Idea about sound / channel management
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Hi guys,
I am sure this idea is not really new, but thinking about all the different sounds and the nicely done volume management in BMS 4.33…
Wouldn’t it by nice to be able to support multiple output channels, so to be able to separate the sound output?
What I am thinking of is that “ambient sounds” could be fed to the normal speaker output (i.e. 3,5mm stereo jack) while “headset sounds” (like radio chatter, ivc, betty, avionics) could be fed to a USB connected headset.
One could then use his room speakers together with the headset. Without having to have the headset stuff in the room speakers or engine and ambient sounds coming out of the headset…But what about the technical side of this? Unless there are multiple sound devices (sound cards), I wouldn’t know how to separate the playback to different outputs. The only way I could think of would be 5.1 output, hereby sacrificing a channel by having an option to use the center channel exclusively for headset sounds (hereby removing those from all other channels). But even then the problem remains how to make the headset play the center channel only, while the room speakers play the others (without having to hassle with some strange cable connections)…
Could a USB headset possibly be recognized as a separate sound device, so that within BMS one simply could assign which sound will by played by which sound device, much similar to the axis assignments in the controller setup?
So from a development / technical side… what do you think?
Greets!
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Could a USB headset possibly be recognized as a separate sound device, so that within BMS one simply could assign which sound will by played by which sound device, much similar to the axis assignments in the controller setup?
This is already the case with at least my USB headset. Although you set it up through Windows and not through BMS.
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This is already the case with at least my USB headset. Although you set it up through Windows and not through BMS.
To clarify, you get betty through your headset, but ambient noises like engine sound and weapons release through speakers?
I am only able to get IVC in my headset.
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Hey guys!
Forgive me the bump. But with the BMS team currently negotiating, I thought it may be a good time to discuss nice, little ideas
Thanks Blu3wolf, you got my point.
I understand with the IVC client you can select one of the installed sound devices for output, which might be a connected usb headset.I still like to know what you guys think about the idea of having this possibility not only on a game-global level within BMS, but individual for the various sound elements in the in-game setup?
Not meant as “demand”, just an idea
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I was already thinking of buying a small audio mixer (4 to 6 channels) to do this sort of thing…if BMS won’t do sound with as much control as I’d like. I have a home recording studio, and I’ll start any experiments there…
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Think it’s pretty safe to assume that many (maybe even most) people use onboard sound card, and in most cases it’s Realtek. It allows to set up front panel and the rear connectors to essentially act like separate sound devices. Separate PCI sound cards probably offer similar features too, but I’m not familiar with them. As far as I know, only IVC allows to select input/output sound device, and BMS uses the system default one for all sounds.
Also, such setup is quite often used in MS FSX community, as it natively allows to select separate sound devices, one for ATC/online chatter and another for engines, cockpit and such.
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If time and money don’t matter, anything is possible in software. Money isn’t a factor for BMS work…time however, well that’s another story. I did the IVC work to split out audio devices and I have to say that I was horrified by what I learned about sound device management under Windows, not having messed with it before. Compared to older Win7 generation newer versions seem to have some very gothic and unhelpful design changes which make some “obvious” things you’d want to do with sound devices really quite hard in coding terms. I suppose all of that is to say: the idea has been talked about…anyone got a spare tuit??
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I would volunteer to try, but realistically my time is already split between work and familiy. So as of now that would be to no avail.
Neither I am into the falcon sound system nor into windows device management….However, from a developers point of view it sounds like an interesting topic. Maybe at some point some dev finds it interesting enough to spend some time on it.
I agree that it is probably lot’s of work from reworking the sound engine over the in-game audio setup ui up to saving and loading the settings.
Does the benefit justify this effort? I really don’t know. If someone tries it, probably just for the fun of it. But isn’t this always the case?From a users point of view it seems to be quite common to have multiple sound devices available, be it (onboard-) soundcards with usb headset or different connectors acting as (virtual) individual sound devices. So it certainly is invitable being able to use these within the application.
Thanx for your opinion.
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Perhaps this might work…
Nice find, thanks for digging that out!
Yeah, as I suggested in my original post: If the various sounds are played on different channels (even while within a single audio device), one could try to feed these audio channels to separate amplifiers/speakers/headphones.
But that means a bit of tinkering and cable clutter most likely resulting in a connection variant only suitable for Falcon (if any).
For enjoying hi quality audio in any other application, one would have to restore the default connections between soundcard and amplifier/speakers.So yes, if in-cockpit sounds and ambient sounds are channel-separated already, then this is a possible workaround for those that really want to separate them. Of course!
But not quite an equally comfortable substitute for this use-multiple-sounddevices-ingame idea.
Btw. as Dee-Jay (in this linked thread) promised to kiss butt for a feature like that, I take it there seems to be quite some interest for it. Maybe a coder with a bit too much sparetime jumps in on THAT offer!