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Gun sounds are near inaudible #179

Closed DashRetro closed 6 years ago

DashRetro commented 7 years ago

Hello!

I just installed Dhewm3 and it's my first experience with a source port. Immediately upon loading in, I'm noticing that the gun sounds are nearly inaudible. When I shoot a gun, I mostly can just hear the bullets hitting the wall and a very faint echo of the gunfire.

I have EAX turned off and speakers set to Stereo. No mods are installed; just vanilla game + Dhewm3.

Thanks!

ghost commented 7 years ago

Do you use Pulseaudio or Alsa?

DanielGibson commented 7 years ago

What operating system are you using? If not Windows, what version of OpenAL is installed on your system?

DashRetro commented 7 years ago

I'm using Windows 7 64-bit.

As for Pulseaudio vs Alsa, I'm not sure what either of those are, sorry.

DanielGibson commented 7 years ago

Doesn't matter, pulseaudio and alsa are Linux specific things.

What kind of speakers are you using? Are they configured properly in the Windows system sound settings? I'm not sure if the Stereo setting in Dhewm3 even does anything, it's probably just a leftover from the original Doom3 menu. OpenAL should get the speaker setup from Windows and use Stereo or 5.1 or whatever accordingly.

Are only the gun sounds so muted and other sounds ok? What about music in the main menu? What about gun sounds from enemies? What about talking NPCs?

DashRetro commented 7 years ago

I use HDMI out for stereo sound. This is great information, so I'll go double-check all my Windows settings.

As for the rest of the sounds, I'll move around a bit more and double check all that. The main menu music works for sure. I'll record a video for you if I don't find the problem in the Windows sound settings.

DanielGibson commented 7 years ago

Great! It's entirely possible that Windows thinks that the HDMI output is 5.1 or some other surround format, but only two of the channels are actually talking to your speakers, so whether you hear something depends on the sounds source (in game) position. For example, if those two existing speakers for some reasons play the rear channels of surround, sounds that are in front of you would be very silent and ones behind you would have normal volume (and the other way round).

One more thing you could try in case changing Windows speaker settings doesn't help is updating OpenAL:

DashRetro commented 7 years ago

I double checked my audio device only shows two speakers, and also updated OpenAL with the one you linked, and no luck.

I am noticing the issue is mostly obvious with the shotgun and when shooting a wall, as if the sound of the bullets hitting the wall is overpowering and even dampening other sounds.

Here is a video showing the symptom clearly: https://youtu.be/X-FkY4AELY4

DanielGibson commented 7 years ago

what does it sound like if you shoot into the direction of the door, but with much more distance (so the sounds of the projectiles hitting the door should be less loud)?

(if anyone else wants to listen, the relevant parts of the video: Original Doom3 Windows client: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-FkY4AELY4&feature=youtu.be&t=25 dhewm3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-FkY4AELY4&feature=youtu.be&t=65)

DashRetro commented 7 years ago

It seems like the effect lasts until I'm pretty far away from the wall, but does go away at some point.

Video: https://youtu.be/gDatvWA_WC8

DanielGibson commented 7 years ago

Ok.

I briefly tested this on Linux with 5.1 speakers and it sounds pretty much the same. Will have to investigate.. Might have something to do with the shotgun shooting several pellets at once and each of them generates a sound on impact (while pistol only shoots one bullet => one impact sound).. just guessing here; however, @Yamagi observed something similar in Yamagi Quake2 with the shotgun hitting the powershield of "Brain" monsters. Funny how no one ever noticed this and now two people notice the same problem in two different games I'm involved with within a day

Yamagi commented 7 years ago

I've just pushed a fix to yquake2: https://github.com/yquake2/yquake2/commit/e3e5bd1bdd1cc403cf3096d60ea143c400971db3

After I understood what's going on the fix was easy: The Brain monsters have an energy shield (the "power screen"). Whenever a bullet hits the shield a nice splash sound is played. Quake IIs super shotgun spawns 20 pellets, if all of them hit the shield 20 sounds are played in the next frame. With 20 splash sounds played at once the overall volume level increases too mush, OpenAL is forced to scale all other sounds (including the background music) down to avoid clipping. That leads to a noticable and annoying drop in volume. My fix just limits the number of splash sounds played in one frame to 16. That doesn't have a audible effect but solves the problem.

My guess is that dhwem3 has a variant of that problem. The impact sounds of the shotgun pellets are too loud, everything else is scaled down. It's just not as noticeable as in Quake II since dhewm3 has no background music.

DashRetro commented 7 years ago

That's exactly what I was thinking the issue was, I just don't really know how openAL works or really anything about this stuff.

DanielGibson commented 7 years ago

Ok, I think I found a simple workaround: Just set Doom3's "global" volume (in Options -> System) down a bit. That way all sound will be a bit less loud (so you may have to turn your speakers up a bit), but as everything will reach OpenAL with a lower volume, it doesn't cut off/downscale everything as much.

This can also be done via CVar, it's called s_volume_dB and is 0 by default, a value of -10 works ok for me. Not sure yet what I'll do about this, maybe I'll give s_volume_dB a lower default value or just multiply everything with some factor (but first I wanna make sure this actually works for everyone :))

DanielGibson commented 6 years ago

any update?

DashRetro commented 6 years ago

Yes! This did indeed solve the issue for me. Sorry I didn't get back sooner... I also have an issue with my video card black-screen crashing during this game specifically whether it's the source port or not, so it's been one issue after another... I really appreciate your work on this issue!

ghost commented 6 years ago

Just wanted to chime in this improved my experience too. Before, the sound of firing the shotgun was drowned out by the sounds of the pellet impacts, which was harsh on the ears.

Why not make this setting default?

DanielGibson commented 6 years ago

I pushed a fix for this to the git repository. Will be part of the next commit (not sure yet when that will happen).

Until then you can just reduced s_volume_dB as a workaround, as described above :)