FPS Saving Sound Mod

[RvEFuSiOn]

Not necessarily. If the original wav file is at a certain quality and you compress it to an ogg file, then you are losing nothing. You would only loose sound quality if the wav file was at a high quality. I think that is what Fusion has done here.

 

Correct

[Pilotasso]

Well sorry to sound skeptical but you rarely get gains like this without sacrificing something. I just would like to know what that is. :)

[c0ff]

I guess your mod triggers some quantum effects if it manages to produce a measurable FPS difference.

[Mustang]

One thing springs to mind when i see this mod, and thats how the new sound engine in FC2.0 handles audio files.

 

I'd imagine this being of benefit in FC 1.12 or even DCS Black Shark as it is now with the crappy old sound engine, but in FC2.0 i would of thought it would make little difference, seeing as the workload is handed off onto a separate CPU thread.

 

Well, maybe it'll benefit the poor buggers out there on single core systems.....

[RvEFuSiOn]

Im on a dual core, and when multiple sounds play on my end like explosions etc etc all at once, it causes significant stuttering, this is true for many people ive spoken with who have multicore systems. So no it wont help the single core guys only. Further more it makes perfect logical sense, imagine your machine having to play a 200-500kb sound file multiple times per second, now imagine playing the same kind of sounds at 10-30kb at the same time per second. See the difference?

 

Peace

Edited May 1, 2010 by =RvE=FuSiOn

[Mustang]

Im on a dual core, and when multiple sounds play on my end like explosions etc etc all at once, it causes significant stuttering

 

Out of interest, what soundcard are you using?

[RvEFuSiOn]

SoundMax HD audio 5.1 onboard Sound card.

Edited May 1, 2010 by =RvE=FuSiOn

[Mustang]

SoundMax HD audio 5.1 onboard Sound card.

 

Rgrt, have you considered getting a dedicated PCI soundcard like an X-Fi Gamer or equivalent?

 

It's well known that onboard codec soundcards eat into CPU usage like crazy, it might explain some of the issues you have with playing .wav files in FC2.0.

 

I've been using an X-Fi for nearly a year now, it handles anything you throw at it, and i can vouch that i have zero sound stuttering/FPS loss with the default sounds in FC2.0 (and i bet others here can too) :)

 

Saying all this, your mod does seem to be beneficial for some, good work :thumbup:

[RvEFuSiOn]

Rgrt, have you considered getting a dedicated PCI soundcard like an X-Fi Gamer or equivalent?

 

It's well known that onboard codec soundcards eat into CPU usage like crazy, it might explain some of the issues you have with playing .wav files in FC2.0.

 

I've been using an X-Fi for nearly a year now, it handles anything you throw at it, and i can vouch that i have zero sound stuttering/FPS loss with the default sounds in FC2.0 (and i bet others here can too) :)

 

Saying all this, your mod does seem to be beneficial for some, good work :thumbup:

 

 

Like really dude.... Don't you think i already know that another sound card would help???

Do you think everyone out there has an extra sound card in their pc's? This was specifically made with that in mind.

Im just trying to understand what is the point of your post? Since both you and I know you are stating the obvious and Im failing to see the objectivity in your posting.

Furthermore my sound card works great for every game out there. It is an HD sound card.

Thanks really... but i dont need tech support no offense, i work in the IT field

 

Peace

[Ven]

I used to include soundblaster as requirement when I build systems but I realized it's waste of money. Yes they do save some CPU cycle but it's smarter to spend that $100 on getting better CPU or GPU. Performance you can gain from $100 sound card is nothing compared to what $100 extra can get you in CPU or GPU.

[Kuky]

Not necessarily. If the original wav file is at a certain quality and you compress it to an ogg file, then you are losing nothing. You would only loose sound quality if the wav file was at a high quality. I think that is what Fusion has done here.

 

Compression is always at the expense of quality :thumbup:

[RvEFuSiOn]

Compression is always at the expense of quality :thumbup:

Please tell me if you are able to notice sound quality difference in game.

Just curious to see what you will say ;-)

[Mustang]

Like really dude.... Don't you think i already know that another sound card would help???

Do you think everyone out there has an extra sound card in their pc's? This was specifically made with that in mind.

Im just trying to understand what is the point of your post? Since both you and I know you are stating the obvious and Im failing to see the objectivity in your posting.

Furthermore my sound card works great for every game out there. It is an HD sound card.

Thanks really... but i dont need tech support no offense, i work in the IT field

 

Peace

 

Hey, no need to bite my head off, if you're reading any malice in my post then you're wrong :)

 

As you say, peace :)

Edited May 1, 2010 by Mustang

[Mustang]

I used to include soundblaster as requirement when I build systems but I realized it's waste of money. Yes they do save some CPU cycle but it's smarter to spend that $100 on getting better CPU or GPU. Performance you can gain from $100 sound card is nothing compared to what $100 extra can get you in CPU or GPU.

 

Well, i got my card for £15 off EBay, so i consider it money well spent :)

[Ven]

Please tell me if you are able to notice sound quality difference in game.

Just curious to see what you will say ;-)

 

I tested this quite a bit now and I certainly don't notice the loss in quality. And although this doesn't seem to increase FPS, it did eliminate the micro stutters I was getting. Some times when I zoom way in and then back out, I used to get stutters and static noise sound. It seems to be gone now. Very nice!

 

And by the way, compression doesn't "ALWAYS" sacrifice quality. There are such thing as lossless compression which keeps the quality yet reduces size.

Edited May 1, 2010 by Ven

[A.S]

those who clap their hand over their heads saying "oooh nooo i want more quality (what ironic expression in this environment anyways btw)" ...have you actually tried his mod?

 

the sound quality difference is almost insignificant, but the proccessing improvement is....

 

PS: @kuky: compression is always combined with loss of quality etc etc ...then you dont know how compression works ..sorry ...

[RvEFuSiOn]

I tested this quite a bit now and I certainly don't notice the loss in quality. And although this doesn't seem to increase FPS, it did eliminate the micro stutters I was getting. Some times when I zoom way in and then back out, I used to get stutters and static noise sound. It seems to be gone now. Very nice!

 

And by the way, compression doesn't "ALWAYS" sacrifice quality. There are such thing as lossless compression which keeps the quality yet reduces size.

 

Awesome this was the response i was waiting to hear after 4 pages of useless nonsense!

Atleast it helped someone which im very happy to hear, thats all that matters.

Great! happy simming

[Kuky]

Yeah sure AS, you know everything :)

[Moa]

Compression is always at the expense of quality :thumbup:

 

Not true. Compression can be lossless, in which case the compression merely replaces repeated bit sequences with a replacement that has a shorter length. Sure mp3 etc are lossy, but that is not the only way that sound can be re-encoded. Choose a different codec and you get lossless compression - the best of both worlds.

 

Compression can cause a significant speed up because even if you use more CPU (or DSP time on your sounds card) this is often *insignificant* to the savings in more limited resources such as the hard disk transfer rate (significantly smaller files take less time to get from disk, which means your CPU/operating system doesn't idle doing IO waits while the file is being read, so you can actually improve CPU utilization). It also saves on memory bandwidth/contention. You want uncontended memory bandwidth since textures are moved between disk, RAM and your graphics card's texture memory.

 

The WAV format is the sound equivalent of the BMP format for graphics. A very simple format that ends up with huge size as it contains a lot of redundancy. Other formats (eg. PNG for graphics, JPG for photos, ogg codecs for sound) do a much better job and are either lossless or the loss is negligible. You should avoid WAV and BMP whenever other lossless formats are available to you.

Edited May 1, 2010 by Moa

[Kuky]

There I tried the mod and can say this... I don't notice any difference in sound in the mission I flew but I saw no FPS improvement at all either... then again to really know if and by how much there is loss in quality it's not enough to just try and feel the difference as you can't tell this way... you'd need some professional software to sample the sounds and cross check side by side the two signals (for noise, frequencies and their amplitude etc)

 

On the side note, did you notice some of the original ogg files are less size to your new ones?

[A.S]

Is that an irritated Fly in your singature?

[Kuky]

it's a fruit fly I guess

[RvEFuSiOn]

There I tried the mod and can say this... I don't notice any difference in sound in the mission I flew but I saw no FPS improvement at all either... then again to really know if and by how much there is loss in quality it's not enough to just try and feel the difference as you can't tell this way... you'd need some professional software to sample the sounds and cross check side by side the two signals (for noise, frequencies and their amplitude etc)

 

On the side note, did you notice some of the original ogg files are less size to your new ones?

 

 

Yes those were backup old .ogg files redundant and left over from fc1.1 with very low sound quality and so i removed them and replaced them with the new .wav to .ogg files with the stock sound quality.

You will notice less stuttering with this modification

example. fire some rounds with an f15c in to the water and see your fps drop. This is because you are firing a M61 Vulcan, which fires at 6000rpm per minute. That's 100 Shells per second, and so your pc has to play your Explodewater sound every time a shell is fired and hits the water or ground! Do the math

IF you have a smaller file size with better compression less cpu usage = less stuttering. MOA explained this perfectly in his post above.

 

PS. I don't know if we have the M61A1 vulcan or the M61A2 Vulcan in lockon however the difference is marginal. The A1 fires at 6000prm and the A2 at 6600 RPM. As per real technical specification all advanced fighter aircraft after 1988 were retrofitted with the M61A2 so the F-15 in FC2 should have the A2. Either way this is not to diverge from the post, but just a clarification on how many rounds are spit out and what effect the sounds have on the system overall.

Peace

Edited May 1, 2010 by =RvE=FuSiOn

[A.S]

not to forget the clusterbomb explosions played in 3D and loops ...

[RvEFuSiOn]

not to forget the clusterbomb explosions played in 3D and loops ...

Amen!

 

EDIT: Let me make it very clear to Everyone, I have clearly said in my first post also, that this mod SAVES FPS! by reducing stutters, not INCREASE FPS, hence i'd suggest the people wanting an FPS increase from this mod should LEARN TO READ! and understand what has been written instead of typing nonsense for the heck of it and insinuating various things.

 

Peace

Edited May 1, 2010 by =RvE=FuSiOn