The Sound Update Thread (The Return)

  • Thread starter TayeezSA
  • 1,178 comments
  • 140,759 views
I didn't notice yet the transmission whine was copy-pasted across race cars in the game. Makes sense though as to why it doesn't sound at all like the real life Mclaren. How many different samples are there, you noticed a couple of different ones already?
Just from the 3 I watched on the last few pages that feature a race car, it sounds like the exact same recording is used. The pitch & volume of the transmission whine is practically identical among the cars it's really noticeable in, imo.

The McLaren, for example, is one of them. I don't know how anyone could say the 650S GT3 is "spot on". The transmission whine completely drowns out any other sound the car makes; it sounds like an airplane in 6th gear just flying along with the wind noise being produced alongside it. The basic sound of the Mac's V8 is there, it's just so soft. At least in the Bathurst video posted, whilst there is a fair amount of transmission whine, that V8 is still easily heard.
 
Just from the 3 I watched on the last few pages that feature a race car, it sounds like the exact same recording is used. The pitch & volume of the transmission whine is practically identical among the cars it's really noticeable in, imo.

The McLaren, for example, is one of them. I don't know how anyone could say the 650S GT3 is "spot on". The transmission whine completely drowns out any other sound the car makes; it sounds like an airplane in 6th gear just flying along with the wind noise being produced alongside it. The basic sound of the Mac's V8 is there, it's just so soft. At least in the Bathurst video posted, whilst there is a fair amount of transmission whine, that V8 is still easily heard.
My only problem is I am playing the game in my living room and while the transmission is loud the engine is just as loud. Its not like you just hear only transmission that was more so when I first got the beta after the 2 updates the car engine, chassis, turbo are all louder. Also have you heard the car during replays with the tv camera?
 
My only problem is I am playing the game in my living room and while the transmission is loud the engine is just as loud. Its not like you just hear only transmission that was more so when I first got the beta after the 2 updates the car engine, chassis, turbo are all louder. Also have you heard the car during replays with the tv camera?
I'm judging by what members here decide to post as proof.

Outside, the car sounds pretty good. Cockpit view still needs work. This was posted 2 days ago; the engine is more pronounced, but still being drowned out by that god awful whine.
 
I'm judging by what members here decide to post as proof.

Outside, the car sounds pretty good. Cockpit view still needs work. This was posted 2 days ago; the engine is more pronounced, but still being drowned out by that god awful whine.

You know what I have been driving in bumper cam a lot because of online, but the cockpit seems to have the transmission louder than in bumper cam. I kinda like the transmission whine but yea they could tone it down a bit. I also love the wind, it gets super loud in the GR.3 cars.
 
You know what I have been driving in bumper cam a lot because of online, but the cockpit seems to have the transmission louder than in bumper cam. I kinda like the transmission whine but yea they could tone it down a bit. I also love the wind, it gets super loud in the GR.3 cars.
I drive in bumper cam because the cockpit view is HOT TRASH, FOV adjustment would be nice 2017
 
I drive in bumper cam because the cockpit view is HOT TRASH, FOV adjustment would be nice 2017
Well that's cool I don't have a problem with the view, but FOV adjustment would make everyone happy I am for it. I probably would move the view back I like seeing the cockpit.
 
WoW I have never seen anybody post that the view is too close. To each their own.
One of my reasons I like Pcars you can basically move the view as if you were in the seat. Yea I don't like close cockpit views I rather just drive bumper cam if thats the case.
 
That GT3 RS is very confusing. It sounds like an AES exhaust, but there is a clear intake-like aspect to the sound (texture and tone). It's hard to really tell, without being able to get my hands on it, exactly what's what on that front.

It's weirdly mixed in the external shots, not too dissimilar to recent Forza games, like your head is stuck in part of the engine's plumbing. It works well on the interior view - although there are some obvious balance issues across the rev-range, still.

On the real car, you can barely hear the intake over the exhaust, except as a hard-edged metallic sound at certain forward angles; the rest of the time it modulates the exhaust note subtly - but audibly. That modulation effect is permanent in the game and too strong, like it's more a part of (e.g.) the exhaust sound itself, instead of a variable interaction.

The (external) metallic intake tone sounds like a thinner version of this, for much of the same reasons - the texture is quite different, of course, due to the configurations.

(I chose this car because of the clear distinction between intake and exhaust notes making both conspicuous and clearly identifiable as separate.)

That sounds bad IMO, the transmission noise is different and too prominent compared to the engine note which isn't accurate and sounds very muted:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3nlWPMQTbg

But yes, compared to previous GT's that would still be a major improvement :).

All I can hear is the typical GoPro-style housing rattle. There are few things that irritate me more!

So while one man's view the instantaneous shift is too much another's view is that instantaneous is not instantaneous enough! :lol:

It's not really so much the speed of it as it is the "shape", if that makes sense. The rise and fall of the controls. PD just seem to be using hard-edged on / off transitions mostly.

"Gear wobble" and general driveline flex is obviously a physics issue, and any changes to the automated gear changes themselves should be considered as part of the physics as well.
 
Well I can hear that the "chipmunk" effect on replay drive bys is gone :)
(in that new Porsche clip)

Like the tyre/road noise on the replay

interior wise, I know in real life, road noise is way louder
 
Last edited:
What's the chipmunk effect? :dopey:

The external tyre noise is very reminiscent of GT3 to me, and is a welcome return despite not seeming to gel with the rest of the sound design at this point. There could be more on the interior, and more reactive to bumps and such.

The interior wind noise is a bit in your face, though. Maybe it's designed for bass hardware. The external wind noise needs work as well.


Something else from that new Porsche video is the cabin modeling. Notice the other car sounds very dull, but the sound from the car you're in is still full-spectrum, and yet filtered in its own way to sound enveloping. This is really quite clever and, with a bit of tweaking, could sound excellent overall (with the right source content i.e. the sounds themselves). They could use this to react to the road bumps as well.


The reverb is still disappointing, I wonder if they're filtering the input to that, because it seems a bit thin and lifeless. I was personally hoping they would move away from a pure algorithmic approach - the cabin reverb / filter effect could have been designed in a way that would translate well to the short initial part of an adaptive external reverb as well, only using an "algo" tail for the decaying part of it, perhaps per-track / per-track-zone. The difficulty is getting that to work for interior views, I suppose...

Anyway, that video shows a substantial change compared with what the beta sounds like, and it's hard to say how old it is. Hopefully there are things still to be tackled on PD's tick-list that will be addressed for release.
 
One of my biggest issues are the missing on-load sounds. The engines sound exactly the same, never mind if you're coasting or on full throttle, the only difference is the volume. That completely ruins the dynamics. I just noticed that after firing up AC again.
 
Griffith500

"chipmunk" effect on driveby, that sort of synthetic pitch shifting artifact

see here - 41 secs onwards, recent, but older video, which sounds more like GT6 did, so they have finally changed out legacy stuff... there is quite a difference between this video and the one above. Seems to be more distance based filtering on sounds



I agree with you regarding the filtering, the road impact sounds on the rough part of the track, actually sounds like your inside of the car.
It could be this new audio director from the music industry side is bringing his audio DSP/processing know how to the fold

The beta Nurb doesn't have grass, whereas the newer Porsche video does, and better trees
 
Last edited:
One of my biggest issues are the missing on-load sounds. The engines sound exactly the same, never mind if you're coasting or on full throttle, the only difference is the volume. That completely ruins the dynamics. I just noticed that after firing up AC again.
Thankfully, you only really need on/off "load" switching for the exhaust. The intake you can get away with just scaling the volume on. The mechanical note can get a subtle volume change and it'd be convincing.

Oddly enough, PD had a throttle-position sensitive exhaust sound using AES when the Viziv VGT was added to GT6, but later patched it out again.

"chipmunk" effect on driveby, that sort of synthetic pitch shifting artifact

...

Ah, that is the sampling doing that, yes. They might have clamped the Doppler shift in some way, which would partly explain the relative lack of response in external shots. You'd have to use soft limits, with a kind of asymptotic taper, instead of a hard clamp - the latter sounds hilariously bad.

The fix is to abandon loops altogether... :D
(And then Doppler shifting gets a little more fiddly to achieve instead of effectively being free.)


So PD have another new audio director? DSP is definitely massively important!
 
Last edited:
I believe when that Forza guy was hired, there was also another guy hired that had music production background or something, to be the audio lead director
Good catch, it will be interesting to see the credits once Sport releases proper.

It might be more mastering / production rather than the nuts and bolts of DSP, the needs of which are subtly different in interactive 3D games as opposed to "static" media like music. There are shared aspects, notably reverb, and of course output / audio hardware targets.

On that latter note, I don't hear any of the problems with other cars drowning out the player car in the new video. The PS3-era audio engine's dynamic range compressor really needed work from a perceptual and hardware point of view. That would class as DSP. 👍
 
I believe when that Forza guy was hired, there was also another guy hired that had music production background or something, to be the audio lead director
Was it this guy?:sly:
d443d59e535801c82617201e016ddad2.jpg
 
I find it too accurate compared to the GTR Gr. 4 in the game.
Maybe the whine is loud for those who complain but in the vid the whine is loud too.
 
So another thing I was thinking about...was race drivers using ear plugs to prevent hearing loss VS what we should hear in our headphones as a player.

Should the race car sound as vicious as a real version and we also should be using earplugs to dampen the sound ? Simply lower the volume ? Make it already dampened to simulate this aspect ?

How this should be approached ?
 
Last edited:
Actually they do have earplugs, it's the radio. And they wear a helmet of course so those 2 things dampen the car sound a lot.
 
Actually they do have earplugs, it's the radio. And they wear a helmet of course so those 2 things dampen the car sound a lot.
but they don't dampen only the transmission whine duh :D if you want to dampen the audio just turn down your volume :D
 
You know what I have been driving in bumper cam a lot because of online, but the cockpit seems to have the transmission louder than in bumper cam. I kinda like the transmission whine but yea they could tone it down a bit. I also love the wind, it gets super loud in the GR.3 cars.

A bit off-topic here: the GT games have always done road and wind noise effects exceptionally well. Wish a certain franchise (ahem) would take a similar approach. :D
 
but they don't dampen only the transmission whine duh :D if you want to dampen the audio just turn down your volume :D

Actually, ear protection will dampen some frequencies more than others. Putting ear plugs in is not simply turning the volume down on the world. Try it sometime. You'll find that actually a lot of the deeper sounds still get through, whether it's through bone conduction or just pure pressure, but almost all the high pitched stuff gets filtered out.
 
I'm judging by what members here decide to post as proof.

Outside, the car sounds pretty good. Cockpit view still needs work. This was posted 2 days ago; the engine is more pronounced, but still being drowned out by that god awful whine.


I beleive PD got it right. The real GT3 car has this high pitch whine that sounds like in game. Take a look at this GTR GT3 video.
 
That's a Nissan, though. My post was about the 650S. :confused:
Yeah i know. My point was to show that gt3 car has that similar high pitch whine and i happen to recall the GTR video. May be you can google around for the 650s video. By the way, I like the 12c :)
 
I beleive PD got it right. The real GT3 car has this high pitch whine that sounds like in game. Take a look at this GTR GT3 video.


Theres more or less whine on different cars. Also the sounds differ if one takes the helmet in consideration or not. And finaly in a game its a matter of taste.

What i wish is that GTS would have vast enought audio settings for everyone to make it how they like.

Volumes for engine, tires, chassis, wind, surrounding cars, drivetrain etc. Even drivetrain and gearbox separately as also engine and exhaust.. But thats pushing it from a wish to a dream.. :lol:👍
 
Back