An excellent discussion of the different ways to control volumes of the various sounds of LokSound decoders took place recently on the groups.io LokSound forum. It started with a user wanting to know the difference between the controls on the Decoder tab and the Sound tab. See figures 1 and 2.
Fig 1 The Decoder tab
The volume setting for a soundslot set from the Decoder tab (figure 1) is like the Master volume control for each soundslot. In the same example, let’s say your Radiator fan soundslot is not very audible. Changing the volume setting from say 60 to 128 under soundslot settings will increase its volume, and the change will be applied equally to all sounds in the soundslot.
Fig. 2 The Sound tab
The volume settings in the window in the bottom right of your second screenshot sets the volume at which each individual sound file plays at when used in any of the sound slots in the sound project. Let’s say you have a Radiator Fan sound slot that uses three sound files, a start sound, a single loop sound and an end sound. The volume of each of the three sound files (typically a 16-bit .wav file) is set in this window. Let’s say you change the volume for the loop sound file from 100 to 150 and leave the volume of the start and end sound files at 100, when you play the radiator fan soundslot, the loop will play louder relative to the start and end sounds. Further, the loop sound will also play at the higher volume setting of 150 if it were used in any other soundslot.
Continuing, Apoorva stated there is in fact a third place where one can change the volume of individual soundstates and sound containers. This is contained within the sound flow of soundstates. Open a soundslot and click on any sound state or container and the menu on the left has a volume setting that one can use to increase or decrease the volume of that particular soundstate or sound container. See figure 3.
Fig 3 Container sound control
He also mentioned that ESU uses this third method of volume control in their prime mover Dynamic Volume Control feature in the most recent versions of their diesel sound projects. They set the volume of the idle sound to a low volume (Volume setting of 50) and each subsequent notch is set to a progressively higher volume, all the way up to 128 for Notch 8. The transition soundstates between notches also step up in volume from the previous notch volume level to the next notch volume level. This gives a more realistic sound transition that many modellers like. Open up the prime mover soundslot and browse around clicking on the various sound containers/soundstates and take a look.
Apoorva also has a YouTube channel containing videos demonstrating his custom prime mover sounds along with other topics.
If you have an idea for a blog post here, let me know. If I can comment on it, I will or I'll see if someone else can and post it
No comments:
Post a Comment