PDI look to be a good position regarding sound compared to their competitors who seem quite invested in their old school sound approach so not sure how easy it will be for them to catch up and try and beat GT with next-gen sound approach.
The way it seems to me is PDI are trying to recreate the sounds while others are just trying to capture and play them back which I don't think will have as good sound quality potential.
There is no NEXT-GEN technology used in GTS. IT is exact same tech everyone uses, they record samples and overlap them over themselves at various RPM ranges.
Difference is that they use LESS samples with LESS effects (like hollow reving without load, downshift/upshift at 5k rpm or 8krpm etc.) available that provide LESS actual spectrum of how car sounds at various RPM stages under load or not under load.
To make a point look at that F40 video. Even if you go from 5k rpm to something like 8k rpm you can hear that 5k rpm sounds different to 7k rpm and at 7k rpm you start to hear intake more which was subdued below 7k which gives you that difference once you hit 7k+range on f40.
They achieved this by recording multiple samples at different rev levels. But unlike GT they didn't just record 2-3 samples but they recorded something like 5-7 samples at each stage.
This is why car sounds like real thing because going from 5k rpm to 7k rpm isn't 5krpm sound sample being stretched to go to 7krpm range but 5k rpm sample fading into 7k rpm sample with very little scratching between them.
This is the reason why GT5/6 sound was total garbage GTS "fixes" that by adding probably one more sample to it in higher range rpms because GT5/6 streatched sample from something like 4krpm to something like 9k rpm in one go for some worst offenders.
Then like i said before car sounds different when it is under actual load VS hollow reving. While recording under load is difficult task to achieve since it requires actual car to actually drive on track while being recorded it gives you actually sound of car that sounds like in real life.
This is where GT5/6 massively failed because all of their sounds were recorded in closed dyno without any load. So just hollow rev.
Then there is quality of people who actually record that stuff and mix it after recording, which sadly is worst part of GT sounds. Samples they get are usually completely stripped out of any depth it has. Because i don't believe for a second that professional sound recording system can't capture grunt of a car while cheap phone microphone can. So it means this is deliberate choice in sound mixing studio in PD. Someone there is sitting there basically doing horrible job stripping samples out of depth.
While it is technically true that GT5/6 had BEST QUALITY audio, PCM multi channel surround sound for cockpit etc, like i said before even best hardware won't save you if source material is garbage. GTS follows the same logic albait they improved a bit by adding probably something like 1 more sample to overall 3-4 samples and few effects (but still way below industry standard)
Something is wrong with the audio in GT Sport, not sure but there is no sound scape. It sounds like you are driving in a vacuum, there is audio when a car is near but once it goes a certain distance all sounds vanish...that's impossible. Where are the ambient sounds and cars sounds reverberating off the environment, past GT's had this to some degree first noticed in Nurburgring, but this GT seems to be absent completely in these replays. It's very weird and makes the game feel flat, I mean the static background with no organic feel to them in the large foliage really breaks the immersion the visuals set up. We need a fix PD, sound scapes are missing, even the tunnel doppler effect isn't even there. Audio from cars overall is far too low, no race car is that quiet even full electric cars(formula E) make a ton of noise.
This sound more like bug to me than actual sound design or lack of it. PD seems to add more stuff to sounds as time goes (though there isn't much time now).
But who knows. IT is PD, sound for them isn't priority at all.
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Holly hell i just remembered that GT5 had flanger effect in main audio constantly mixing from one side to other ALL THE TIME. I mean with cases like this i wonder if their sound design guy even knows what he is doing.
Flanger effect is effect popular in DJ circles when you use knob or electronic switch to phase (aka slightly pitch from below instead of up) for whole spectrum giving you effect of something like this:
If you have good ear you can here it constantly going from one side to the other in background on every sound in game. Effect is hardly noticeable but it is there.
