Strange sound bug with HRTF set to "On"

Post by **Caligari87** » Sat Oct 13, 2018 2:56 pm

When HRTF is set to "On", I get some weird audio glitches. Name, sounds on one side of me "pop" to the other ear when moving. Also, the entire soundscape seems oddly "bright" with HRTF on. Headphones recommended.

https://streamable.com/kmduw

As shown in the video, neither the "bright" sound nor the positional "popping" happens when HRTF is "off" or "auto". Running GZDoom 3.6.0 64-bit on Linux Mint 19. I have a large cocktail of mods turned on here but I don't believe they're relevant to the problem. I just noticed it was easiest to hear with the constant sound of that Hideous Destructor robot.

Post by **Chris** » Sun Oct 14, 2018 5:29 am

Certainly an odd fluttery-type of sound when its moving left and right. It makes me think there could be something wrong with OpenAL's fading between directional responses, though I can't say I've heard that before. What version of OpenAL (OpenAL Soft) do you have installed? 1.19.1 was just released, and 1.19.0 was released last month. If you can, try updating to the latest to see if it helps.

Post by **Caligari87** » Sun Oct 14, 2018 9:43 am

It looks like the latest version available in my repositories is OpenAL 1.18.2. After some quick searching, everything Ubuntu-based seems stuck on this version. I'm trying to find a PPA (without luck so far) as I'm not quite comfortable installing it from source, at least not yet.

For what it's worth, this only happens if if force HRTF "On". I still get the HRTF effect (proper fading for sounds behind me) if I use "Auto", without the fluttery effect. Is there something done different between those settings?

Post by **Chris** » Sun Oct 14, 2018 3:24 pm

Caligari87 wrote:It looks like the latest version available in my repositories is OpenAL 1.18.2. After some quick searching, everything Ubuntu-based seems stuck on this version. I'm trying to find a PPA (without luck so far) as I'm not quite comfortable installing it from source, at least not yet.

It might take a little bit to reach down-stream, but there is a new version on the way which should indicate if it's still a problem or not.

For what it's worth, this only happens if if force HRTF "On". I still get the HRTF effect (proper fading for sounds behind me) if I use "Auto", without the fluttery effect. Is there something done different between those settings?

From the video you posted, it sounds like Off and Auto are the same, i.e. Auto is plain stereo. With Auto, HRTF is enabled if it's able to detect the output is headphones; PulseAudio indicates that by the port name being "analog-output-headphones" (and with WASAPI/DirectSound, that's determined by the device having a Headphones or Headset formfactor) with 2-channel output. Other backends don't have a way to specify this information, so it assumes speakers.

Post by **Graf Zahl** » Sun Apr 19, 2020 6:12 am

So is this still a thing with the newer OpenAL?

ZDoom