The Sound Update Thread (The Return)

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I personally really like the sounds in GTS. I've heard comparisons between cars in real life and in GTS and GTS isn't really that far off. Cars also actually sound like they have engines underneath the hood and not handsaws or vacuum cleaners. The game may not have the greatest, most realistic sounding cars but I couldn't care less. I'd rather them focus on other aspects of the game first.
 
Perkel
Kaz himself said in interview that they do not generate sounds anymore.
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Citation required.



Kazunori words: "While making Gran Turismo Sport, we changed our method of data capturing. We recorded the sounds of real engines (samples), and also ran a sound simulator for each engine type (synthesis), then combined them with the real sound (samples mixed with synthesizing). That is how we created the sound of Gran Turismo Sport".
So in other words they have NOT stopped making sound as you claimed they are merely mixing with samples.
 
I view all this feedback kind of like Olympic judging in subjective sports (ice skating, etc, anywhere 'artistic merit' is judged): I throw out the top 10% and the bottom 10%, and the valuable feedback is in the middle. To say "this sounds just like GT6/Vacuum cleaners/etc" seems patently untrue, and to say that "this is the best sounding racing game currently available" seems like a stretch as well. Also, it ain't even out yet! I'm reserving judgement for when I play the release version for myself.
 
WhaHappened
I view all this feedback kind of like Olympic judging in subjective sports (ice skating, etc, anywhere 'artistic merit' is judged): I throw out the top 10% and the bottom 10%, and the valuable feedback is in the middle. To say "this sounds just like GT6/Vacuum cleaners/etc" seems patently untrue, and to say that "this is the best sounding racing game currently available" seems like a stretch as well. Also, it ain't even out yet! I'm reserving judgement for when I play the release version for myself.
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I do not think there will be any significance changes to the sound anymore either some slight tweaks here and there, this version is pretty much gold by now.
 
AH49
For driveby's I will agree GT Sport still has issues, specifically the sound doesn't resonate long enough when a car passes by. For chase cam I think sounds are decent, the biggest complaint seems to be they are a little quiet. In-car however, for me, GT Sport unquestionably has the best sound accuracy and reproduction amongst it's console rivals. They capture the soundstage exceptionally well, while most other sims reproduce what you'd expect to hear at the exhaust, but with added transmission whine.
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Very well said. That’s what I’m looking for in my audio, something balanced and representative of what I’d expect to hear either in the car or just outside of it, not like I’m sat with one ear in the engine bay and the other at the exhaust making my bones rattle.

It’s like buying TVs. In the stores they are set up far too saturated and vivid. Might look impressive, but not realistic. Same with games - showy and shouty don’t necessarily mean realistic.
 
SavageEvil
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.
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This video was from when the press was invited to PD's studio, a few months ago, and each group got to try out the most recent build back then, and record and do a write up about it etc
You can hear the cars clearly and the ambience etc. Although the black car later on it the clip also has the quiet bug. Although there is a bit of that no sound thing, until close, but much less than the current demo on preload.
So something is not right



and in this clip, the outside is quiet, but in car it's like there is no sound apart from the whine... at 1:00




this bit - incar for GT3 RS sounds good, you can hear the Corvette infront

 
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CoolColJ
This video was from when the press was invited to PD's studio, a few months ago, and each group got to try out the most recent build back then, and record and do a write up about it etc
You can hear the cars clearly and the ambience etc. Although the black car later on it the clip also has the quiet bug. Although there is a bit of that no sound thing, until close, but much less than the current demo on preload.
So something is not right



and in this clip, the outside is quiet, but in car it's like there is no sound apart from the whine... at 1:00




this bit - incar for GT3 RS sounds good, you can hear the Corvette infront

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Just like in that video, that is how the game is supposed to sound, I thought it was weird when I got the demo and was watching it that something was off. After I got through looking at the visual candy, I was like where are the engine notes from a distance, why is everything so quiet? That first video sounded so awesome, let's hope it's a replay bug and doesn't happen during races else we're going to have some serious problems. I wonder if we can still access the Beta bug report page? They need this brought to their attention, it takes away from the replays immensely.
 
SavageEvil
Just like in that video, that is how the game is supposed to sound, I thought it was weird when I got the demo and was watching it that something was off. After I got through looking at the visual candy, I was like where are the engine notes from a distance, why is everything so quiet? That first video sounded so awesome, let's hope it's a replay bug and doesn't happen during races else we're going to have some serious problems. I wonder if we can still access the Beta bug report page? They need this brought to their attention, it takes away from the replays immensely.
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I wasn't in the beta, so I don't know. It's also very obvious, so I don't know how that went through.
It's like some sounds are not playing, while others are missing
 
CoolColJ
I wasn't in the beta, so I don't know. It's also very obvious, so I don't know how that went through.
It's like some sounds are not playing, while others are missing
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The beta did not sound like this. It had qualities of that sound, but even after playing the beta as much as I did, seeing this video got me extremely excited for the finished product. I still think this is the best sounding video of GT Sport to date. It’s almost like they went backwards with the sound design in the demo replays we’ve been able to see? There’s definitely something up.
 
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CoolColJ
here is the video where the cars are really quiet, I mean this many race cars should not sound this quiet....

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JayneS
I’ve had this running now on a couple of replays. I would say that the drive-by audio feels glitched. The sound ends far too abruptly with each passing car, but then occasionally it kicks up a notch. Something easily resolved I’m sure, and the whole purpose of the demo is to get feedback like this,
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It seems to be largely an issue with Doppler. Instead of a transition of multiple sounds progressively fading out, they just seem to shut off once another sound source goes by. Its an odd one (almost as odd as the lack of Doppler in PCARS 2) and its made even more weird by the fact that when you hear multiple cars going through the slow corners, you hear them all at once.
 
CoolColJ
I wasn't in the beta, so I don't know. It's also very obvious, so I don't know how that went through.
It's like some sounds are not playing, while others are missing
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It's probably a bug in the demo itself, but we'll see once the Demo goes live if it persists in player replays. I'd like to think that this is only affecting the demo and not the final product since well it's already too late since the game went gold last month. Either way let's hope PD is notified of this issue in the demo, the Beta had a lot of audio going although some sound scapes were absent on courses like the Nurburgring(almost no reverb, which is madness that place is a valley of echoes IRL). Fingers crossed this isn't affecting the final product.
 
CoolColJ
Someone buzz Kaz's Twitter about this, I don't use Twitter myself :)
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I think Kaz (by accident?) retweeted one of the tweets mentioning this, but removed it after. I got the Twitter notification. So he knows about it.

Edit: he replied

 
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I thought the sounds in the videos on the demo sounded really good and when you compare it to past GT games you could say amazing!
 
Perkel
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)



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.
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PDI seem to use a synthetic system.



PDI hired this guy the same month this vid was uploaded. Sound does look like a priority for PDI and they seem to be leading the way in the genre in terms of technical approach and I'm not sure it will be easy for others to catch up as it seems that it involves a lot of R&D and costs to get to stage where GTS is currently at. There is an app on smartphones called Real Engine Sim which seems approach used by GTS and IMO GTS sounds a lot better. The GT3 RS sounds really impressive which is probably making use of their latest methods.

The way PDI record cars seems top level thanks to Dynapack use. Hopefully they record the right car sounds, not mainly tuned cars like Forza seems to do.

I personally like how cars on GTS sound on downshifts and off throttle, still some work to do but they are getting there. Will see tomorrow if things have improved much since the closed Beta.

 
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zr1chris
I thought the sounds in the videos on the demo sounded really good and when you compare it to past GT games you could say amazing!
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You don't hear the sound of the car the camera is focusing on most of the time, and then sometimes you only hear it after the car has passed, but then it gets cut off abruptly. You barely hear any of the other cars before and after the car the camera is looking at.
In some replays, the interior of the car has no sound, just gear whine.

Maybe the demo attract mode, doesn't load all the sounds of the cars, or it's just a bug

Whereas if you compare the demo clips to this replay from a few months back, you should be able to hear the difference.


and, first few mins and replay at 5:50

 
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yeah, but still in parts, the cars drive past, and you don't hear any sound from the car in front of the camera.
 
CoolColJ
yeah, but still in parts, the cars drive past, and you don't hear any sound from the car in front of the camera.
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I was talking about the interior improvement.

I know what you are trying to say about the exterior sounds. But it should be really easy to fix. They just need to change the amplitude curve. Hopefully they will do.
 
So remember how I mentioned they haven't quite got that distinct mechanical note on the V10s?

Weirdly, they actually got it on the Quattro:

 
Seems the audio bug from the demo that was on display earlier doesn't appear when you run a replay, all the audio is there. Worryingly my replays are at 30fps, guess I'll have to set the game to performance mode to see if that switches it back to unlocked replay frame rate.
 
SavageEvil
Seems the audio bug from the demo that was on display earlier doesn't appear when you run a replay, all the audio is there. Worryingly my replays are at 30fps, guess I'll have to set the game to performance mode to see if that switches it back to unlocked replay frame rate.
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Yes it does.
 
Tried the GT86 and I don't think they captured the distinctive boxer sound. Then tried the M4, which in-game, sounds super revvy and sharp, while the real car sounds a bit stuffy.

Need to check more cars.
 

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