Did you know? GTR2 can use external engine sounds in the cockpit and your ears will thank you for it

[Shovas]

I was today years old when I found out you can change the cockpit engine sounds to use the external engine sounds which tend to be a bit punchier and more throaty with more exhaust notes.

Edit your PLR and change this setting:

Only External Engine Sounds="1" // Always use external engine sounds regardless of current view

It might get fatiguing after a while but I always appreciate rougher engine sounds.

Discovered this after reading a goldmine thread from 2006 about GTR2 Tips and Tricks here:

Print Page - GTR2 Tips & Tricks

 

[Jempy]

Interesting trick indeed ... I always prefered external sounds in GTR2 compared with the cockpit ones.
NB: but always remained lazy .... for checking all plr file lines !

Thanks Sho'

 

[The Iron Wolf]

Nice find, glad to see you digging
If your setup allows you (say if you have a dedicated room for your rig) the best experience I ever had is by using drummer headphones for team communication (Crew Chief of course) and GTR2 sounds via external speakers. Racing is done with earplugs, and that setup was something - I was able to feel engine sound with my body.

 

[Shovas]

Nice find, glad to see you digging
If your setup allows you (say if you have a dedicated room for your rig) the best experience I ever had is by using drummer headphones for team communication (Crew Chief of course) and GTR2 sounds via external speakers. Racing is done with earplugs, and that setup was something - I was able to feel engine sound with my body.

That's a really cool way to do it actually. You can configure Crew Chief to output to headphones and not speakers?

Funny, I used to crank up the sounds way too loudly and wear ear plugs to get a similar effect.

Might try that again with the external car sounds trick

 

[The Iron Wolf]

That's a really cool way to do it actually. You can configure Crew Chief to output to headphones and not speakers?

Funny, I used to crank up the sounds way too loudly and wear ear plugs to get a similar effect.

Might try that again with the external car sounds trick

Yes, you can redirect audio for any app anywhere you want using Win10 audio settings. CC also has so called nAudio output (search prefrences) which will allow selecting output devices, but many people have issues with it. The most compatible way is not use nAudio and use Win10 audio routing.

Yeah, I appreciate tiny realism details like that (the fact that you race with earplugs is the reason I am not adding any sounds to my plugin - it's not realistic, you won't hear a lot IRL).

 

[GTR233]

JFYI external sounds are MONO contrary to internal sounds which are STEREO so this is a downgrade for me.

 

[Jempy]

This explains the strange impression I had yesterday when testing the trick in the .plr
I prefered the sound for itself but felt a hint somewhere of which I could not guess the reason... but it was a very short test.

Knowing now the reason, I'll go backwards with this plr change .... stereo being finally better.
Good point @GTR233 ... but is it finally true even for all mods ?

 

[Shovas]

To be honest, there's a reason cockpit sounds are toned down, even beyond mimicking wearing ear plugs and a helmet and being inside a cockpit, it's fatiguing on the ears after a while. I fear that's why we've never gotten really great sounding engines in sims so far. It would sound great but people would complain And rightly so, even I went back to stock sounds as it was annoying after a while.

 

[MJQT]

This is a cool trick - will try it out, although it's too bad it's not stereo. Couldn't they possibly be made stereo by renaming the external sound files to the internal names and copying the relevant external settings to the internal parts of the AUD file?