3D Sound Is Terrible In Conversation But 2D Sound Doesn't Work -- What's Going On?

Balkoth

If I move the slider all the way to the 2D side it just lowers the volume on everything. The voices even at 100% volume (versus 40% before) are insanely quiet. Can't even hear the words for spell casting.

And I don't like the 3D sound being based on the camera rather than my character. Rotating the camera during a conversation shouldn't make it sound like the speaker is circling around me.

Here's a video showing the problems.

Edit: this is how Diamond Edition sounds.

Balkoth

Am I missing something here? And/or is there to revert versions for now?

@niv Any ideas?

Balkoth

Added a second video showing how Diamond Edition sounds.

The current EE has NPCs on the RIGHT side of the screen sound like they're coming out of the LEFT ear.

DrHappyAngry

I've had a ticket open here for awhile
https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/34564#change-211628

It may help if you comment there with your specs, particularly the sound setup. For me I get a lot of voice coming from the rear speakers.

Balkoth

Which specs were you thinking of exactly? I'm just using Logitech G230 headphones in terms of output.

Balkoth

Also, for the record, my sound works perfectly in other games like Overwatch where directional sound is exceptionally important.

numos

I'm having the exact same problem.

My laptop has a Realtek HD sound card and 3D sound works fine in any other game. The fact that 3D sound depends heavily on camera positioning is bizarre. I've tried increasing the 2D sound bias on the slider, but it just seems to lower the volume on the "3D" sound. I was hoping I could disable the feature entirely. It really has no place in this game.

DrHappyAngry

Balkoth said:

Which specs were you thinking of exactly? I'm just using Logitech G230 headphones in terms of output.

The actual sound out put device, probably built into your motherboard, but could be an add in card or USB device. Some head phones do actually function as USB sound cards, so if it's one of those, you should mention the exact model. Replying in the ticket is probably better for Beamdog to track it, than putting it in this thread. For instance my sound card is an Asus Xonar DX. Ya, I'm weird and have an add in PCI-E sound card. The cards Linux support is great, so I've kept using it. It looks like those head phones use a 3.5mm jack, so it's whatever you plug them into that they need to know about. If it's a specific model of computer you can probably look it up with a quick google search "sound card computer model".

Balkoth

DrHappyAngry said:

The actual sound out put device, probably built into your motherboard, but could be an add in card or USB device.

Realtek High Definition Audio. I'm not sure this is really the issue you described though -- technically speaking I'm not sure the audio is coming from the WRONG side...the point is that it shouldn't be coming from ANY side during a conversation.

I guess I'm not feeling optimistic about the ticket system given how this was never fixed (or even acknowledged).

Dark_Ansem

Could the problem depend on the fact that audio was recorded as 3d stereo back then, despite the engine CLEARLY saying it has to be in 2d mono?

Balkoth

@JuliusBorisov Given that this was moved to "Technical Support," does that mean I'm one of very few people having this issue and most people have the same behavior as before?

@Dark_Ansem Don't know.

Sylvus_Moonbow

Yeah I will see a fountain on the left side of my character but the fountain placed sound plays in the right side of my headphone and lots of other sounds do this too with static sound like a campfire or a torch or anything like that placed that makes sound this needs to be fixed in the next patch.

Balkoth

So...does anyone NOT have this behavior? I'm trying to figure out if this is a bug or a problem on my end.

Dark_Ansem

Balkoth said:

So...does anyone NOT have this behavior? I'm trying to figure out if this is a bug or a problem on my end.

I have it intermittently - I cannot determine, however, if it's just in the toolset or also in-game

JuliusBorisov

Balkoth said:

@JuliusBorisov Given that this was moved to "Technical Support," does that mean I'm one of very few people having this issue and most people have the same behavior as before?

Not sure whether others have this issue or not, but the transfer of this thread to Technical Support happened because the topic is about something that is not working (according to the OP).

Tathkar

Sylvus_Moonbow said:

Yeah I will see a fountain on the left side of my character but the fountain placed sound plays in the right side of my headphone and lots of other sounds do this too with static sound like a campfire or a torch or anything like that placed that makes sound this needs to be fixed in the next patch.

I would like to add my concern about this. I too suffer from the issues mentioned here.

- Sounds playing through wrong side of headset.
- Poor volume levels.

Balkoth

JuliusBorisov said:

Not sure whether others have this issue or not, but the transfer of this thread to Technical Support happened because the topic is about something that is not working (according to the OP).

@JuliusBorisov

I am the OP. If something isn't working because of something I need to adjust on my end, then technical support makes sense. But if it's broken for EVERYONE and it's a bug that we can't do anything about, moving it to technical support doesn't help. Or it might be the new intended behavior and I just don't like it. Hence why the distinction is important and why I posted it in a forum with more visibility.

VivienneL

I noticed this issue too.
Edit: It's noticeable while using headphones and may not seem so obvious while the speakers are turned on.

Dark_Ansem

I'll test that and get back at you.

JuliusBorisov

"Technical Support" is for discussing bugs and other issues, no matter if it's something that needs to be adjusted by users or fixed by developers. But bugs should be reported on support.baldursgate.com according to the instruction in the stickied post of this category.

Balkoth

@JuliusBorisov So how would I even know if this is a bug or the new intended behavior?

Also, I previously posted a different bug a month ago. That one was a clear bug that's easily reproducible. So far it hasn't even been acknowledged as a bug, let alone been worked on.

JuliusBorisov

Balkoth said:

@JuliusBorisov So how would I even know if this is a bug or the new intended behavior?

Also, I previously posted a different bug a month ago. That one was a clear bug that's easily reproducible. So far it hasn't even been acknowledged as a bug, let alone been worked on.

The only people who can define that are the team who go through Redmine tickets. We've had a few issues when tickets where closed and Trello cards were created as a result of their judgement.

As for "hasn't even been acknowledged as a bug, let alone been worked on" - don't worry, they'll get to it.

BelgarathMTH

Balkoth said:

@JuliusBorisov Given that this was moved to "Technical Support," does that mean I'm one of very few people having this issue and most people have the same behavior as before?

@Dark_Ansem Don't know.

@Balkoth , I started a game last night and immediately noticed that the sound for voiceover audio files was coming out the right speaker only. (I use headphones.)

All I got so far from Beamdog is "File a ticket."

I can't believe more people aren't complaining about this.

It's enough to damage Beamdog's quality reputation pretty seriously, I think.

Dark_Ansem

BelgarathMTH said:

Balkoth said:

@JuliusBorisov Given that this was moved to "Technical Support," does that mean I'm one of very few people having this issue and most people have the same behavior as before?

@Dark_Ansem Don't know.

@Balkoth , I started a game last night and immediately noticed that the sound for voiceover audio files was coming out the right speaker only. (I use headphones.)

All I got so far from Beamdog is "File a ticket."

I can't believe more people aren't complaining about this.

It's enough to damage Beamdog's quality reputation pretty seriously, I think.

A problem that apparently not everyone is having can damage reputation?

BelgarathMTH

Tathkar said:

Sylvus_Moonbow said:

Yeah I will see a fountain on the left side of my character but the fountain placed sound plays in the right side of my headphone and lots of other sounds do this too with static sound like a campfire or a torch or anything like that placed that makes sound this needs to be fixed in the next patch.

I would like to add my concern about this. I too suffer from the issues mentioned here.

- Sounds playing through wrong side of headset.
- Poor volume levels.

This, times 10. I wish I could agree more than once, to indicate very strong agreement.

Sycraft

So the problem is in part caused by Creative Labs' terrible software OpenAL library. The default OpenAL library they provide does a garbage job with software mixing, only working well if you have CL hardware with hardware OAL support. Thus something you can do to help is replace it with a better one. Go get OpenAL Soft, it is a much better (and free) software OpenAL implementation. Then what you need to do is extract the soft_oal.dll from the bin/Win64 directory in the archive to the bin/win32 directory for the game. I know, it seems confusing but they put the 64-bit version of the game in a directory called "win32". Rename the existing openal32.dll to something else like openal32.bak and then rename soft_oal.dll to openal32.dll. Now NWN:EE will use OpenAL Soft for its mixing, which helps a lot. It doesn't fix the issues completely, the audio still doesn't have great positioning and level balance, but it makes it a lot better and will actually use surround speakers, if you have them.

Symphony

@Sycraft 8193.13 comes with a new OpenAL Soft .dll instead of the 32 bit version that was in there before (and unused, since the game is now 64 bit). This has shown a marked improvement for some players, though, a lot of the issues discussed here are quite a bit old now and not as prevalent.

Additionally, the new OpenAL soft DLL is only part of the current Windows install, and as I am on a Mac, I have experimented with the MacOS OpenAL soft distributions, but not given them much weight since they did not address some of my funny issues with the game.

I don't understand why people have such a hard time with 3d/2d bias, but I don't think Bioware labelled these sliders very well, and like some of NWN's other accomodations for the days when everyone had a CRT, the slider serves a lot less purpose than it did then. It's essential task is to turn up "3d" and down "2d", or turn down "3d" and up "2d" sounds so that they are of comparable volumes. This obviously is "earballed", since you won't even hear the same recording coming from both "2d" and "3d" source, and any individual recording has it's own volume at any given instant anyways.

A "2d" sound is a pre-mixed stereo recording of something like inventory armor clanks or a narrator speaking, or the wind in the area blowing. A "3d" sound is a MONO recording placed in an XYZ location in the current game scene, whose location is translated into "positional sound" during the game's stereo mixdown. That is to say that running passed a fire on your right should allow you to hear a fire get louder and then quieter in the right headphone only.

For whatever reason anytime people start to play with this balance to fix a different issue (like the music being far louder than the sound effects, or a builder's sound effects not being loud enough, or a tileset never having been giving footstep sounds, or a custom race breaking Bioware's original incantation voice effects) they move it all of the way to one side or the other, which of course mutes one of the two above categories entirely. Then they say that it made things worse, which is correct.