Increase number of sound buffers

RejZoRRejZoR Slovenia Join Date: 2013-09-24 Member: 188450Members, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Shadow
in Ideas and Suggestions
Can you guys do something about the sound buffers? I'm getting sound that's often skipping, getting cut off or is just distorted. But not like random sound glitches, from my experience this kind of audio artefacting happens when you (over)saturate sound buffers and then audio engine has to cut out sounds to make new ones still work. Usually this happens when there are vents that make permanent hissing noise or something similar followed by gunfire etc.

I have a soundcard capable of 128 HW accelerated 3D sounds (Sound Blaster Z) and while I know HW acceleration is not used anymore these days, the soundcard is still capable of outputting 128 sounds at once. Any chance of giving users ability to ramp up number of audio buffers within Audio Settings to fix that? I love it how games sound when there are tons of sounds played at once without any interruptions or audio skipping. Is it doable?
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Comments

  • SamusDroidSamusDroid Colorado Join Date: 2013-05-13 Member: 185219Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Playtester, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
    It's not that easy to change as all of that is done in FMOD, and each individual sound can be set to have priority over others.
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  • RejZoRRejZoR Slovenia Join Date: 2013-09-24 Member: 188450Members, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Shadow
    edited November 2015
    Is there any way to ramp up the number of sound buffers available to the soundcard (I'm not aware of any tweaks I'm used to in Unreal Engine or others through INI files)? Most games use only 32 3D buffers and that's something I've been using back in the 90's on Sound Blaster Live! 5.1. It's 2015 and it feels like I'm still stuck in the 90's sound quality wise... I want to hear more sounds at once without any skipping or interruptions.
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  • rkfgrkfg Russia Join Date: 2013-09-03 Member: 187744Members, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Gold, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow
    Is it happening on Windows as well? On Linux it happens all the time though I've got used to it and it sounds like your "character" goes deaf for a second. Realistic, yeah.
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  • RejZoRRejZoR Slovenia Join Date: 2013-09-24 Member: 188450Members, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Shadow
    Yeah, I am on Windows.
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  • rkfgrkfg Russia Join Date: 2013-09-03 Member: 187744Members, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Gold, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow
    Thanks, note to self: never use FMOD for any project, especially knowing that OpenAL exists for quite a while. There's another game powered by FMOD, Armello. It also suffers from similar issues like rattling and disappearing sound though they've managed to make it a bit better in the end. Nevertheless one particular sound (don't remember which one) still has clicks.

    I doubt these issues come from exhausting the buffer numbers. There may be 10-20 simultaneously playing sounds at max around you. If only the game doesn't attempt to play all the sounds around the map at the same time making the distant ones playing at zero volume. Then yes, I can see why it chokes even though there's not much going on.
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