Would love this quiet neutral foot sound as an option:
https://www.pond5.com/sound-effect/66835475/feet-footsteps-barefoot-feet-bare-floor-wood-walk-slap.html
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Torley - Sansar Thanks for sharing this, Whystler!
We'd like to introduce more audio materials in the future. There's such a wide variety of possibilities we could tap into, as you point out. First putting more choices on the Store, then someday, allowing creators to upload their own.
All of the current audmats correspond with a general kind of footwear, but it'd be great if we could account for both the surface AND what you're wearing on your feet — even if it's nothing at all!
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Whystler Thanks Torley,
I was playing around with the audmats yesterday and it was a lot of fun.
Surely its disconcerting to hear the hard heel on hard floor sound when you're walking and running around in barefeet, or soft soled shoes. So that's exciting to hear about possibly what you are wearing on your feet will dictate sounds in the future. And it's also nice to hear that we'll be able to download our own.
Of all the ones I played, though, I found most of them too harsh for my scene. I think I liked plaster the best as a hard one, and carpet wasn't terrible, but it was too carpetty for even soft shoes on stone.
What I did like, when I was experimenting, was when inadvertently, an audmat with more reverb, happened to coincide with a hall like space after coming in from one with much less reverb from an open space. I really liked the contrast of that. The realism of the change was so cool, and then I remembered I had bare feet lol. -
Lex yes i agree the footstep sounds are a bit to loud. they should be more on the background.
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Richardus Raymaker Agree. i noticed to that foot steps sounds are pretty loud. i would say to loud.
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GwenetteWriter Footstep sounds totally prevented immersion for me They dominate the soundscape.
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Torley - Sansar @Whystler I appreciate your thoughts. I'm glad you brought this up about reverb — transitions between spaces could be so much cooler if we had more flexible control over "reverb zones", which is something we've discussed before.
@Lex @Richardus @GwenetteWriter Thanks for the feedback. I'll tune the footstep balance more in future releases as needed, but here're some key points that I hope will give you context:
- Walking footsteps are noticeably softer than running. However, it appears most people choose to run instead of walk to travel longer distances (unless they're teleporting), so it's reasonable to think that "you hear running more than walking".
- Footsteps and voice chat are two "anchors" (at defaults of loudness = 50) that other sounds should be pegged to. Try testing a scene with voice chat and footsteps happening naturally. Now, and this is a key point for emphasis: if footsteps are too loud in your experience, it probably means the experience's ambient sounds are too soft, so my recommendation is to boost those sounds (there's a lot of headroom to go) and reduce overall volume.
- If you're familiar with audio editing... and you record Sansar's raw audio output and look at the waveforms, you'll see that most audmats' footsteps sit relatively low, RMS or LUFS "average loudness", in the total dBFS scale. Which basically just means that, again, I recommend lowering your overall system audio or lower it within Sansar. And if other creators have sounds that are too soft in their experiences, I suggest letting them know that they can make those louder before our audio attenuation (which kicks in at loud sustained levels to prevent hearing damage) clamps down on them. There's likely plenty of dynamic range to go.
- Since personal taste is a part of this, you can also adjust Voice audio relative to Experience audio in the Settings.
- For an example of where footsteps have been deliberately balanced, see https://atlas.sansar.com/experiences/intelcorp/ces-booth and the linked scenes inside (the giant chip, Ready Player One).
- There's some subtlety here, as well. I noticed that footsteps with groups of avatars running would stack/aggregate and noticeably be too loud (all things relatively speaking), so for the next major release, R17, there's dynamic compression to limit their range. It may not be realistic, but perhaps it's more stylistically appropriate. They're overall softer too.
Please let me know if any questions or feedback about this!
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GwenetteWriter Aloha Torley - long time no see...Mahalos for all those great tips. I will be spending more time in Sansar, so this info is truly helpful.
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Torley - Sansar Aloha Gwenette and good to have you with us in this world! :D
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Lex Thx for the info.
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Whystler I appreciate the information too!
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