[Shivan Hunter]

Digital Sound isn't additive

I just made a mission with one fighter warping in next to you, then 4 fighters warping in at about the same location at the same time. The 4 fighters were noticeably louder.

Dunno what happens code-side but multiple sounds are in fact louder.

[Flipside]

Not louder, more distorted, the clipping takes place at the highest volume, so you're not getting anything louder than before, it's just that you're getting 'more' of the loud bits which can degrade the wave shape into white noise, especially at lower sample rates. I'm not saying there aren't possible volume issues, but playing several clips at once won't add to the volume, merely to the amount of 'sound' being pushed through the speakers.

It could be, as I suggested earlier, a distance thing, I think the nebula thunder is played as though it were 0 distance from the player, so it's going at full volume all the time, if the audio has been normalised up to a higher volume, or the sound code is, for some reason, multiplying up the volume way too much for distance then either, or even both could be responsible.

Edit: It's like how a guitar amp has seperate controls for 'Gain' and 'Volume', Gain multiplies the sound before it is amplified, causing distortion, Volume does so after amplification. That's how you can turn up distortion on a guitar, and then adjust the volume of that distorted tone. So Gain is the ratio between input and output on the Amplifier, whereas volume is a direct value of output only. This sounds to me like the problem is arising before the volume section takes place, else it would affect all sound, which it doesn't seem to do.

[Zacam]

I'll do some testing with the newer SFX we have and see about reducing (if necessary) their individual volume scape.

Just to remove that from being in contention. Meanwhile, how many of you are using "Generic Software" and/or OpenAL Soft? And did you set it to "Generic Software" prior to putting in OpenAL Soft if you are using it, and are you using it as "soft_oal.dll" or "OpenAL32.dll" in your Freespace 2 dir?

I actually had to configure without OpenAL Soft, then run the launcher again with it as "OpenAL32.dll" and then rename it (without re-running the launcher) to "soft_oal.dll"

[jr2]

yeah reverb or echo was what I was going to ask about next. it needs clamping so it can't boost itself into a feedback loop, at least on a mixer board, idk about in an engine.  plus, multiple sources shouldn't multiply volume, they should be parallel. the volume should go up but not by that much. clapping is loud, but 10,000 ppl clapping won't blow the roof off of a building, even though it is louder than one person.