[1693] Voices are too loud and over-compressed after this update
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Catboy Slim
i am definitely getting overstimulated faster after the new update. voices are a lot hotter and saturated now, it's almost the same effect as clipping but not quite. there is a notable reduction in dynamic range. previously i had my volume at 40, and now i have to turn it down to 30. and even then i still can't handle as many voices at once.
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Catboy Slim
This issue is now in the live build, not just the audio beta. the voice quality is actually painful, voices are way too loud and it's causing me to get overstimulated and irritable. i cannot enjoy socializing in VR anymore.
Plaster
testing this more, this audio behavior is the same on the open beta. There is some kind of "inner radius" for voices that causes people to remain the same volume even when a bit of a distance away.
I got a workaround using ear muffs working, zero radius but adjusting the fall off to sorta force the audio into shape, outside volume to 20% and that sounds significantly better.
I'd love for that "minimum distance til drop off" thing to either get reduced (and maybe linked to the players scale while at it pretty please) or removed entirely.
Plaster
It shouldn't be vrchat's job to fix the audio for people that can't be bothered to fix their own audio first, this is ruining it for everyone else instead with no ways to fix or at least mitigate this. People should know to increase the volume on their own audio hardware first before vrchat has to make changes like these. Maybe since vrchat now has a mic tester, maybe it would be a good idea to create an audio tester? drop people into a world made to test audio, I'd bet there's quite a few that don't even know they're wearing their headphones backwards......
lackofbindings
Definitely preferred the previous configuration. Everything including player voices, avatar sound effects, and even ui sounds sound really “hot” and crunchy. Some people mention that with the old config voices were more directional, I was a big fan of that fact that I didn’t need ear muffs mode to be comfortable in large groups. But now it’s worse than live.
Venclaire
lackofbindings Is that why I randomly feel like I need earmuff mode? I felt like the voices used to project out in-front of you, now it feels like its back to just being an audio bubble around someone
･デVド･
This is affecting my friends and I as well. Recently voices are overly compressed. People's voices who used to sound a lot nicer sound so much worse recently...
It's like they decided to reduce the audio bandwidth that is being utilized.
Enverex
The new HRTF has been universally worse for me, everyone is obnoxiously loud, voices and spatialised audio has lost its bass again, etc. It no-longer feels like an upgrade at all.
Catboy Slim
i have since switched away from the beta
Catboy Slim
the beta is now live and i am getting extremely irritated at the audio quality. it's not just the steam audio beta either.
knah
While I was not a huge fan of voices being overly directional in the previous version, I feel like this version severely over-compensates now. The voices are loud, flat (missing bass?), and very weakly directional. As a result it's way harder to pick out individual conversations even in lightly crowded areas, and in some cases a conversation five meters behind me is louder than someone talking right next to me.
Given that people don't disperse to avoid this, I suspect this is not an issue on live.
The Heavynator
ive also noticed if you look directy at someone while there talking it can sometimes sound like there behind you or inside your head. also lower angles have really poor spatial accuracy too.
RuneFox237
I agree with this post. I had to rely on earmuff mode way more often in various instances where I normally would only rely on it sparingly on Live and not at all on the previous steam audio beta. Voices are almost gratingly loud and flatter, less directional.
RuneFox237
Noticed the same issue that Heavynator is talking about as well, for me it was when talking to someone who was in front of and below my head from my pov as they were lying on top of me while we were watching some videos. I'd rotate my head left and and right slightly and their audio would seem to 'snap' in directionality between ears rather than a smooth transition like you'd expect from such small movements.
StormRel
Merged in a post:
[1693] new HRTF profile far too loud and sharp.
The Heavynator
while the new profile does indeed make voices clearer it also sounds as if all audio has been sent through a high pass filter (mids and bass sound muted) and amplified by quite a bit.
again while this may be fine for voices its quite bad for all other audio, especially more whitenoisey sounds like waterfalls and streams.
this is somthing i myself encounterd while testing diferent .sofa profiles for steam audio in this report (https://feedback.vrchat.com/steam-audio-open-beta/p/1604-hrtf-deadzone-at-low-angles) where most profiles i tried degraded the overall audio quality quite severely and also made things much louder in some cases like whats happening in this update.
i beleve this happens because when the profile is made it also captures the characteristics of whatever mic was used to capture the audio responses, valves default profile is likely modified to preserve sound quality because of this.
I've proveded some comparisons between SAs default profile, VRCs current profile and ONSP. (audio bitrate set to 256)
StormRel
Merged in a post:
[1693] Voice quality significantly downgraded
Rokk
This is a very subjective thing, so it's hard to objectively quantify or "prove", but it feels like the latest Steam Audio beta update (Build 1693) has significantly downgraded the voice quality. I restarted for the update and it feels like night and day.
More specifically, it sounds like the bitrate of voice audio has been cut in half. The only other way I can reproduce the effects of this update is by opening any voip application like Teamspeak, and lowering the bitrate to about 16kbps.
Again, this is a subjective thing so it's very hard for me to say if this is a bug or just a personal subjective effect, but voice quality has gone down a lot in my experience, so I'm making this post as a feedback post.
StormRel
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Plaster
the camera shutter is extremely loud now too
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