No Sound on ShootMania Please HELP

[sadzealot]

and please also set to "normal quality" only, as "high quality" sometimes has the issue that sounds are not played.

Is this still true? as I have always played at high quality.

Same here, and never have I had an issue with sounds not been played, but because of this I'm putting it on normal in fear of not hearing some footsteps or something

[TMarc]

This issue was not there with all the people, but it was not told it was fixed either

[GabrielM]

Hey guys.

I would all advise you to set it to "Normal quality" indeed.
High Quality is not working properly for some people, i don't know if this is truly working fine for the ones like you who seem to hear nothing wrong (probably, but can't say it without any doubt).

So you all know :

Normal Quality : up to 32 simultaneous sounds can be played.
High Quality : up to 48 simultaneous sounds can be played.

Now think about 48 different sounds played at the same time, can you all hear or identify them ?
If you play mods like Battle or Siege for example, you will mostly hear a bit more explosions and gunshots, so it would be even more of a mess... Normal quality was set to be the optimal quality, where the closest / more important sounds only are played. So the result in the end is a clearer sound, and also less exhausting / tiring for your hears.
In Elite you would see no difference between normal and high quality i guess, there are not as much sounds played in the same time as in most FFA mods.

Another good thing to know, if you don't already know about it, is regarding the volume slider : if you put it at 7.5/10 or 7/10 on the volume "white dots" scale, you will have a quieter and more precise sound mix to play elite.

Let me explain :
-> Full range is the casual mix, with lots of explosion, rocket trails, louder player footsteps (only yours) etc etc
-> The more you go from 10/10 to 7.5 the more you turn down rocket trails and explosions volume, you also remove a bit of your foosteps, and the volume rolloff gets more precise for a better localisation.
-> Under 7.5 you have reached the quiet mix, you can only turn down the main volume. The quiet mix was made for two reasons : "pros" that want a clearer version of the game to hear better their opponnents, and secondly, for every player playing loud FFA mods that want to play, maybe for a long time, but in a calmer in-game sound environnement .


Hope those tips and explanations help, if you had never heard of the volume slider thing before, please tell your friends ! I will make a general post for everyone to read it later on.

[TMarc]

Thanks alot for your detailed answer, GabrielM

Perhaps better remove then the "audio quality setting" completely, or change it to "number of simultaneous sounds" instead?
And keep 32 as absolute maximum value perhaps.

The thing is, on high quality, sounds disappeared also in Canyon, and this is especially annoying if the engine sound is affected.
I doubt there might be so many sounds on a solo play in Canyon.
It is different on a server where one might be able to hear much more sounds.

Just to give an idea:
count the regular sounds of a car: engine, brake, drift sound, horn -> 4 sounds
If all those sounds are always loaded and active as sound buffers,
then with 32 sounds, you might be able to hear a maximum of 7 others player plus yourself.

Now if we reduce the ambiant sounds like wind, and other menu sounds,
the number of audible players reduces by 1 or two.

At the end it is a matter of priority of the sound buffers, which is discarded first.

Sound engineering, and using sound systems, sound drivers, DirectSound or OpenAL, is also a science for its own

[GabrielM]

Perhaps better remove then the "audio quality setting" completely,

I knew i was gonna get this remark, because you've all understood the conclusion of my post : Low and high quality are useless because they are absolutely bugged. So what reasons to keep this setting available ? None .
It's somewhere on someone's list to remove it, but how high in terms of priority... I guess there are plenty of other things to be done that comes prior to that. But i've got a good feeling about it, and someday it will be removed i'm sure . In the mean time let's forget about it til it's done, and focus on the great new things that will soon come instead hehe.

[Zell]

Ahh, so "high quality sound" isn't even meant to be fixed, hence the bug since Canyon beta... Well, good to finally know!!