Is there a way to make PBAoE's less loud?

[Stormwalker]

For the longest time in CoH, I was never able to stay in a team more than about an hour, and I knew it was a problem with volume and sound sensitivity issues that I have, but I never realized exactly why it was until I was soloing some missions at +2/x5 on my Claw/SR scrapper and noticed that Spin was obnoxiously louder than all of my other powers anytime I hit more than three targets with it.  After doing some more testing with other characters, I've noticed this seems to be the case for ALL PBAoE powers (or at least, all the ones I was able to test).  It's like it's playing the hit sound for every target all at once, causing the volume to be multiplied as many times over as the number of targets you hit... which is way too much and gives me a headache after 10 or 15 minutes of playing high-spawn missions.  It's exasperating and takes away from the fun of some of my favorite characters.

 

Is there any way, via client modification or whatever, to fix this?  I've turned my volume down to 15%; if I turn it down much lower than that, the other sounds in the game get way too quiet... but even at 15%, that sudden wham of a PBAoE hitting 10 targets is just way too much.

 

If not, I may have to start doing builds that just don't have any PBAoE's, but that seriously cuts into the performance of a lot of sets!

[Braddack]

Intersting Observation,

[Techwright]

Sounds like an opportunity for those who work with audio mods for the COH Modder.

[Snarky]

Yes.  You will need to search around in a few places but sooner or later you probably will find one of the many volume sliders built into the software/hardware for your setup.

[Stormwalker]

4 hours ago, Snarky said:

Yes.  You will need to search around in a few places but sooner or later you probably will find one of the many volume sliders built into the software/hardware for your setup.

 

Did you actually read the post?  I've already set my sound effects volume down to 15%.  It doesn't solve the problem, because the problem isn't one of overall volume, it's that PBAoE's that hit multiple targets are several times louder than the sounds of my other powers.

[ForeverLaxx]

1 minute ago, Stormwalker said:

 

Did you actually read the post?  I've already set my sound effects volume down to 15%.  It doesn't solve the problem, because the problem isn't one of overall volume, it's that PBAoE's that hit multiple targets are several times louder than the sounds of my other powers.

That's because the audio for landing a hit plays from every enemy that's hit by the attack. The more enemies that the AoE hits, the louder it becomes. I don't think there's a way to fix that in-game, but you might able to edit the sound files and replace the sound with something less annoying than the default one. Beyond that, it comes down to whether the devs can code in something that mutes target hit audio if "too many" targets are hit at once.

[Stormwalker]

4 minutes ago, ForeverLaxx said:

That's because the audio for landing a hit plays from every enemy that's hit by the attack. The more enemies that the AoE hits, the louder it becomes. I don't think there's a way to fix that in-game, but you might able to edit the sound files and replace the sound with something less annoying than the default one. Beyond that, it comes down to whether the devs can code in something that mutes target hit audio if "too many" targets are hit at once.

 

That's what I was afraid of.

 

Right now I'm playing around with the lightsaber sound mod for dual blades, which helps some on my DB scrapper, because the hit sound is less "crunchy", so even though it's still a lot louder when I hit multiple targets, it doesn't seem to set off my sound sensitivity the same way.  Doesn't help me with other sets, though.

 

I can solve the problem (at the cost of offensive performance) while soloing by simply not taking PBAoE powers, of course, but that doesn't help with the team problem.

[Snarky]

1 hour ago, Stormwalker said:

 

Did you actually read the post?  I've already set my sound effects volume down to 15%.  It doesn't solve the problem, because the problem isn't one of overall volume, it's that PBAoE's that hit multiple targets are several times louder than the sounds of my other powers.

Did YOU read my name....?

[Oubliette_Red]

On 5/29/2022 at 1:06 AM, Stormwalker said:

For the longest time in CoH, I was never able to stay in a team more than about an hour, and I knew it was a problem with volume and sound sensitivity issues that I have, but I never realized exactly why it was until I was soloing some missions at +2/x5 on my Claw/SR scrapper and noticed that Spin was obnoxiously louder than all of my other powers anytime I hit more than three targets with it.  After doing some more testing with other characters, I've noticed this seems to be the case for ALL PBAoE powers (or at least, all the ones I was able to test).  It's like it's playing the hit sound for every target all at once, causing the volume to be multiplied as many times over as the number of targets you hit... which is way too much and gives me a headache after 10 or 15 minutes of playing high-spawn missions.  It's exasperating and takes away from the fun of some of my favorite characters.

 

Is there any way, via client modification or whatever, to fix this?  I've turned my volume down to 15%; if I turn it down much lower than that, the other sounds in the game get way too quiet... but even at 15%, that sudden wham of a PBAoE hitting 10 targets is just way too much.

 

If not, I may have to start doing builds that just don't have any PBAoE's, but that seriously cuts into the performance of a lot of sets!

 

Yes... yes there is, although hunting down all the PBAoE's in the game may be a bit daunting.  You may want to narrow it down first to the biggest offenders of your ears, at least to start with.

 

[Outrider_01]

On 5/29/2022 at 11:42 AM, Snarky said:

Did YOU read my name....?

The Snark Knight Returns!  Coming to a forum post soon!

[EdgeOfDreams]

To actually answer the question: yes, it's possible, but it may take more effort than you're willing to put in. If you can find the specific audio file, you can edit it to reduce the volume or silence it. Check out this thread for full details: 

[Six-Six]

I think what the Snark-man was referring to is the Graphics/Audio tab in Options. You have sliders for Sound/FX, Music, and Voiceover. Other than that, there's no way to control individual sounds without popping the bonnie and getting your hands dirty.

But I concur that it is possible, and that it has been done. You may want to get hold of a fetching young virgin and offer a sacrifice for @Solarverse. He's done a buttload of SFX mods, most of them I use. One of them is making certain Elec toggles quieter, another one added the "twang" of bowstrings to Archery. He's even got a quick tutorial on how you can do it yourself if you're so inclined (and yes, it is a bit too much for li'l ole me). Do a search in the forums for sound mods. what you're looking for or a close alternative (lightsaber hum) may already exist

[JasperStone]

On 5/29/2022 at 3:41 PM, Krimson said:

In ancient Mesopotamian, Sunar.ki means "Less than helpful "...

 

I may or may not have made that up. 🤔 

STARES at word ......

🤔

*scrambles off to make an alt

[JasperStone]

Quick question on audio mods ...

 

Am I the only one to hear it, or can others hear it too?

[Apparition]

2 minutes ago, JasperStone said:

Quick question on audio mods ...

 

Am I the only one to hear it, or can others hear it too?

 

 

Yourself only, as it is entirely client side.

[Oubliette_Red]

 

1 hour ago, Apparition said:

1 hour ago, JasperStone said:

Quick question on audio mods ...

 

Am I the only one to hear it, or can others hear it too?

 

 

Yourself only, as it is entirely client side.

 

Which is quite entertaining when there are multiple Bots MM's running around and all I hear is a flock of rubber duckies when they are tromping around.

 

[Stormwalker]

On 6/2/2022 at 12:17 AM, Six-Six said:

I think what the Snark-man was referring to is the Graphics/Audio tab in Options. You have sliders for Sound/FX, Music, and Voiceover. Other than that, there's no way to control individual sounds without popping the bonnie and getting your hands dirty.

But I concur that it is possible, and that it has been done. You may want to get hold of a fetching young virgin and offer a sacrifice for @Solarverse. He's done a buttload of SFX mods, most of them I use. One of them is making certain Elec toggles quieter, another one added the "twang" of bowstrings to Archery. He's even got a quick tutorial on how you can do it yourself if you're so inclined (and yes, it is a bit too much for li'l ole me). Do a search in the forums for sound mods. what you're looking for or a close alternative (lightsaber hum) may already exist

 

As it happens, Solarverse's lightsaber fx mod helps when I am playing my DB or katana scrappers; even though the AoE's with multiple hits are still louder, the sound is not as sharp and thus doesn't set off my sound sensitivity nearly so much.  Sadly, it doesn't help me on my main (claws/sr), where Spin can be really brutal when hitting 10 enemies at once.  Oddly, Shockwave doesn't cause this problem even though it generally hits more targets than Spin does.  But then, it seems the hit sounds for Shockwave are staggered - the attack actually travels as a wave and the sound plays when it reaches each target, so you get a bunch of successive hits rather than one really loud one.  Also, it's hit sound is rather softer than Spin's to begin with.

 

Hmm.  Maybe I can just replace Spin's hit sound with Shockwave's hit sound, if I can figure out which files those are.  Might help.

 

I may just have to try to specifically find the Spin hit sound and see if I can do something about that.

 

As for the volume sliders, yes, the sound effects slider is the one that I have at 15% currently.  Which... reducing it to 15% is enough to solve the issue, but presents the problem of every other sound in the game being way too quiet (obviously) and thus kind of ruining the experience a bit.  Also makes it hard to hear glowies even after installing a sound mod to make them louder.

[Herotu]

Mods.