Heya this is Torley, sound designer etc. on the Audio Team + Sansar Studios. Just wanted to start this to talk about all things Sansar Audio for "R16/Fashion" and maybe onward. Let's see... and hear.
Discord is helpful but it can be hard to scroll back (can't link to past messages unlike Slack, alas), so for recurring stuff, I'm just gonna jot it here so it can help future people.
Feel free to ask questions and stuff too, or you can catch me in Discord in #audio
HOW TO TURN OFF/CHANGE THE VOICE CHAT NOISE GATE
So, this has come up a few times at our meetups.
There's a lot of voice chat improvements in this release, SEE OUR RELEASE NOTES.
In the Fashion release, there's a "noise gate" that auto-mutes your microphone if you have a mild amount of background noise. It's useful for making the signal somewhat cleaner in between your sentences.
I recommend going to Windows Sound control panel and increasing your mic input gain first, because if it's very low, then your normal speaking voice may be silenced.
If you are on a really crappy mic, then you may always have a weak, low-gain signal no matter what you do. I do recommend buying a better microphone/headset, you deserve it.
But if you need to adjust the noise gate in the meantime — either because you're regularly coming into Sansar from a noisy environment or due to the aforementioned crappy mic, here's how:
- Close Sansar first.
- Open C:\Program Files\Sansar\Client\Audio\UI.toml — you'll probably need to right-click and open it as Administrator, or try an editor like Notepad++ which can remind you.
- Read the instructions under "VOICE CHAT NOISE GATE" and change them accordingly, then save. You may need to experiment with this a few times.
- Start Sansar and test voice chat with a friend. These are local settings that only affect YOUR outgoing voice. See if it's any better.
If you're on a bad mic, you'll probably need to click Sansar's mic mute button when you're not speaking. But trust your ears!
Note that we don't officially support editing of UI.toml, but if you accidentally botch something up and Sansar doesn't start, just reinstall.
DID YOU KNOW WE HAVE SOUND SETTING SLIDERS NOW?
Go ahead and click More options... > Settings
It's pretty self-explanatory what each one does, and it works in realtime before you click Save.
And for more details, check out our Knowledge Base's "Settings" article!
This gives you more control under the hierarchy of:
Note there is a KNOWN ISSUE with Experience audio and Voice audio not affecting reverb, so if you set Experience audio to 0 and hear weird echoey things in a scene, well that's why — it's the "wet signal" that's still present. We hope to get a fix out in the not-too-distant future.
FUN FACTS ABOUT VOICE CHAT (AND OTHER AUDIO TIDBITS)
For this Fashion release, we paid a lot of attention to user feedback about voice chat — it's key to social experiences! I just wanted to share some details to confirm things you may have noticed, in addition to what I said about the noise gate above...
Voice chat range has been increased to about 10 m before it noticeably drops off. Notice that it does subtly start fading out after 2 m, but the falloff curve is way more gentle, and it allows for easier conversions in larger groups. Here's a good example at Voyage Live: Egypt, especially with that table in the middle:
Also note that this is specific to voice chat, although Point audio emitters now have a 2 m nearfield radius before falloff, so they're still highly spatialized but a bit easier to hear. (This also includes mitigating some weird artifacts from hearing them too close while moving the camera, though there are other improvements we want to do in that regard.)
There's a subtle dynamic compressor that evens out voice volume. It's pretty "transparent" and isn't the kind of thing that has much of an audible effect. Similar to the technique used on broadcast radio and podcasts. Note that we removed an older volume auto-normalizer we had, because that had some terrible side effects, like if you accidentally thumped your mic, your whole voice volume would go down, and such frequent "pumping" sounded unnatural and unpleasant.
As a pleasant side effect of better dynamic control, you may also notice less screeching audio feedback. Although you should not be the cause of ugly feedback when using a good headset and microphone, if someone else is using speakers (instead of headphones) playing to an open room, there runs the risk of feedback loops. :( Or other scenarios where what they're hearing is being fed back into their microphone. Which is why we recommend — especially for intended spatial audio — please use a quality headset! We'll continue to research better improvements, but there really is no subtitute for getting things right "at the source" for you transmitting audio.
Both Oculus Rift and HTC Vive have built-in noise gates in their microphones. So if you're using a VR headset, yes, your voice will cut out faster when you're not talking. They're fairly aggressive in my experience, so our Sansar one is intended to play nicely with them, instead of having a terrible stacking/clamping effect.
Hmmm... what else to write here. Well, let me know what curiosities you have, and I can expand this. I'm just thinking out loud but maybe we can congeal some of this stuff into formal Knowledge Base articles in the future!
Can you access the Sound Slider Settings via the API? Are there plans too?
@GranddadGotMojo — no, and there are no plans to be able to override the user settings via scripting/API, but we do want to enable scripted functionality for controlling audio loudness in other ways.
Heyla Torley
Yesterday i was in Experience "High Lands" there is a wind blowing sound that would be very appropriate for High lands :) only the thing is:
I could not find the slider (besides Master) that reduces the Experience sound.
The Experience slider only sets volume on my footstep sound but not the wind.
I'm i confused whit naming? And is there a way to lower the Wind sound there?
Greetings (daydream).
And to be able to do that in VR (audio sliders) i need to Feature Request?
@Lex — thanks for noticing this. I should also clarify that, unfortunately, Experience audio slider does not affect older scenes made by Sansar Studios (our inhouse team) like Highlands, due to them using an older content pipeline export system where audio emitters are setup and routed differently, and are not the same type that can be fully edited in the layout editor.
However, these are the only scenes like this, and they are:
The other ones are newer and Experience audio slider will work.
Maybe someday I'll get to redoing the audio in those scenes if we revisit them and bring them up-to-date with future features.
As for audio sliders in VR, please add a request so we have a clearer idea of who else may want it! I can see how that'd be useful so you don't have to take off your headset.
That solves it for me :) thx.
The Request is at
AMBIENT SOUNDSCAPE TIPS
These are some guidelines I've built up over time when it comes to creating soundscapes, including those in Sansar, and I want to share them — in case they'd be useful to you too! The following assumes you know how to do some sound editing, but even if you don't and are reaching out to a collaborator for help, it should give you a clearer idea of what to look — and listen — for:
First, the purpose of an ambient soundscape is generally to enrich its corresponding visuals without drawing too much attention to it. Sometimes, you can hear things you can't see, which is alright if it's done tastefully. For example, in a forest, you might hear birdsong coming from above, even if there aren't actually animated bird objects (although that could be even more cool!). As another example, the sound of water moving augments animated UV textures used to visually simulate water (until we have better ways down the road). Always consider the synergy of sight + sound and how they can work cohesively together!
Instead of using one loop in a given space, layer multiple loops of varying length. This is especially effective if the times of the loops aren't exact multiples of each other! For example, Loop A is 1:03 min., Loop B is 1:16 min. This ends up sounding more varied because the loops will repeat out-of-sync, preventing them from repeating together at the same time, over and over. The human ear is sensitive to repetition, whether it's intentional or not, and especially for part of a scene that's intended to be natural, you don't want it feeling artificial. I know that it can look cluttery to have several audio emitters (cuboids or spheres in this case) stacked near each other, but when you have Audio/Video Preview ON, you can momentarily hide them with the Visibility menu > Audio volumes and trust your ears. That's how I work, I alternate between looking at where the emitters are in the layout editor, then hiding them as I move my camera through the scene, then I build and visit the scene with reverb ON to get the same result visitors will hear.
Oh, that's another thing — remember to turn ON Scene Settings > Compute Reverb. This is very important for a soundscape, because reverb helps different layers gel and blend together, making the falloff of an ambience less noticeable as an avatar moves from one place to another. Used in conjunction with audio materials, it will greatly enhance the believability of a scene.
Also related, collidable mesh objects — often visualized as walls and floors in a scene — will also occlude sound, depending on the audio material that's used. In some cases, you may need to protrude an audio volume further beyond the collision mesh area, so they can be heard. For example, if you have an enclosed garage where urban traffic is coming from outside a thin window — an area you can hear but can't navigate to — test and move the traffic audio emitter somewhat inside the walls. Then again, it might sound fine being outside the walls and being muffled. Again, trust your ears, sometimes placement of the audio emitters can look odd but sound good, and that's ultimately what you're going for.
Use the Scene Settings > Background Sound slot subtlely. The usual use case here is to put non-digetic background music that isn't intended to come from within the scene (and thus sounds like it's always playing inside the avatar's head), but this can also be used for low-volume room tone across the whole scene, such as these free ones on the Store. You can put a pretty quiet ambience here (almost to where you can't hear it but can still feel it) to add a touch of presence, then use the in-scene audio volumes to build on top of it.
Unless you have a specific effect in mind, I highly recommend you DON'T use anything in the Background Sound slot that's too high-frequency or directional/panned. It sounds distracting if and "wrong" if you're moving your avatar around, yet there's a panned element that doesn't rotate with the camera. But... think about the real world when you're in a room that's not dead silent, and you can't quite pinpoint WHERE sound is coming from, but you hear some "air" or "hiss" or "hum" nonetheless. Those sounds tend to work well in this slot.
In addition to different horizontal spaces or rooms having their own "sonic identity", consider verticality. If your scene has several levels that you can get to via stairs or teleporting, think of how it might sound different when you're higher vs. low. For example, when ascending a mountain, there might be new layers of wind gusting that aren't present on the ground. Or when descending down a tunnel into the lowest floors of a building, there might be an industrial hum when you're near the machinery that powers it.
By the way, you can hear examples of most of the above at our Star Wars gallery. Notice how each room has a slightly different feel, and how the "dark side" parts feel more ominous than moving towards the more hopeful "light side" at the end. :)
Please feel free to ask me if you have any questions about the above, and if you're trying to achieve a particular aural effect, ask away!