Some thoughts on soundtrack volumes.

[tinpanalley]

I posted this over on another site, but thought others could benefit.
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Just wanted to put this out there because of the amount of posts I'm seeing about people having to crank their soundtrack volume slider.

It's not the game that mutes the sounds. The volume sliders are all pretty well normalized to the same levels. What you guys need to fix is the levels on the audio files you're using. Where are you getting them from? If all your tracks are from different places, even if they're coming from different CDs, they're all going to be mixed and mastered differently not to mention all the commercially available CDs out there that are mastered poorly. I'm not even gonna start on downloaded music.

So, solution? You need to get software that will let you raise the levels on your songs to just below the clipping point, or at least software that will allow you to normalize the songs although that's not really ideal.

Audacity can do it, Sound Forge can do it, I'm sure there are other programs out there. No they're not all free and they're not all cheap. But that's what you need to do. Raise the levels and you'll start seeing volume sliders that are easier to balance. Also, decide what you want the game to sound like. What I mean by that is, do you want the game to sound like a tv broadcast, as I do? Or do you want it to sound like you're at the arena? Or perhaps you like it to sound like you're on the ice with the teams. Either way, tune things so that it reflects that audible perspective.

Just some thoughts, guys. Hope it helps.