15 minutes of SP hell footage and bad sound mixing

[Koko Ricky]

I'm excited. Looks great. Looks like a lot of fun. And there's a sweet 3D automap! But the sounds...sound design is HUGELY important in a video game and it kept throwing me off how a sound that should be loud is rendered near-silent. This happens constantly in the game. Which is weird because plenty of other sounds are at an appropriate volume. This isn't going to be a deal breaker for me, but surely id understands the role of sound design, and surely someone noticed that there's a huge inconsistency in the volume level of the sound effects. Frankly this is very elementary stuff, I don't know why it's all fucked up sounding. Really cool otherwise!

[Krimson Madness]

They were streaming man you will hear the quality of the sound when you have it don't panic ;)

[Koko Ricky]

Oh, thank goodness! There's a SHIT LOAD of missing sounds and I was like, no way they're fucking up the sound this late in development! Okay, makes sense.

[ChickenOrBeef]

Which SFX sounded off to you?

[Chubzdoomer]

The MP beta's sound mix/design was complete shit as well, so it wouldn't surprise me if that problem plagued the entire game. It's probably something inherent to the engine.

[Koko Ricky]

ChickenOrBeef said:

Which SFX sounded off to you?

There was numerous times when an enemy dies, or there's an explosion, or shit being fired, and I hear nothing, or the sound is very low. Or like, the gun is hitting the manc's armor, and there's no chink sounds from it being pelted away. Like lots and lots of little sounds I expect to hear, but don't. The super shotgun sounds really loud while the rocket launcher is barely audible. Stuff like that.

[Zemini]

It seems that most of the streams had sound down way low. I couldn't hear much unless I turned it up. Unfortunately the dialog the players would then break my ear drums.

[archvile82]

Guys,

Are you using either of the following:-

virtual surround headphones
5.1 or 7.1 surround amp

My pc is going through a high quality 2 speaker amp and the sound was bloody good in MP and I imagine it will be the same for single player. If you haven't already try setting your sound card to 2 speaker output and see if it sounds any better. There could be something up with the surround mixing.

Seriously in MP the sound was clear, meaty and weapons sounded bassy especially the SSG and Plasma rifle.

Edit:- for reference my soundcard is a soundblaster ZXR plugged into a stereo amp hooked up to a pair of acoustic energy 301 speakers.

[Almonds]

the biggest offenders are the shotgun's cocking sound, the rocket launcher's firing sound and the turret fire mode for the chaingun. Seriously they're barely fucking audible.

[Quasar]

In that particular video it seemed like a lot more would be audible if the music were turned down a bit but, I haven't played the game either, so I can't speak to it. However the gameplay looks awesome and has me hyped.

[Champskiez103]

I'm still waiting for the classic Doom guy grunt, and scream when you die.
Didn't hear pain noises in the stream.

[dsm]

Champskiez103 said:

I'm still waiting for the classic Doom guy grunt, and scream when you die.
Didn't hear pain noises in the stream.

The absence of pain noises bothered me a lot too - both from the player and the demons. Lots of nice pain and death animations tho.

[MrSkeltal]

The audio for that video is desynced, you can easily notice it between 3:57 and 4:16 with weapon sounds happening before the animations.

[Jaxxoon R]

Glad I'm not the only one that noticed.

[LittleBurger]

Seemed like some of the audio was quiet to an extent. Do you thing they toned down the audio so we could hear them talk?

[Skitso]

I noticed the sound issues too. The game is missing lots of small sound effects and in certain circumstances some effects (grenades, rpg, exlosions in general) have very low volume.

[brokenhangar]

sound was really weird, even in the open beta, hopefully they can work on it before the game releases.

[HorrorMovieRei]

That little narration in the beginning was cheesy af. It sounded like Dr.Claw from Inspector Gadget.

[Jaxxoon R]

Kind of odd how the log was called "The Slayer's Testament," though, given the word's general meanings of admiration/appeasement or scripture. Who liked or worshiped the Slayer enough to record that and place it in the middle of nowhere? Is there just some non-demon entity that likes to fuck with hell's denizens or something?

[rampancy]

archvile82 said:

Guys,

Are you using either of the following:-

virtual surround headphones
5.1 or 7.1 surround amp

My pc is going through a high quality 2 speaker amp and the sound was bloody good in MP and I imagine it will be the same for single player. If you haven't already try setting your sound card to 2 speaker output and see if it sounds any better. There could be something up with the surround mixing.

Seriously in MP the sound was clear, meaty and weapons sounded bassy especially the SSG and Plasma rifle.

Edit:- for reference my soundcard is a soundblaster ZXR plugged into a stereo amp hooked up to a pair of acoustic energy 301 speakers.

good to hear (pun?) im an audio guy myself. my xfi goes through my denon amp and my jbl studio series speakers and im hoping for an awesome experience.

[ChickenOrBeef]

HorrorMovieGuy said:

That little narration in the beginning was cheesy af.

That's probably what they're going for. Marty has said they're going for a "comic book" vibe and always try to make sure the game "doesn't take itself too seriously".

After all, Hell in this game was designed after Heavy Metal album covers, so expect a badass, but somewhat cheesy adventure with this game. Not the grim, horror take of Doom 3.

[ShadesMaster]

God-DAMN cacodemons have it hard in this game, they look like they get tired easily the way they haveta give momentum to their lightning balls, that twist and throw thing they do with their head/body lol....

[Chest Rockwell]

ShadesMaster said:

God-DAMN cacodemons have it hard in this game, they look like they get tired easily the way they haveta give momentum to their lightning balls, that twist and throw thing they do with their head/body lol....

Also their little arms fall off when you shoot them

[LittleBurger]

mistercow said:

Also their little arms fall off when you shoot them

Now that sort of makes me want to try aiming for their arms when the game is released.

[HellVain]

LittleBurger said:

Now that sort of makes me want to try aiming for their arms when the game is released.

Poor cacodemons...

[lazygecko]

MrSkeltal said:

The audio for that video is desynced, you can easily notice it between 3:57 and 4:16 with weapon sounds happening before the animations.

Even so, there's plenty of things that are just silent, so it's hardly the syncing that is the issue here.

Overall there's just a worrying lack of feedback in the audio direction. Like in some of the glory kill animations you don't hear any actual punch impacts. Just a bit of faint gore splatter.

It's also highly confusing when you compare the hell footage to some of the other UAC base footage. In the latter I hear actual footstep foley for instance, which you don't in hell. You could also hear the rocket explosion impacts in the latter, which are almost non-existent otherwise. Why are the two so different?

The game also seems to go for a very "modern" audio direction, in the sense that it has this kind of aversion towards mid-range frequencies. Instead it's mostly bass and treble, and makes more use of audio ducking/sidechain compression to convey loud and powerful sounds, either baked into the sounds themselves, or perhaps dynamically triggering it in the ingame mix, I dunno. Maybe that's why you can't hear stuff like rocket explosions in the hell video, because there's some other sound source sidechaining it? Either way, I'm not really feeling it.