Increase volume of sound via xml?

[Jaydee]

Is there a way to increase the volume of sound via xml?

 

Most of the changes that can be done via xml upon inspection only relates to stealth, or am I misunderstanding how it works?

[xyth]

You cant change the volume of individual sounds in xml.  

[Jaydee]

2 minutes ago, xyth said:

You cant change the volume of individual sounds in xml.  

Dang alright that's sad.

[TheWolfssegen]

There is a mod that changes volumes of some sounds, but it can't be done through xml. To my knowledge, you'd need to rip the audio files from the game, then lower them manually in something like audacity, then make them back into unity assets and replace them in a mod. This is the mod that does it, if you want an example to go off of, though I don't have any experience with ripping or creating unity assets so you'll have to ask someone else about that.

[Jaydee]

On 6/15/2021 at 7:58 AM, TheWolfssegen said:

There is a mod that changes volumes of some sounds, but it can't be done through xml. To my knowledge, you'd need to rip the audio files from the game, then lower them manually in something like audacity, then make them back into unity assets and replace them in a mod. This is the mod that does it, if you want an example to go off of, though I don't have any experience with ripping or creating unity assets so you'll have to ask someone else about that.

 

I have successfully ripped sounds from a mod (specifically Bdub's helicopter sounds) and they seem loud when played on VLC. In-game they sound so tame.

 

I don't think editing the WAV file and reimporting will fix it. It has something to do in the game instead.

[doughphunghus]

edit: this is a good old link to explain how to extract and repackage sounds for the game: 

 

Not sure if I can help here, but I’ve messed with the game sounds:

I have several Sounds I made that sound “loud” in audacity but when put into the game they sound muddled/low. The sounds that I have ripped from the game and modified and put back into the game sound “good”, volume wise. My guesses as to what may be causing the volume issue is:

- the game may be doing some sound processing on sounds.  
- from what I’ve heard, a lot of vanilla sounds sound really loud when extracted and played outside of the game. 
 

given these two, it’s likely a sound just needs to have some “general high sound db level” to sound good in the game.  Maybe the devs are working off of some “max volume” setting or something, so all sounds are recorded at max volume and then they lower it for distance, volume sliders, etc because if you made a sound “louder” than it was recorded it might cause clipping or distort it?

 

I also believe some sounds are attached to “things” (like zeds, blocks) and some things are in your head. For both of these, it makes sense to record them “as loud as needed” and then have them naturally get quieter as the “thing” moves away. For “in head sounds” maybe the max volume is set different than the sounds attached to things as the distance (in your head) never changes so it’s a known volume to record/playback at?  Just thinking about this as maybe there are 2 “max volume levels” one might find if you extracted sounds for these types of things.

 

annother theory, based on another person having similar issues and some discussion. Still a theory! Maybe the game is also manipulating the sound not in volume, but in “range”, like a graphic equalizer. So if a sound has a lot of bass or treble but not a lot of midrange, it might sound muffled?  Just a theory, but you might want to look at the source sound profile to make sure all the “volume” isn’t at the far end of the high or low spectrum. I doubt this is the case but unless a dev explicitly says it’s not or says how they handle sounds (or what they do to record new ones) all theories are valid.  I doubt though that this is a major contributor unless your sounds are really only high/low.

Edited June 17, 2021 by doughphunghus (see edit history)

[khzmusik]

On 6/14/2021 at 9:06 AM, Jaydee said:

Dang alright that's sad.

 

I know, right? I found this out a while ago (some custom NPC sounds were too loud and I wanted to change them). As someone who used to work with audio semi-professionally, that's basically getting an F in the Audio 101 course.

 

They must have good reasons, but for the life of me, I can't figure out what they are.

[TheWolfssegen]

On 6/15/2021 at 6:00 PM, Jaydee said:

 

I have successfully ripped sounds from a mod (specifically Bdub's helicopter sounds) and they seem loud when played on VLC. In-game they sound so tame.

 

I don't think editing the WAV file and reimporting will fix it. It has something to do in the game instead.

To my knowledge, the way the audio works is that audio comes out of an audio source (if you look at the xmls, each sound has one). These are a unity thing that have a volume built in, as well as some other parameters I'm unfamiliar with. You can, at the very least edit the relative amplitude, if not the peak amplitude and it will have an effect in the game (I tried this out a few days ago and confirmed at least relative amplitude change, meaning you could leave 0.01 seconds at the current peak amplitude and have the rest be really quiet). This is the same reason you'll see a lot of custom entities that have audio as a core of their identity using the screamerVO as their audio source, it's loud. So that's partially true, but you can do something with just audio editing.