Anyone remember the reason for this tweak...

[racinjoe013]

Been having some audio issues lately i'm trying to figure it out. Somewhere along the lines I edited the audio_engine.ini file and changed the max_channels from 256 to 512. I know I must have read it somewhere because i'm not smart enough to figure out something like that on my own.

Anyone remember why that tweak was suggested and what it was supposed to allow the game to do?

 

[bondyboy]

better sounds

I remember changing it years ago, think I noticed a bit of a difference (or placebo was strong)

did have a SoundBlasterZ at the time, onboard chips MMV?

 

[racinjoe013]

No. I use my TV as my monitor so my sound runs through the hdmi cable to my soundbar.

 

[RasmusP]

It simply raises the maximum of simultaneously played sounds.
Now you could do an excel sheet and check if you need more than 256 simultaneous sounds or not.

I'm not sure what counts as "one sound" though. Is 1 engine = 1 sound or is your own car already 3 sounds or something...

RFactor2 had some slight bug a week ago and my sound channel setting got set to "1".
I had audio drop outs 3x per second when driving.
Set it back to the maximum, which is 64.

Basically, if you have it too low, you'll lose some sounds. Like not hearing the car 20 positions away from you.
If set too high, it will consume too much cpu or overflow the game engine and lead to issues.

256 should be fine but if 512 is "allowed" by the game engine, that's fine too.

Try 256 and see if the issues go away. You won't get "lower quality" sounds. You will simply get fewer sounds at the same time.

 

[racinjoe013]

It simply raises the maximum of simultaneously played sounds.
Now you could do an excel sheet and check if you need more than 256 simultaneous sounds or not.

I'm not sure what counts as "one sound" though. Is 1 engine = 1 sound or is your own car already 3 sounds or something...

RFactor2 had some slight bug a week ago and my sound channel setting got set to "1".
I had audio drop outs 3x per second when driving.
Set it back to the maximum, which is 64.

Basically, if you have it too low, you'll lose some sounds. Like not hearing the car 20 positions away from you.
If set too high, it will consume too much cpu or overflow the game engine and lead to issues.

256 should be fine but if 512 is "allowed" by the game engine, that's fine too.

Try 256 and see if the issues go away. You won't get "lower quality" sounds. You will simply get fewer sounds at the same time.

Thanks for the info. The problem i'm trying to solve is all of a sudden in AC the sound of the cars directly in front of me have gone almost silent. It's almost as if the 3D sound has reversed. Cars coming up behind me are louder than cars right in front of me. It's the strangest thing and literally came out of nowhere. One day it worked normal, next day backwards and I hadn't changed a thing or installed any kind of updates for drivers or Windows.

 

[RasmusP]

Thanks for the info. The problem i'm trying to solve is all of a sudden in AC the sound of the cars directly in front of me have gone almost silent. It's almost as if the 3D sound has reversed. Cars coming up behind me are louder than cars right in front of me. It's the strangest thing and literally came out of nowhere. One day it worked normal, next day backwards and I hadn't changed a thing or installed any kind of updates for drivers or Windows.

Cars volume level in front or back of you don't have any separate setting in AC.
However you can play around with the sound settings in the sound hud app.
Move the mouse to the right like for all hud apps and click on the speaker icon. It will show you different options like tyre volume, engine volume, opponents volume.

Only other possibility I can think of: are you using different cars now? Some mod cars won't have certain sounds.
To resolve issues or find them first, always only use official Kunos cars, no mods.