GZDoom 3.7.2. Reverb issue

[cortlong50]

Hey so I've been working on a map pack for the better part of forever...

and today i booted it up to test PBR and I noticed that the reverbs were messed up.

I have an electricity sound that plays in a specific area and in 3.0 it used to be contained and added a nice reverb effect to the sound...but after updating i can hear the sound throughout the entire map...and that map is massive.

so for some reason reverbs were changed at some point...and have basically made every ambient sound i use play through the entire map, which is definitely not what im going for.

i wouldnt consider it a bug, but im wondering what was changed in reverbs and i was wondering if anyone was aware of it. its such a random unneeded change that could be detrimental to older maps.
quite frankly a ton of work has gone into making sure the reverbs were perfect...and thats change kinda makes me want to stop mapping altogether. it just sucked the hope right out of me.

[_mental_]

Post a small runnable sample please.

[cortlong50]

https://www.mediafire.com/file/4od2ma3c ... o.rar/file

This is an older sample I sent to people in December. There have been changes to it since then bust mostly in a file (PBR and stuff) way.

The sound causing the issue is kinda hard to explain how to get to.
In game, once you exit the pod thing you will wrap around up to a locked door and a bridge. Cross the bridge. After crossing the bridge no clip through the wall to the left side. You’ll now be in a long hallway.
In 3.7 you should now hear an overly loud electrical noise. If you go towards the illuminated area (past it, with noclip still on) you’ll reach a t-intersection hallway past some bars. Take a right and it is where the flickering light is.

Again. This sample I have not tested. This is an older working sample for testers. But it should contain the reverbs and all that.
If it does not let me know and I’ll reupload the sample.

Sorry for the file size ahead of time.


TROUBLESHOOTING TIPS:
Test the long hallway with the ONE light in it using different versions of GZDoom.
If you go to 3.0 you’ll notice the reverbs are pretty well contained. They are only audible when getting close to them
In 3.7 you’ll notice that annoying electricity noise permeating through most of the map, anywhere past the initial setup area. It especially happens in more heavily reverted areas which kills the immersion.

Sorry for the complex explanation. I just want to be through so when someone does hop in they know exactly what’s going on.

Also if you’d like to test mod easily open the map in GZDB and change the first script from “OPEN” to “(void)”. It’ll let you skip that long intro and start in the spawning tank.

[Guest]

Hello!

Do you provide a roomrollofffactor in your reverb environment?

This particular parameter reduces the "bleeding" of sounds throughout the whole map.

Best
zhd

[cortlong50]

Hello!

Do you provide a roomrollofffactor in your reverb environment?

This particular parameter reduces the "bleeding" of sounds throughout the whole map.

Best
zhd

I actually have not and wasn’t aware of such a parameter. The issue wasn’t prevepant int the older versions of GZ though, it’s just this new version. And they’re all the stock parameters. I try not to add any to avoid conflicts (plus it’s easier).

But if need be I’ll definitrly see if that’s the issue.

Is that something that can be defined on the stock reverbs or is that for custom ones?

[_mental_]

To give exact location in a map you can use idmypos 1 in console. The same coordinates are shown on automap.
They can be used with warp CCMD to move player there instantly.

To be honest, it sounds fine with the latest development version to me. I don't hear any loud noises the mentioned hallway.
What I noticed is some background noises at -2750 3800 present in the current version while in 3.0 the same location seems to be silent.
I'm not an audio expert, quite the opposite in fact, so sound bugs are somewhat hard to grasp for me.
What I can do is to try to localized the version when the difference was introduced.

[cortlong50]

Gotcha. When I wake up (little insomnia bout right now) I’ll hop in and give you exact coordinates.
And test to make sure the issue is there in the version I sent you. I’ve tried two different versions on my end that have the issue, but it is possible the reverbs weren’t implemented in that file I sent you. But I’m pretty sure they are.

When you say you hear some background noise is it the dripping faucet noise? That was as the first sound I actually noticed doing it so I removed it. (If not just ignore this part hahaha)

You’ll notice if you go down the elevator to your right (if you’re looking at the flickering door with the electricity sound) that sound can b heard throughout that entire area. Definitely not something I’m shooting for.

I’ll be sure everything is correct an help you narrow this down a little better with some better info ASAP.

Thanks for looking into it.

[_mental_]

When you say you hear some background noise is it the dripping faucet noise?

Yes, seems like it's about that sound. I needed to raise the volume to quite high level to hear it distinctly.
Like I said, it wasn't so noticeable during a walkthrough. Anyway, it's something to start from.

EDIT: I'm almost certain that the given issue is a duplicate of this bug report. They were introduced somewhere between 3.1 and 3.2 both.

EDIT2: I narrowed it down to this commit. In fact, I have no idea what issues it was trying to solve. I would like to ask Chris to comment on this.

[cortlong50]

Okay. So the origin of the sound is at -3100, -2009, 192.

It can be heard all the way over to -7864, -3862, 64 (which in 3.0 you cannot hear it at all).

And over to -206, -596, 0.

I play with headphones and can hear them almost so loud the gunshot doesn’t play over the sound. If I play with 3.0 I cannot hear the sound at all unless I am in the hallway containing the sound.

Again versions are the release of 3.7.2.0 vs 3.0

In those two locations you can hear a waterfall and an electrical noise suuuper loud hahaha. It’s weird.

[Chris]

EDIT2: I narrowed it down to this commit. In fact, I have no idea what issues it was trying to solve. I would like to ask Chris to comment on this.

The issue is that reverb's initial distance decay is calculated based on the speed of sound and distance in meters. Older versions of OpenAL Soft sort of ignored this and presumed a fixed 343.3 meters per second for the speed of sound for the initial reverb decay, which meant that the speed of sound ZDoom set was effectively ignored. However, this was fixed in OpenAL Soft to account for the speed of sound setting, meaning the value ZDoom sets (32956.8 units per second) would cause the reverb to have too strong of an initial decay, effectively silencing it for any slightly distant source.

That change sets the speed of sound and meters per unit more accurately (which opens the possibility of making them moddable), and so it would also work with OpenAL Soft's fixed decay calculations. It also sets the doppler factor to 0, to prevent excessive pitch shifts from the doppler effect and Doom's high movement speed (also open to the possibility of modding), though that shouldn't affect reverb at all.

[cortlong50]

EDIT2: I narrowed it down to this commit. In fact, I have no idea what issues it was trying to solve. I would like to ask Chris to comment on this.

The issue is that reverb's initial distance decay is calculated based on the speed of sound and distance in meters. Older versions of OpenAL Soft sort of ignored this and presumed a fixed 343.3 meters per second for the speed of sound for the initial reverb decay, which meant that the speed of sound ZDoom set was effectively ignored. However, this was fixed in OpenAL Soft to account for the speed of sound setting, meaning the value ZDoom sets (32956.8 units per second) would cause the reverb to have too strong of an initial decay, effectively silencing it for any slightly distant source.

That change sets the speed of sound and meters per unit more accurately (which opens the possibility of making them moddable), and so it would also work with OpenAL Soft's fixed decay calculations. It also sets the doppler factor to 0, to prevent excessive pitch shifts from the doppler effect and Doom's high movement speed (also open to the possibility of modding), though that shouldn't affect reverb at all.

hmmmm, so could changes in OPENAL as a whole cause the issue? or do yo think it was an inhouse line of code that was changed?

[Chris]

hmmmm, so could changes in OPENAL as a whole cause the issue? or do yo think it was an inhouse line of code that was changed?

Originally there were two bugs (one in OpenAL Soft and one in GZDoom), which happened to cancel out -- GZDoom errantly set a really high speed of sound, while OpenAL Soft errantly ignored speed of sound for reverb purposes. The bug was fixed for OpenAL Soft 1.19, while GZDoom had its fix applied in the aforementioned commit. Using an older GZDoom with an older OpenAL works fine, as does a newer GZDoom with the newer OpenAL Soft. If you use a newer GZDoom with an older OpenAL Soft, you'll have reverb that's heard farther away than normal (an older GZDoom with a newer OpenAL Soft will have reverb that goes silent closer than intended, though there's an env var you can set to get the old buggy behavior back for compatibility). So the issue can be fixed by using a newer OpenAL Soft version (1.19[.1]).

[Graf Zahl]

I have updated Openal32.dll in all the packages I use for creating binaries so for official releases the issue should be fixed then.
Devbuilds are a different matter, though, as I have no control over the build environment.

[cortlong50]

I have updated Openal32.dll in all the packages I use for creating binaries so for official releases the issue should be fixed then.
Devbuilds are a different matter, though, as I have no control over the build environment.

okay so as it sits now, the officials will have this issue resolved?

i only play with official builds (just to ensure compatibility with my players), so i hopefully wont run into it hahaha

how soon will the next official release be? (just so i can download and begin testing as normal)

[_mental_]

Unfortunately, it's not resolved.

I tested with 1.19.1 on Windows 32- and 64-bit and unwanted sounds are still audible. Same for 64-bit macOS, with 1.19.0 and .1 both.
With the mentioned commit the version of OpenAL-Soft seems to have no effect and the issue still persists.
In order to silence those sounds I needed to revert the change and to use OpenAL 1.18.2 or earlier.

As a side note, this report I already mentioned has a small sample of potentially the same issue.