SNDINFO: >1.0 factors for $volume, * wildcard support

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Expand view Topic review: SNDINFO: >1.0 factors for $volume, * wildcard support

Re: SNDINFO: >1.0 factors for $volume, * wildcard support

by Nash » Thu Feb 28, 2013 9:52 am

There are plenty of decent freeware brickwall limiters on the internet (I even used some of them in production) but none of them come with source.

Anyway, here's an open source mastering suite I found, perhaps the limiter section of their DSP can give you some ideas...

Re: SNDINFO: >1.0 factors for $volume, * wildcard support

by randi » Thu Feb 28, 2013 9:33 am

gamefreakdude wrote:It would save me a lot of time if the $volume command in SNDINFO allowed you to increase volume; currently, it will only decrease the volume of sounds.
This isn't possible because FMOD doesn't allow it. Nash could probably give you a good idea why.
Nash wrote:It would be nice if ZDoom has a configurable brickwall limiter in the DSP chain of the final audio mixdown
Do you have any information on the math for such a thing?

Re: SNDINFO: >1.0 factors for $volume, * wildcard support

by Nightfall » Thu Feb 28, 2013 7:15 am

Gez wrote:So the upper cap shouldn't be 2.0, but 1000.0.
1000.0? Blasphemy! The loudness industry knows no limits! :violin:

Re: SNDINFO: >1.0 factors for $volume, * wildcard support

by Nash » Wed Feb 27, 2013 11:01 pm

Gez wrote: LIES! The real industry secret is louder = better!

So the upper cap shouldn't be 2.0, but 1000.0.
And I am guilty of this. :mrgreen:

That's why I was talking about a brickwall limiter in my other post. The reason I reserve all that headroom during the mixing phase is so that I have enough space to squash the entire mix to all hell until the wave form looks like a huge rectangle in the editor.

These days, the art of destroying a mixbrickwall mastering itself has become industry secrets and especially with engineers, I don't talk about my mastering chain.

Anyway! I digress.

Re: SNDINFO: >1.0 factors for $volume, * wildcard support

by Enjay » Wed Feb 27, 2013 5:06 pm

The music is a different issue because it is more complicated to edit but with sounds, I would rather edit the sound file and get it how I wanted rather than relying on the engine to tailor an initially unsuitable file. Certainly the refinements available in SNDINFO are useful but surely it's better to start with a sound that is as optimal as it can be on its own?
Gez wrote:LIES! The real industry secret is louder = better!

So the upper cap shouldn't be 2.0, but 1000.0.
Especially where bass is concerned.

Re: SNDINFO: >1.0 factors for $volume, * wildcard support

by Gez » Wed Feb 27, 2013 5:03 pm

Nash wrote:I would actually work the opposite way and mix my audio subtractively; use the $volume command subtractively to bring down sounds that are too loud so that the sounds that I actually want to be loud can be heard better... also lower down the $musicvolume so that the music doesn't drown out game sounds...
Spoiler:
LIES! The real industry secret is louder = better!

So the upper cap shouldn't be 2.0, but 1000.0.

Re: SNDINFO: >1.0 factors for $volume, * wildcard support

by GFD » Wed Feb 27, 2013 2:20 pm

What I'm working on is a weapon mod for vanilla Doom, so I need to increase the volume of my new sound effects, 'cuz right now you can't even hear them over the growling and screaming of Doom's monsters. The module-format music is also very quiet compared to Doom's mids.
I could use SoX, but while finding a good volume to raise these sfx to, I'd have to put the files through SoX every time to compare volumes, and my first impressions are SoX also looks really complicated. But that's still a perfectly valid method for adjusting volume as well.

Re: SNDINFO: >1.0 factors for $volume, * wildcard support

by Nash » Wed Feb 27, 2013 1:56 pm

I would actually work the opposite way and mix my audio subtractively; use the $volume command subtractively to bring down sounds that are too loud so that the sounds that I actually want to be loud can be heard better... also lower down the $musicvolume so that the music doesn't drown out game sounds...
Spoiler:
This also has the benefit of giving the final audio more headroom so that the audio doesn't clip to hell and concerned users like Edward will have their hearing saved... :B
Spoiler:

Re: SNDINFO: >1.0 factors for $volume, * wildcard support

by Blox » Wed Feb 27, 2013 1:18 pm

With this, I wouldn't have to manually amplify over 80 sound files.
You can use SoX for batch processing, because it's a command-line utility.

So say, if you wanted to amplify everything by some 3 dB, and you don't mind dumping it into a temporary folder to feed it with, and another for it to output to - you could do something like this:

Code: Select all

For some reason I'm assuming you're using .wavs.
for %f in (X:\WhereDaSounds\*.wav) do "X:\WhereDaSoX\sox.exe" %f X:\WhereDaOutput\%~nx gain 3
Or you can normalize to the maximum volume without clipping:

Code: Select all

for %f in (X:\WhereDaSounds\*.wav) do "X:\WhereDaSoX\sox.exe" −−norm=0 %f X:\WhereDaOutput\%~nx
Or even with clipping!

Code: Select all

for %f in (X:\WhereDaSounds\*.wav) do "X:\WhereDaSoX\sox.exe" −−norm=2 %f X:\WhereDaOutput\%~nx
But yeah, loads of stuff to mess around with in this thing.

Re: SNDINFO: >1.0 factors for $volume, * wildcard support

by Edward-san » Wed Feb 27, 2013 4:37 am

please don't kill my ears!

SNDINFO: >1.0 factors for $volume, * wildcard support

by GFD » Tue Feb 26, 2013 5:41 pm

It would save me a lot of time if the $volume command in SNDINFO allowed you to increase volume; currently, it will only decrease the volume of sounds. With this, I wouldn't have to manually amplify over 80 sound files.
I'd also appreciate raising the factor cap of 2.0 on $musicvolume; manually amplifying all these module-format songs doesn't sound fun either...

Another huge time-saver would be wildcard support in SNDINFO. For example, being able to specify:

Code: Select all

$volume cs/polarstar/* 2.5
rather than having $volume commands for every single sound in that group:

Code: Select all

$volume cs/polarstar/lv1 2.5
$volume cs/polarstar/lv2 2.5
$volume cs/polarstar/lv3 2.5
$volume cs/polarstar/select 2.5 [...]
would be much easier, cleaner, and fun for the whole family

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