Sound Normalization - Still a Problem?

I_Cant_Loop

I was watching this Scott Jund video today. I didn’t even realize this was an issue in the game. A few questions:

1. Is this still a problem with certain survivors?
2. Is it as easy as Scott says it is to fix?
3. If so, why haven’t the devs done anything about it for years?

https://youtu.be/9jtvSGSrNsE?si=JwixXvbnG_VbP6Za

TwinsMain2004

because they dont care and dont see it as an issue worth fixing as it really only affects the higher level

slop jund is wrong about 90% of the things he talks about but i'm with him on this one

it's a very simple fix

they just dont care lol

buggybug

More qq nerf survivors. Run stridor its been buffed back to counter iron will. Also with the 50+ aura reading perks and add ons, people still can't find survivors who are quiet? Pathetic and petty. We can't have 3 quiet survivors over the other 40 loud ones?

No surprise its always a spirit main complaining about as no other killers seem to have an issue and she's still op with no counters so if he wants that then she needs more nerf like the nerf they didn't give her to kick dust up while phasing

iloveandhatethisgame

@I_Cant_Loop said:

I was watching this Scott Jund video today. I didn’t even realize this was an issue in the game. A few questions:

1. Is this still a problem with certain survivors?
2. Is it as easy as Scott says it is to fix?
3. If so, why haven’t the devs done anything about it for years?

https://youtu.be/9jtvSGSrNsE?si=JwixXvbnG_VbP6Za

I wish they would make characters like Ada louder and Claire much quieter. I say that as a Claire main.

I_Cant_Loop

@buggybug said:

More qq nerf survivors. Run stridor its been buffed back to counter iron will. Also with the 50+ aura reading perks and add ons, people still can't find survivors who are quiet? Pathetic and petty. We can't have 3 quiet survivors over the other 40 loud ones?

No surprise its always a spirit main complaining about as no other killers seem to have an issue and she's still op with no counters so if he wants that then she needs more nerf like the nerf they didn't give her to kick dust up while phasing

The whole point is that there shouldn’t be any difference between survivors. Pick whatever sound level you think they need to be at, but there is. no reason for them to not be the same.

Also, what are you even talking about with the “spirit main” thing? Your whole 2nd paragraph is just an incoherent rant that doesn’t have anything to do with the original topic nor is there any factual basis to it. When I play as Spirit, survivors know exactly how to counter me. They walk/switch directions while I’m phasing, use Iron Will (which by the way was recently buffed), and just move around unpredictably in general. Try harder to come up with excuses for why you can’t counter her.

buggybug

@BillsWrinklyballs said:

https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3928597#Comment_3928597

Don't be so dishonest and just say that players pick certain survivors to gain an advantage. Why do you think Renato, Ace or Ada have such a high pick rate?

I Play Leon Yoichi and Trevor so your question is irrelevant.

Caiman

They said they would fix this, but they said that years ago and there hasn't been one word of acknowledgement since.

@buggybug said:

More qq nerf survivors. Run stridor its been buffed back to counter iron will. Also with the 50+ aura reading perks and add ons, people still can't find survivors who are quiet? Pathetic and petty. We can't have 3 quiet survivors over the other 40 loud ones?

No surprise its always a spirit main complaining about as no other killers seem to have an issue and she's still op with no counters so if he wants that then she needs more nerf like the nerf they didn't give her to kick dust up while phasing

This negatively affects survivors too when they play characters whose pain sounds are louder than normal. There is no need to turn this into yet another tired us vs. them fight.

buggybug

Use your 50+ info perks, scratch marks and blood pools. This topic and that video reeks of just usual survivor complaints. He literally sounds like he wants all survivors loud as a damn jane/Jeff am glad devs dont bother with some of this. The equalization thing was cause of iron will nerf and it was bull and unneeded and was mostly the qq of spirit mains.

buggybug

@BillsWrinklyballs said:

https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3928637#Comment_3928637

Now type this in a coherent sentence so I can understand you.

Oh you just made this account just now, probably someone who was already banned before, pretty common lol.

Ryuhi

Threadly reminder we have been waiting literal years for this to be followed up on after being officially acknowledged and promised. It could be done by a single person in something like Audacity in maybe half an hour.

Edit: lmao why did this get a vote down

100PercentBPMain

Will this not just move the goalposts? If we make all noises equal, people will just make threads saying Claudette is OP, or women in general are op. Dbd players are never happy

Before anybody tries, I'm a p100 Feng and I enjoy playing Claire and Bill

Coffeecrashing

With the new survivor, we don't need complicated math or science to fix this. Just make her noises louder (except hook noises), and ask a few BHVR employees to listen to compare the new files to someone like Meg or Dwight, and ask they personally feel it's somewhere near the same volume level.

And honestly, they should be able to just grab the median decibel value from each of her sound files, compare them to the median decibel value of all the survivors (for the same sound file type), and adjust as necessary.

frozzenk

Sounds has had all sort of issues in DBD for a long, long time. They just don't care. Which is crazy when they have a killer that needs sound to operate, and somewhat recently released another killer with a transformation that operates in much the same way.

Footstep sounds are extremely inconsistent by survivor to survivor, and by map to map. If they're running on snow/sand like Eyrie, you will often not hear footsteps, as if they were levitating.

It's a real shame because I think Spirit is an amazing killer conceptually. But the game is not up to it and playing Spirit is just an endless source of headaches.

xGodSendDeath

I personally wouldn't care that much about the sound normalization and audio occlusion so much if losing track of one survivor and losing a chase wasn't so heavily punishing as killer. It will straight up lose you the game

UndeddJester

@I_Cant_Loop said:

I was watching this Scott Jund video today. I didn’t even realize this was an issue in the game. A few questions:

1. Is this still a problem with certain survivors?
2. Is it as easy as Scott says it is to fix?
3. If so, why haven’t the devs done anything about it for years?

https://youtu.be/9jtvSGSrNsE?si=JwixXvbnG_VbP6Za

1. Yes, Ace and Ada are hell quiet, and Orela is too apparently.
2. Scott's assessment simplifies the problem and leaves a lot of stuff out, but yes to provide a simple answer, yes this approach is a valid solution that would be good enough for DBD. I have a proper description below.
3. As someone who works as a software development QA engineer, and working currently in audio processing, I have been able to discuss this very problem with highly qualified audio engineers... My conclusion is I honestly can't say why BHVR haven't fixed this issue... I err on the side of giving BHVR the benefit of the doubt, as I myself am not an audio processing engineer and there may be some factor I just don't know about. However unless they clarify the reason why, I have to admit that I'm not aware of any reason this issue couldn't be relatively easily resolved in the manner described.

If you wanna read my full conclusion on this issue, it's available here:

@UndeddJester said:

Hi all!

Probably pointless to dredge this up as likely no one other than me actually cares, but in the spirit of ensuring I'm not passing misinformation, I've continued developing my skills on my audio digital processing journey as part of my work, and do have a much better understanding of it than I did before... so I thought I would share for anyone interested.

So regarding opening up a quiet audio file and increasing the gain of the audio signal, the simple up front answer is this is a perfectly valid approach to resolving the issue of quiet audio on most cases, and given the resolution of audio files, most audio files can be scaled quite substantially without any noticeable issues with distortion or artefacts.

The amplitude of the signal goes between 1 and -1, and an audio signal in essense defines the position of the speaker at a particular point in time during playback, in order to produce a sound. When adding gain, a signal that has a particularly sharp peak can hit issues when the peak goes over the limit, which then requires normalising or clamping the signal. This is obviously where the most pronounced issues in audio processing occur.

There is also gain sequencing, which refers to where in the audio pipeline gain is applied.

Part of audio processing pipieline takes the audio input signal, applies param EQ, compression and a limiter to the signal, all of which I only have a high level understanding of, but to give the idea:

• Parametric Equalising changes the volumes of different frequencies to balance the sound, effectively the balance of your treble and bass for the medium you're listening in.
• Compression will reduce the dynamic range of the signal, reducing the difference between the loud and soft sounds to make the audio have a more consistent (and usually more pleasant to listen to) sound.
• A limiter effectively caps the signal with the range, and basically ensures the signal fits within the desired range of the output speakers. You can make a softer limiter to smooth the cut off of the signal, or you can just hard stop a signal over the range. The compressor is a type of limiter, but is more of an artistic clamping of a sound, vs. the limiter which is more a technical make is work within this range change.

Alot of this stuff is feel and experience rather than exact science; and listening to an audio engineer talk about this stuff can be easily summed up as "applying the voodoo".

Regarding the debate in this thread, one thing to bear in mind is the order of operations. If you apply a gain before all these processing steps (the equivalent of applying our gain to the raw audio file in audacity), this changes the equaliser, compression and limiter behaviour away from what it was before. It is most likely fine still, but it will be different to what would be produced from the original signal applying these effects, and then applying the gain post processing.

So the TLDR version, it is very likely that simply boosting the gain in audacity would produce a result that is certainly good enough for DBDs needs... and we're talking differences that would be quite unlikely to be human detectable, let alone noticably worse in quality.

So as to why it hasn't been done, I honestly can't say... but its been interesting to learn about 😁🤘

Have a good one!

redhat74

Bless Judd, he is a great supporter of survivors where the butter is spread but if he thinks turning up the audio recordings of survivors will fix the spagetti code then perhaps he isn't Italian and stop just droning on