A quick question about sound

[Gambit37]

The sound doesn't sound anything like the files I sent you - there's a lot of noise and it all sounds very 'bottom end'. I'm guessing that you took it down to 11Khz or lower to keep the download small. Do you think you'll be using the high quality sound files in the final version?

If so, I'll send you my updated files as I've been doing a bit more processing to increase the clarity and I also added a tiny bit of reverb (not the massive amounts of echo to be found on the new sounds in DM Java). Let me know if you want them.

[Gambit37]

I've just tried my original 22Khz sound files using the new override feature - (which is a very nice touch to allow us some customisation at this early stage, thanks!). But they sound awful through RTC - loads of background noise, even though they are clear as a bell when played through media player.

Any idea what's going on?

[George Gilbert]

Yes I resampled them down to 11kHz to keep the download to under 1.4Mb (so it fits on a floppy disk), however, as you say, they do sound much worse than they should and I've no idea why. They're being played through the DX interface without any modification (bar changing the volume and adding a directional effect, neither of which should effect the quality). I'll have to look into it more, but I really can't see where it oculd be going wrong.

[Gambit37]

It doesn't sound bad for all sound effects. Footsteps and doors sound quite awful, but the click for example sounds really clear. Don't expect that helps you much.... <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/im ... ohwell.gif ALT=""><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END-->

[Gambit37]

Using my 22Khz files, here's a list of which sound fine, and which have noise (up to level 4):

<b> GOOD</b>
Slither, click, weapon swipe, wing flap, thud, mummy/ghost shriek

<b> BAD</b>
Door, rock pile attack, bumping into a wall, 'dink', magic, gulp, worm attack, party 'oofs', screamer attack, death scream.

I'll add more to the list when I get to them. Perhaps this can help you see if there is a common cause?

[Gambit37]

<b> GOOD</b>
Skeleton

<b> BAD</b>
Couatl strike, swamp slime movement

It seems like some sounds are being played much louder than they should - and these are the ones that appear to be distorted. If this is the case, I'll boost the volume in the original wavs and send them again if you like?

[George Gilbert]

Please.

I'm only internally *decreasing* the sound levels (for sounds that occur away from where the party is). Any increase is happening as a result of them playing through the DX layer rather than in my code.

[Gambit37]

On a related subject, I tried replacing the sounds with ADPCM compressed sounds and they didn't play at all, so I guess that's a limitation. Annoying though - could have saved quite a bit on the download (assuming ADPCM is a better compression than what RTC is using...)

BTW, did the PLEASE mean "Yes, boost the volume and send them again"? If so, I don't think I should change the sound volumes, as the files I'm using have come straight out of GRAPHICS.DAT and all the relative volumes are correct.

Have you had any further ideas on what's causing the distortion?

[Gambit37]

I found this overview about DirectX and sound cards on the MS knowledgebase. I don't know if it helps, but could be useful:

<a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/techa ... _sc.htm</a>

I have a Creative Labs Awe64 ISA card if that makes any difference. Also, the overall Direct X technology pages can be found here though I'm sure you know about these already! :

<a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/defau ... hor.htm</a>

[George Gilbert]

Erm yes, i've read all of them before (or at least a very small, but hopefully relevent, subset!).

I think the problem may be that I'm driving RTC through DX3 interfaces to ensure that it runs on NT. Certainly from that first article it seems that the standards have moved on and whilst it doesn't explicitly mention the differing DX versions it may be that if I switched to DX8 (or whatever we're up to now!) then the problems would go away.

Understandably I'm somewhat reluctant to do this though as it would drop the NT support, and equally I'm not keen on supporting two different codebases; one for NT one for everything else. I'll try doing a private build with DX7 and see if it makes a difference or not though - if for no other reason then it would be nice to know what the problem really is!

If this is the issue then it may be just a question of having to live with it for a while and I'll release two different builds of the final exe; one for DX3 and one for DXLots.

[cowsmanaut]

You know, you have already released a competant release that supports NT. If you fix any of the major bugs in this and set it aside as the NT version. then swicth to direct X 8 and continue from there as there will undoubtedly be a lot new issues with that..

Then when you are fully completed with that one.. it can go no further and you feel like doing more.. compltete the dx3 version for NT.

[Gambit37]

I'm not sure if this is related, but I've started getting some other strange problems which I've posted in the bugs forum:

<a href="http://pub50.ezboard.com/freturntochaos ... 5.topic</a>