Why is equalizing all of survivors' audio levels taking *years* ?
This has been an issue for years, and I have made posts about it on these Forums before, too. Ace and Ada for example, are way too quiet, so playing them makes it harder for killers to track them. Playing as Jane or Jeff or Ash is a detriment, because they are very loud, and thus very easy to track. That contributes to people not wanting to play them.
I remember a few years ago or so you mentioned that you would make all of the survivors' sound at the same level. Why is it still not done?
Scott has made a beautiful video about it:
I agree with him, equalizing the sounds shouldn't take too long, maybe it can be done within 1 day, but certainly within 1 week. Why is this taking years instead? All you need to do is put the sounds in an audio program, and increase or decrease the volume. It's very simple. Unless it's not for some reason, but then you could share with us the specifics. But even then, it shouldn't take years. You could ask the community for help, if you need it. I'm sure some people would even do it for free.
When can we expect these changes to happen? I would really appreciate some info on this.
P.S. also the unfair gen skill checks that proc at the same time you leave a gen, and you have no chance to hit them or fail them, they automatically fail.
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Playing Jill is an actual detriment when playing survivor lol.
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Yeah, and it's such a pity… We could have more variety of survivors if they were equally loud.
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I am pretty sure I read an official statement that they tried to do it but it was harder than they anticipated. Dont know if they dropped it altogether or just postponed it indefinitely..
I would guess sounds in this game are already very prone to being buggy and just running them through some software would result in some unwanted sounds and they also need approval for all the licensed characters…
As to those phantom skillchecks… yeah annoying but they are kinda a feature currently and you should always be aware that letting go of a gen has a chance of notifying the killer. And regressing the gen.2 -
I don't agree about the unhittable skill checks being a feature. There is basically no counterplay to them. Due to bad luck you alert the killer and/or ruin an almost done gen. The only thing you could do is wait out a skill check if you urgently need to let go, but sometimes the skill check won't appear for 20+ seconds. And then when you do let go, it appears and bam! -10% off a gen. Very annoying for a lot of us.
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not everything needs a counter in games. DbD has plenty of situations that have no counterplay. Luck and RNG are part of this game.
And I think BHVR even acknowledged these skillchecks (in a Japanese or Korean dev Q&A or something). You don’t have to agree for it to be the current status of the game.
and I already agreed that I find these annoying as well…0 -
but what is there even to do when it comes to how loud /not loud some survivor are. sure im no game dev but im convinced it cant be that hard to up the/down the volume on some sounds
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Yeah, I have been talking about this with Iron Will nerf and nothing was done to fix it…
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I'm not an audio engineer myself, but I do actually work with some truly exceptional audio engineers, and have learned enough to know how little I know. I am mostly regurgitating information I've gotten from them here, but just to debunk some misconceptions, turning up audio is definitely not as simple as "opening the file in audacity and turning up the volume".
To change the volume you can try to raise or lower the gain a small amount and avoid any distortion, but it isn't a guarantee, and the further you push it, the more likely/more severe the distortion you can get. Even small adjustments can screw up the waveform.
You can try to normalise the signal by finding the maximum(or minimum) absolute sample in the waveform and then scale the whole waveform so that those limits value hit the dBFS (decibels relative to full scale) ceiling/floor of the system to avoid distortion, but even then it can create a result that doesn't sound right or butchers certain frequencies.
I imagine this is likely the issue BHVR hit, and sadly the true best way to fix it is to record it again but louder. You can try and correct it with software, but there is only so much you can do.
Edit: Ofc in this brave new world of AI, it might be possible to create an AI that can basically record a new version by basically impersonating the survivor... but you'd need to teach it somehow.
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pretty sure it’s subjective to some degree. And maybe some sounds would sound unnatural/distorted?
But well. I don’t know either and I couldn’t find the actual statement from BHVR
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Wow okey. I really thout its simple.
Like there is the file for jeff grunting in pain and they lower the sou d of that file. But that sounds pretty complicated.
That makes it even worse that they did not think about making every survivor equal in terms of noise when sound is a balance fsctor in there game
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Tbh, I don't expect them to fix that ever.
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Thank you for sharing this info with us. I didn't know changing the volume could have such complications.
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You have massively overcomplicated a non-issue for some reason. Its true you can't just say "Make sound big louder" without ramifications, but you are talking about 10+ dB increases that are ENTIRELY unnecessary. Nothing you described is in any way relevant to fixing survivor sounds.
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I reckon they would have to re-record the sounds with the volume adjusted and for some survivors I don't think that is possible without hiring a new voice actor. Probably the difference between recording in house and having Monster Factory doing the audio.
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They said they investigated and didn't find anything wrong. Not even joking.
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I'm not an expert in audio as I say, but I am a software engineer, and I work with people who are, and I have read and reviewed the source code of various libraries and tools that do the kind of things we're talking about, and from my limited knowledge, it is extremely complex.
To simplify an explanation, do you think that your own voice when recorded saying the exact same thing at different volumes is exactly the same waveform just bigger? Obviously it isn't, and that is effectively what just cranking up the volume in audacity would do. You will get some distortion, the question is, is the quality still good enough to get away with it?
There is a reason why major motion pictures tend to have to rerecord lines of dialogue rather than edit out mistakes in the audio, modifying a waveform is a very complex process. As I stated, you can try to modify audio via software, a small gain might be something you can get away with... but it isn't guaranteed to produce a satisfactory result.
I am not defending BHVR, nor rubbishing your video dude, I'm a subscriber of yours, and I enjoy a lot of your content. You may be right, maybe it is possible that tweaking the audio as much as BHVR needs to do can be done to a satisfying degree. Without trying it and seeing the results, I cannot say... but BHVR stated themselves it was more complicated than it seems at first, and if it was really that simple don't you think it would be done by now?
So given my admittedly limited understanding of audio processing, I have to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe them its more complex than it seems... cause if it could be rattled off in a couple of hours one afternoon, I'm pretty sure BHVR would have done it.
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Claire, Leon and David are even worse. Put Iron Will on them and then they're about the same as Ace usually is.
I've asked this SO MANY times, IDK why BHVR loves to give its player base tinnitus. There are certain sounds that are far too loud than it is neccessary. Survivor sounds not being equal, their screams whilst getting hooked, and so on. I will put this on ever single BHVR questionnaire about the game until maybe one day they will see it and give an F about it.
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It is not as simple as just lowering or raising the volume of the sounds. The pitch, consistency and type of vocalizations made also play a huge part, so it's not possible to simply bring them all to the same level.
Personally I don't mind there being a difference to the characters, though some survivors like Ada do feel a bit like pay-to-win.
A spirit main did a very thorough video analyzing and ranking all the survivor sounds:
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