Audio effect issues with tall layouts

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  • So I added sound effects to the 'Sounds' folder. Each time an object is spawned in my game, and that can happen up to every 0.1 seconds, the corresponding sound is played.

    I read in another topic Chrome is 'to blame' for the crackly sound effect that you get as the sounds 'stack'. Or am I using the sound effects wrong? I use the 'Play at object' action, however changing it to a simple 'Play' action doesn't seem to make any difference.

    Anyway, another problem I encounter is that when I play looping audio at a specific object location in a layout, the sound is already hearable 3500 pixels at the bottom of the layout. It's a scrolling level, you go upwards, so about 4000 pixels long. The sound object should be hearable only when you're close to the object positioned at the very top of the layout! How can I control its 'range'?

    Also, for some reason it seems that as I get closer to the top of the layout, where the viewport is (which is about 1/4th of the level height) the non-looping audio effects gets louder and louder as I get closer to the top of the layout. I don't understand why its like that.

    Any ideas?

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  • AFAIK positional audio implementation in chromium has a number of issues that pretty much, but not entirely, break it. A year or so ago I was involved in a Chromium issue tracker and uploaded a simple javascript example showing the issues but to my knowledge nothing has been fixed.

    That said, if you are rapidly playing a bunch of sounds every 0.1 seconds, it is highly likely that you are hearing digital clipping. The sum of multiple sounds playing over the top of each other is exceeding 0dBFS and causing audio artifacts.

    You can try reducing the volume of your samples to make sure they are not near 0dB and making sure the length of each sample to be played rapidly is shorter than the period before the next sample will be played.

    Construct has no Master Limiter effect that you can run all sounds through to prevent clipping, so you need to manage your levels carefully

  • Thanks for your reply.

    I wonder why they don't fix it? They have all that money and resources! Such a shame, Chrome is by far the most popular browser.

    Anyway that's a good suggestion; I will try to make my audio effects as short as possible.

    I'm not really experienced with audio in C3, or in general. I am able to make basic changes to files though in an audio program.

    Had to Google the 0dBFS thing, still don't quite understand it, but I'm guessing it's about a maximum 'allowable' pitch in sound?

    Does Mozilla Firefox have any issues with audio that you know of? I think that I'll just go ahead and test my games with that browser from now on. We need a reliable benchmark!

  • I believe positional audio works correctly in Firefox, at least it did last I checked. dBFS (decibel Full Scale) is the unit used to measure the volume of digital audio.

    In most circumstances, digital audio cannot exceed 0dBFS without causing the distortion you hear. When you play a sound in C3 the default playback volume is 0dB, which is the maximum. You can lower the volume of the sound by using a negative number between -99 and 0.

    dBFS is a logarithmic scale so keep in mind that -6dBFS represents approximately half the volume of 0dBFS.

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