Better engine sounds Copa de Marcas?

[Bram Hengeveld]

Overall I am very happy with the sounds and quality of the various engines in Automobilista but one car class really annoys me and that is the Copa de Marcas. It misses that typical touring car sound and raw noises of the transmission and gearbox that makes tintop racing so popular to watch and hear.

I know it will be quite a task to replace or replicate perfect sounds but surely something can be done to make it sound closer to the real thing either by the devs or the community?

 

[ouvert]

seems pretty close to me ... whish that other sims had 50% quality of AMS sounds (well with R3E exception obviously)

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

In that video the sounds are pretty close but the sounds from the cockpit in video 1 are much more "mechanical".

Maybe it has to do with the position where the sounds have been recorded. Was it in the cockpit as well?

 

[Will Mazeo]

The sounds in the real life cars aren't more mechanical, they just have a poor microphone.

 

[ouvert]

videos from cockpit with some Gopro like camera (microphone) are IMHO not really good for comparison .. sure they give you general idea about the engine sound but they will probably have missing/flatened low,distorted high frequencies and pushed middles that makes it sounds more mechanical, raw, resonating ..
Just try to record your voice or music or anything with GoPro, than with pro or better microphone and you`ll se how big difference there is

 

[Heitor Facuri Cicoti]

But regardless of the mechanical part of the sound and of it being pretty close, there's that higher annoying sound, which is very present on downshifts. You can actually hear them on the real car, but it is more subtle.

Of course there are always some differences between real and virtual. There will be always an error, but in this case (I think) it would be better to miss by under instead of over with regards of that annoying part.

Edit: I'm referring to Marcas only.

 

[P*Funk]

I dunno, the crappy mic/camera argument is trotted out anytime people discuss sounds. Lets be honest about it. No sim ever really captures the full range of sounds coming out of a car and all the peculiarities. It'll maybe be pretty close but there's always some grunt, some whine, some crunch or whatever it may be that isn't captured and that's because real sounds, even on crummy sound hardware, has so much more character and dynamism than things that are looped and synthesized by game engines.

R3E shows us that its very possible to push the limits further but at the same time it also reminds us that sound modeling is easily as complex as any other thing like graphics and most sims and gaming in general lacks a lot of focus on making it quite as tasty as the graphics or physics are these days.

its not to denigrate the work Reiza does (I think their sounds are far more engaging and immersing than most sims out there) but it is to defend the fair observation that yes there are sounds missing. Reiza at least tends to get transmission whine while for some reason either its like AC and the GT-R sounds nothing like the real one or its like iRacing and apparently every car regardless of make and model and series has the same friggin' transmission.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

 

[ouvert]

I dunno, the crappy mic/camera argument is trotted out anytime people discuss sounds. Lets be honest about it. No sim ever really captures the full range of sounds coming out of a car and all the peculiarities. It'll maybe be pretty close but there's always some grunt, some whine, some crunch or whatever it may be that isn't captured and that's because real sounds, even on crummy sound hardware, has so much more character and dynamism than things that are looped and synthesized by game engines.

well cause it is valid argument .. I keen to believe that profesional recording of engine with better microphones located on places where it makes sense gives us better representation than consumer actioncamera facing whatever direction ... sure ingame sound will never be perfect for reasons you stated .

 

[ouvert]

So how M3 GTR sounds?

 

[P*Funk]

I think its clear for one that the middle video likely features a different transmission. It doesn't matter how crap your recording is the absence of the transmission whine says we're dealing with effectively a different car in terms of what is making noise. Not so much an issue with spec or nearly spec series that will always feature high pitched racing transmissions.

Even so, when you hear varied sound quality you will always hear some of the same sounds that are often missing. But you've picked a very biased comparison. Instead if you look at the various onboards from Stock Car Brasil and compare it to the Reiza version regardless of the sound quality it tends to feel like the same as what we get. Most of their cars are pretty good on comparison.

A better option for comparison though is a single series, a single spec.

 

[ouvert]

ok .. I was just proving point (that is why I choose so extreme examples) but if you wanna same car recorded with different cameras or perhaps even with the same camera, here yu go:

I`m not saying ingame is perfect, just saying YT could be misleading .. some nuances in sound that you`ll hear on video might not be noticable in real life, some frequences could be distorted to extend they don`t sound like real anymore, etc ... I always like high pitched tranny whine, I was told by people who were in those cars you don`t hear it that way .. all I`m saying is that video Bram posted (and I like that sound more than that in game) might not give us good representation of how those cars sound ...

 

[P*Funk]

Yea and in those two videos despite the different sound quality I hear basically the same stuff just at different volumes. You can hear the transmission whine in both, you can hear the engine note in both, etc.

Using one video is of course a bad idea but I think any sensible person can listen to a variety of onboards to determine what the sound characteristics of a car are and whether the ones in the game capture it.

You're saying the variation in sounds in onboards is too unreliable to draw conclusions from but I think its not the case. I think its pretty easy to draw conclusions entirely by looking at various ones and listening to the common factors across wildly different sound quality. That if anything is a smoking gun for a sound - that its always there regardless of equipment.

 

[ouvert]

Well that is the point ... Bram likes that mechanical sound in video ... my 1st video is more mechanical than the 2nd one just by having more mid frequencies and wider range or whatever .. but is it that mechanical or is it just distortion or character of recording device

You need to keep in mind that devs didn`t based ingame sounds on game sounds but on much much better sounds recording of real car .. what they reproduced could be off, but YT video is not good enough source to tell .. original recordings are ...

I`ve never sit in most of cars we have in sims so I don`t really wanna argue about it .. just throwing in my opinion .. with respect to yours

 

[nounoubleu]

In my past working life I had chance to drive several (low power) racing cars and past some hours in right seat of high end cars (WRC, GT2, etc..).
Even if RRE remains the ref, onboard sounds in AMS are a very good surprise.
Global atmosphere is really well rended. In racing cars, you don't listen to engine only but many other sounds. A cockpit is like a drum and for instance you always hear gravel (or any foreign element) hitting wheel housing.
Concerning transmission sound, I agree it could be bit more present but for me one thing is missing, one thing I appreciated in RRE: this small vibration in the wheel when you shift up/down.
To be honest I don't remember whether such vibration is realistic but it really help in immersion feeling.
Implement such device in AMS would be wonderful.

 

[xnorb]

Yorkie had the oportunity to drive a Ginetta G40 around Silverstone, so he had the direct comparison and also talks about it:
Cameras mounted to the car will always pick up all the vibrations way louder than what you actually hear, which will distort the overall sound experience (grunt and whine that seems to be missing in audio reproduction) on the other hand a friend of mine said that the loud drivetrain whine is rarely replicated in sims at all.

In the end: Just turn that volume knob a little bit more to the right than you feel comfortable with and you end up in the zone 100% (I am not accountable for any damage to your hearing if you follow this advice - everthing on your own risk *g*)