.

My previous method of capturing audio from GZDoom was flawed (extracting the audio stream from a FRAPS recording - ack!)

Re: Sound effects play back differently between GZDoom versi

by _mental_ » Thu Mar 01, 2018 7:14 am

Nope, there is no single good or bad version. The issue seems to be quite timing dependent. Playing with FMOD settings affects it significantly too.
I think raw sound output needs to be saved and analyzed in external tool like Audacity. It's futile endeavor (at least for me) to find something out just by hearing.
All that I can say is plasma rifle and chaingun sound differently indeed. Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it's not.

Re: Sound effects play back differently between GZDoom versi

by Graf Zahl » Thu Mar 01, 2018 7:03 am

Any new info here?

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