Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2016 5:56 am Post subject:
Investigating the cause of the popping in game, and silence
I've noticed random clicks and pops after various sounds play, which seems to happen early on in the game, and then either I stop noticing or they stop happening -- I believe they mostly stop happening, for some unknown reason, while a few cases they persist.
I always ignored it as some engine glitch or maybe an aberration in one of the RA2 patches, but I started looking into it because in SE I've noticed my Berkut (which uses a moveloop like every other aircraft) seems to go silent after some time/usage. Since it does not appear to happen with other aircraft as repeatably as the Berkut, my Halo did at some point but hasn't seemed to since, I don't know what to make of it. Now just to verify I'm not crazy, I repeatedly tested the Berkut, even using different audio filenames.
I've changed the order in the sound.ini definition list, moved the afterburner sound just to where WW's sounds stop, and to the end, neither made a difference. Likewise I changed the name structure to match WW convention, reduced characters to 8, to no effect -- works for a while then stops playing. The sound has one of each attack loop and decay files, which makes it uncommon in that most have several loop files.
I would check the audio format (22050Hz, 16 bit, mono).
In TS if a wrong format aud is played, the entire sound engine stops working.
RA2 is afaik a bit more robust, but maybe it causes sideeffects like you've described. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
A fair number of my sounds are 44khz, and I've tested 48k works as well, though I've resampled the majority for size.
Like I say the post-sound-pop is present in the original game, unless for some reason I have bit errors in my ra2.mix causing that to be corrupted slightly, since naturally that was the source of my modified .bag as well. To be clear the pops happen with GenAllVehicleXxxx sounds too, and I verified the original samples (extracted) are free of anything of the sort. _________________ http://www.moddb.com/mods/scorched-earth-ra2-mod-with-smart-ai QUICK_EDIT
A fair number of my sounds are 44khz, and I've tested 48k works as well, though I've resampled the majority for size.
Until the audio buffer overflows and you hear digital screams from hell...
Yes there are some audio bugs, its not just you.
Another one is in the Audio out of focus code, if you minimize a windowed game while the cash tick sound is playing, half a second later you will hear the cash sound for a brief moment and it will be obnoxiously loud.
As for comparing issues with TS and RA2, every single one is a coincidence.
TS uses the same tiny audio engine RA does.
WW replaced it in RA2 with the go to engine at the time which is also present in Emperor, NoX and at the time Westwood's Generals (as the GUIEditI.exe in the leaked alpha show). That audio engine is massive, as in ~500 functions massive, it would be a nightmare to debug _________________ Tiberian Dawn, Red Alert, Tiberian Sun ,Red Alert 2,Renegade, Command & Conquer 3,Tiberium and Tiberium Wars and Westwood related image & video archive
https://picasaweb.google.com/113361105083292812413?noredirect=1
Skype live:tomsons26
Don't forget to state who are you otherwise i'll ignore the invite QUICK_EDIT
It's just odd that it keeps happening to 1 specific unit, after 3-5 airstrikes with small groups, the moveloop stops playing, the auxsounds and voices still play...
There's literally nothing special about the moveloop either, 3 waves @ 22khz, it's almost like it just won't release the resource and thinks the limit applies?
Looping sound events should not use uncompressed (PCM) wave files. In my experience this is the prime cause of those sound events stopping from playing entirely, for some reason. It could be related to the filesize or such, but I don't know for sure. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
So not quite accepting the 4-bit as a solution, I'm making a new .bag from a vanilla copy, it's possible I had stuff in there I didn't use anymore, or who knows if XCC mangled anything...
Taking the opportunity to resample over 30 voice/movestart sounds I had missed, and making audio for the new units I added. I will update after I test, though that'll be after I have a nap _________________ http://www.moddb.com/mods/scorched-earth-ra2-mod-with-smart-ai QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 22 Nov 2010 Location: Iszkaszentgyorgy, Hungary
Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2016 3:53 pm Post subject:
You're aware that 4-bit IMA equals to 16-bit PCM, aren't you? And that all unit voices are in 4-bit IMA already. And stuff like that. _________________ "If you didn't get angry and mad and frustrated, that means you don't care about the end result, and are doing something wrong." - Greg Kroah-Hartman
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Past C&C projects: Attacque Supérior (2010-2019); Valiant Shades (2019-2021)
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WeiDU mods: Random Graion Tweaks | Graion's Soundsets
Maintainance: Extra Expanded Enhanced Encounters! | BGEESpawn
Contributions: EE Fixpack | Enhanced Edition Trilogy | DSotSC (Trilogy) | UB_IWD | SotSC & a lot more... QUICK_EDIT
I don't know where you got that, I just checked the GenAllVehicleMove and it is 22khz PCM 352kbps... and Generals audio is the same, C&C3/RA3 however uses 48khz.
*moe.wav converted to IMA ADPCM 4bit -> test.wav... clearly visible bitrate change.
XCC Mixer always extracts the audio from idx/bag as uncompressed PCM waves regardless of their original encoding.
You can't really use bitrate as absolute measure of perceived audio quality between two different encodings. IMA ADPCM is a lossy encoding that has compression ratio of 4:1 compared to uncompressed PCM wave files - thus explaining why the bitrate of the converted file is more or less one fourth of the original.
You will notice some quality loss with IMA ADPCM but in most cases it's an acceptable price for taking only a quarter of the space and potentially not choking the game's audio buffer to death. You could continue using PCM if you so choose but it would be ill-advised with longer audio files. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 22 Nov 2010 Location: Iszkaszentgyorgy, Hungary
Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2016 6:14 pm Post subject:
Generals does use PCM for some reason but that engine can handle IMA as well. (Tested ages ago.) _________________ "If you didn't get angry and mad and frustrated, that means you don't care about the end result, and are doing something wrong." - Greg Kroah-Hartman
=======================
Past C&C projects: Attacque Supérior (2010-2019); Valiant Shades (2019-2021)
=======================
WeiDU mods: Random Graion Tweaks | Graion's Soundsets
Maintainance: Extra Expanded Enhanced Encounters! | BGEESpawn
Contributions: EE Fixpack | Enhanced Edition Trilogy | DSotSC (Trilogy) | UB_IWD | SotSC & a lot more... QUICK_EDIT
You will notice some quality loss with IMA ADPCM but in most cases it's an acceptable price for taking only a quarter of the space and potentially not choking the game's audio buffer to death. You could continue using PCM if you so choose but it would be ill-advised with longer audio files.
3 seconds is long enough to suffer from the issues previously mentioned, so quite frankly it does explain it. It's a shoddily put-together game from around the turn of the millennium, can't really expect much from it. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
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Investigating the cause of the popping in game, and silence
