Give us better sounds - PLEASE !!

[archie_aileron]

When PD says it's due to a RAM limitation in the PS3 I believe them.

There are limitations, and if we have to compromise on something I'd want it to be the sound, not the graphics or physics.

 

[Tenacious D]

I want to know how Forza modelled sounds, because they sound absolutely awesome. The cars really do sound how they should.

No they don't. The non-racing cars with "stock" exhausts all sound upgraded. In fact, some of them like the RX-7 sound obnoxious. I was passed by an RX-7 while driving my own annoyingmobile in one race, and I decided to switch to it because its "generic" samples sounded much better to my ears. Well, I found out why the camera switch in replays takes so long, because the game dumped the generic samples for it and loaded the annoying ones.

I know that Forza is often heralded as the indisputable pinnacle of racing sounds, but not only are the stock exhaust samples more aggressive and distorted than they should be, the 360 only has room for a select few large high quality samples. So usually only your car has the "enhanced" samples, and all the other cars have generic ones. In fact, in replays you can frequently hear your car roaring over the entire pack, even in the distance. I don't think it's a bad method, but I prefer GT5's sound library because I don't agree that all the cars sound as limp as pencil sharpeners or whatever the trope of the week is. And because the sounds are consistent across the board, so that you don't have one car, your car, drowning out the rest of the field. This seems to be the minority opinion around here, but I have to contend that Forza's method isn't undeniably better. I would rather argue that PD's sound team do their job to the best of their ability and forget what other games are doing, because other devs have fewer cars to deal with, or as in the case of Forza, they short sheet every car but the car the camera is focused on, at least in the 360. On the XBone, the abundant ram might allow them to load a full suite of sounds for all cars, and the same for racers on PS4.

But in the case of PS3, that 256 megs of system ram has to do a lot of tasks, and each task requires its own space. I know I say this periodically, but too many people act like the PS3 has ram to burn like a PC, and neither it or the 360 do.

 

[Ranman20]

The Mazda 787B and Sauber C9 sound very accurate to me in Forza 4 to me. That's 2 cars out of all other amazing cars in Forza.

 

[mustafur]

2JZ in forza is also spot on.

 

[Chad Daddy]

I don't think many people get it. Forza's sounds are not that good either. It's exaggerated as you can't hear the transmission whine and many of the cars sound inaccurate to their real life counterparts, such as the Audi Quattro S1.

 

[Encyclopedia]

I'd say Forza's sounds are very good and for the most part accurate. But they're also spiced up, particularly the road cars. And that can be a bit off-putting to some.

 

[ironman44321]

I want to know how Forza modelled sounds, because they sound absolutely awesome. The cars really do sound how they should. I don't own an Xbox or Forza but a mate of mine brought both (FM4) over a few months back and though I didn't have much good to say about the physics I had to admit it was a great racing game and every single car sounded good, some of them sounded absolutely brutal.

That Mclaren F1 and the Lamborghini Diablo GT..



I do wish that PD would swallow their pride and abandon their method of creating sounds, because half of these cars don't even sound like cars let alone the cars that they are modelling, I obviously have no idea exactly how they do it but it just isn't great. I do notice though that low glugging sounding V8 cars are something they do better, but then I noticed most games do that V8 gurgle a lot better than other sounds, perhaps it is just easier to achieve. Games that struggle with other sounds (GT5, iRacing, Simraceway, Project Cars, to name some) have all managed to nail those oldschool brutal V8 sounds.

Why? They sound better but they aren't accurate to what the cars actually sound like. I'd rather PD find a way to make the sounds more accurate than have them just go from one inaccurate sample to another.

 

[lalaurentide]

The car sound ain't so bad when you play with the chase cam, they are even very good and I remember playing the Zonda R for the first time, damn! The problem is the vacuum cleaner sound of GT1 with the bumper and cockpit view, the roof cam used to be half and half before GT5 got a sound engine update and ruined everything now there's noise whining in the engine sound as if somewhere in the emulator there was too much gain and you can hear the noise floor, it wasn't like that at release, they've ruined it and it was exactly the same in the GT Academy demo.

But yeah, they need to trash their old PS1 PS2 electric razor, weed eater, vacuum cleaner, sound emulator and build a new one from the ground up.

 

[Bigbazz]

Why? They sound better but they aren't accurate to what the cars actually sound like. I'd rather PD find a way to make the sounds more accurate than have them just go from one inaccurate sample to another.

The Mclaren F1 in Forza sounds exactly like a Mclaren F1, no other game has managed that. I don't think GT5 comes even close with the majority of cars, where as the majority of cars I tried in FM4 did. The 90s Honda Civic was another example. And in terms of quality Forza actually sound like cars where as to be honest I don't think the same can be said for GT5, it has probably the worst car sounds in the business.

Given how much of an uproar is made over the GT5 sounds I don't think that is an unfair statement.

 

[PepeMickey]

Well, Ram limitarions and all, PD could still use better sound samples and that doesn't mean "higher quality samples" but ones that are actually convincing, accuracy is not that important right now, it's a matter of bad design. GT5 already had good graphics, an improvement was not necessary but they improve them yet again anyway.

New and more powerful hardware could still be limited if PD decided to blow it all on graphics, which they'll probably do since GT is nothing but a pretty face, a system seller. Stop excusing them, their inability to balance their resources is the problem here, not the hardware limitations.

 

[hyyperactive]

I don't think many people get it. Forza's sounds are not that good either. It's exaggerated as you can't hear the transmission whine and many of the cars sound inaccurate to their real life counterparts, such as the Audi Quattro S1.

When it comes to sounds real race cars are noisy and loud. Loud volume alone makes the cars sound different in our ear than if we hear the same sound from a recording at much lower volume. This is just physics. Louder sounds and more energy makes our ear respond to it and hear it differently.

Naturally we can not all wear earplugs and adjust our stereos to 11 every time we want to drive a car on ps3/pc/xbox so in forza the game has adjusted the sounds so they sound natural at much lower volume. We get the same exaggeration of loud cars without having to adjust our volumes through the roof.

Honestly I'm just amazed how any can say gt5 sounds do anything at all even as good as forza. There just is no comparison. The difference between forza's sounds are gt5 sounds is trillion times bigger than the difference in quality when you compare the norschleife in both versions. In gt5 it is extremely good, in forzas it is bad. While in gt5 the cars sound like food mixers in forza they sound very good and natural.

 

[ironman44321]

The Mclaren F1 in Forza sounds exactly like a Mclaren F1, no other game has managed that. I don't think GT5 comes even close with the majority of cars, where as the majority of cars I tried in FM4 did. The 90s Honda Civic was another example. And in terms of quality Forza actually sound like cars where as to be honest I don't think the same can be said for GT5, it has probably the worst car sounds in the business.

Given how much of an uproar is made over the GT5 sounds I don't think that is an unfair statement.

Uhh? are we hearing the same thing? The F1 like every other sound in Forza is way over distorted and in the case of the F1 is too high pitched. But if you have an example that shows that they sound the same I'd be happy to give it a listen. Other cars such as the 458 and Veyron are way off aswell. Like I said, Forza sounds better. But they are no more accurate.

 

[machschnel]

I don't think many people get it. Forza's sounds are not that good either. It's exaggerated as you can't hear the transmission whine and many of the cars sound inaccurate to their real life counterparts, such as the Audi Quattro S1.

Of course it's exaggerated, how else could you possibly try to evoke the same emotions that sitting a few feet behind a grumbling V8 does through (in most cases) TV Speakers?

 

[archie_aileron]

New and more powerful hardware could still be limited if PD decided to blow it all on graphics, which they'll probably do since GT is nothing but a pretty face, a system seller. Stop excusing them, their inability to balance their resources is the problem here, not the hardware limitations.

Saying they need to balance resources better is just pure speculation on you part. How do you know? Because you dislike the sounds?

Like with other aspects of the game I think many people here are focusing on details, missing the big picture, and have unrealistic expectations.

 

[R.S]

Saying they need to balance resources better is just pure speculation on you part. How do you know? Because you dislike the sounds?

Like with other aspects of the game I think many people here are focusing on details, missing the big picture, and have unrealistic expectations.

There is no excuse, several PS2 games have far better audio experience than GT5 and so far the GT6 examples have. (and decent graphics to go along with it)
Notice how I said "experience" not "quality". You can improve the experience without really touching at all the quality (ie kbps, sample rate or whatever we call it).

Everything about GT5 sounds are flat and lifeless, engine sounds are recorded from vacuums and gear shifts have no character whatsoever.
A tiny bit of wobble to a gearshift noise would make a world of difference to what we have now, all this is is a tiny bit of semi random number generation and warping the sound around randomly, which is nothing different to what GT already does. PD just don't bother as their sounds are too 'realistic' already.

A racing car is a powerful, violent and physical and mechanical object. GT does nothing to represent this.

vvvvv sound, pitch up, ppsssshhh, pitch down, pitch up... yep that'll do.
Sure you can't make it better? nope not enough RAM. What if you replace the vvvvv sound with a better one of equal size? NOPE better sound === 10x more RAM needed.

Strangely there are one or two cars in the game which go noticeably against the norm, but that's impossible right?

 

[Ranman20]

And another thing, when you're shifting up and down in Forza, it sounds realistic.

 

[RevoXeli]

I think PD uses old samples and just puts them in the "new" cars. To make new samples for 1000+ cars would take too much time for them. That's why the GT games always have those vacuum cleaner car sounds that sound pretty much the same in every game...

 

[sems4arsenal]

Didn't Jordan report slightly better sounds, so we should expect atleast a minor upgrade.

 

[Griffith500]

I think PD uses old samples and just puts them in the "new" cars. To make new samples for 1000+ cars would take too much time for them. That's why the GT games always have those vacuum cleaner car sounds that sound pretty much the same in every game...

I agree with the first part, but I think you may be mistaken in your justification. My take is that they've transferred production effort to the as-yet un-auditioned new method, and are neglecting their old sampling scheme entirely.

 

[MXH]

Didn't Jordan report slightly better sounds, so we should expect atleast a minor upgrade.

I believe it was only for a handful of cars. Let me find that piece from Jordan's write-up.

Edit:

I also noticed a slightly more gritty engine sound than what I have heard in previous builds. A Sony representative confirmed that several of the cars were equipped with updated audio. Although I’m not sure if I played with one of these cars, I could sense something had changed. For those optimistic audiophiles out there, don’t get too carried away by my comments – the game still sounds much the same – but you should take comfort in knowing that it was better.

 

[Griffith500]

Jordan said it was subtle. It's likely a mixing / effects difference, and the sampling is still the same - which we should expect, because the new sounds won't be in at launch (if ever).

 

[Magic Ayrton]

When PD says it's due to a RAM limitation in the PS3 I believe them.

There are limitations, and if we have to compromise on something I'd want it to be the sound, not the graphics or physics.

Why say they will be updated in a coming patch then if their are limitations?

 

[alonsof1fan91]

I just hope they allow us to turn gear whine off... Driving any FR in GT5 was a pain in the ass because of this.

 

[Magic Ayrton]

I just hope they allow us to turn gear whine off... Driving any FR in GT5 was a pain in the ass because of this.

Could not agree more

 

[Crowood]

I just hope they allow us to turn gear whine off... Driving any FR in GT5 was a pain in the ass because of this.

They also made it a bit quieter with one update, it was way worse when GT5 launched

Btw hope they get the vettes V8s right from the beginning this time:

C7.R
]

 

[Simon Tibbett]

Lol @ saying the sounds in Forza aren't accurate when speaking about sounds in GT5.

I'd rather a stock car sound modified than every car sound like a high revving vacuum cleaner.

Many cars in Forza were very close to the real deal, specifically when modified and race cars. The same cant be said for GT5.

Here's a toast to at least somewhat better sounds in GT6. I hope.

 

[wowbaggerBR]

They also made it a bit quieter with one update, it was way worse when GT5 launched

Btw hope they get the vettes V8s right from the beginning this time:

C7.R
]

If GT6 sounds like this, i'll play Daytona for hours, just to listen this car.

 

[Griffith500]

The C7R isn't in, though, is it? And the road car has a different exhaust configuration which means it wouldn't sound like that anyway. Any mods to make it sound like that are likely to give less usable power first, so probably wouldn't be popular in the real world!

But the new sounds aren't going to be in at launch, so if you start the game up come the 6th of December expecting a massive improvement, then you did it to yourself.

It would be nice, though, if the samples used were at least reasonably close to the right sound, certainly at least the same engine configuration would help.

 

[Tenacious D]

I'd say Forza's sounds are very good and for the most part accurate. But they're also spiced up, particularly the road cars. And that can be a bit off-putting to some.

I know this is a minority opinion around here, but this is what we're saying. I didn't do any muffler upgrades in Forza 4 for a long time, because overly beefy distorted stock tones became race car roars with a sport upgrade, and WAY distorted overly beefy roars with racing mufflers. I know that most gamers love sounds that go to 11, but I have to cringe at how overwhelmingly people will be happy with inaccurate samples as long as they stomp. And a lot of T10's samples are great and all, but some of them are just yuck.

Mostly I race street cars, and face it, street cars have mufflers that turn them into polite vacuum cleaners to meet sound regulations. While it may not seem like it, I'm with everyone who wants Gran Turismo to have super accurate sounds like Race Room. But not to go the NFS/Forza route of racket for the sake of it. I'll be content with the same old garbage disposal sounds until PD gets it right.

 

[TB]

If you want to discuss Forza insertnumberhere, please do so in the appropriate thread. Leave this one to GT6, if you please.