What Can Be Done About Looping Audio?

I am surprised this issue is not more widely discussed. Both Xbox and PlayStation are plagued by looping audio. This occurs when a sound plays for a short duration followed by a distinct pop or break in the audio which then repeats, again and again. It is an unpleasant listening experience and has been a problem since the console edition’s inception, though it appears to be worsening in recent trains.


On PlayStation, the new Class 90 suffers from this issue on the AWS and DSD alarms (I believe all trains are affected by this on the safety system alarms) and the traction motor fans. The Class 350’s unique traction motor sound also exhibits this problem, as does the higher-pitched sound that fades in and out during acceleration on the Class 390.


I would be grateful if any developers or knowledgeable individuals could provide an explanation for this issue and suggest a potential solution? I have not noticed it as much on the Medway Valley 375, if at all, so has this been configured differently?


I would also love to hear other people’s opinions on this matter as I can’t believe I’m the only one that hates it so much.

 

The 350 is particularly bad.

 

There's still some old BR traction where the AWS has like a half second loop and it sounds awful

 

I know the class 31 and 37 have the problem on 100% throttle. I presumed it was a mixing issue rather than hardware related. Would be interesting to know if it only impacts Xbox/PS and if so, DTG can investigate along with everything else

 

When they're editing the audio they need to actually blend the cuts together. ItsYa165 has some good techniques to show of in this video, it's pretty long but very informative

 

I’ve noticed this on Rapid Transit too. Hold the horn for a few seconds and you’ll notice it sounds painfully bad. You can hear it looping the sound over and over again.

 

looping traction motor sounds are very bad on the class 390. Its a real shame for a product that is the mainstay of multiple routes.

 

can it be fixed? possibly
will it be fixed? no way in a million years. it was allegedly fixed on xbox for tsw5, lo and behold we’ve got nowhere since then

 

Has been a problem since I own TSW. Made a huge riot about it back then. They managed to fix it on PS5 for a while but since TSW6 it's back on a lot of loco's. That's why I'm not complaining about the reduced volume on the medway valley line. I was assuming that was their fix for the looping audio.

 

Yeah I was gonna say, outside of a couple of things such as the 700 (which is the same for every platform), looping audio disappeared.

Now in TSW 6 it’s on quite a lot of things. Same with just really poor audio distortion on some things, the GWR 150 is really bad for example.

I do tend to notice it’s more prolific on third party items though.

 

I just done a night run with the 700 on MVL and unfortunately when accelerating the audio looping is still present.

 

I'm sure it has been mentioned before that it is a UE 4 issue. I can't remember the discussion.

 

Why does it only affect TSW, and not any racing games made in UE?

 

DTG tends to blame UE4 for multiple issues. I'm not a fan of Unreal Engine in general, however there are UE4 games without stuttering and without audio issues. Also Firefly has shown us that routes can be optimized and the overall quality can be way better then what DTG delivers. So in the end, DTG looks more like incompetent or lazy.

 

So the question is, how do we get DTG to acknowledge this and resolve it?. It’s an immersion killer for sure. I recall driving the class 37 when it was first released on TVL with a PS4 and there was no audio looping!.

I can’t imagine they’ll have to redesign the whole game to fix it.

On a side note, I’ve been keeping an eye on the Medway thread and how quickly Firefly are acknowledging feedback and looking to implement changes. Why can’t DTG be like this DTG Matt.

 

They know about it, they have spoken about it in streams, but they just don't fix it or not properly. It's the same with z-fighting on Xbox and the ongoing blurry texture issue.... Solutions for blurry textures and optimization even has to come from modders/3rd party dev, so I say DTG is incompetent and lazy at the same time.

 

Easy answer here. Those type of games using their own proprietary audio engines (really expensive stuff) or 3rd party audio engines like WWise or FMOD (also way to expensive to being used in TSW). Those engines have way more flexibility and possibilities to do audio than UE4 itself can provide.

Loops are the things we need to use in TWS for the type of continuous playing sounds. It then depends on the available recordings or sources if you can make a seamless loop from it or not. Especially swelling sounds, like the ones produced by air pressure (including horns), and by any types of motors that will mostly not spin at a constant speed for longer than a few ms, are hard to loop when you not have any constant and long recording of it. These are then the ones you can hear in TSW often. And there is a different problem coming on top on consoles and that is the compression that is needed. Compression can shorten a loops unwanted about a few samples or even milliseconds and that then destroys the intended loop cue points (basically start and end) what ends up in pops and crackles. The latter could be solved by setting the compression quality to 100%. BUT since we have tons of audio for all the trains to carry around while playing the game, it would eat up way to much RAM what then ends up in more blurry textures or crashes.

 

One thing I’ve always wondered is whether it is possible to edit these in the console builds after the port from the PC dev build to tidy them up after the audio compression. I know some of the devs doing the audio setup won’t have access to the console builds directly but could DTG’s audio team do that or is it just not possible?

 

Not that i would know how. To edit audio it needs to be uncompressed. When you open a MP3 or AAC in a Audioeditor like Wavelab it will be decompressed when opening and compressed again when saving. I'm sure when i save a loop as AAC or MP3 with Wavelab it will be fine (pro Software though) but the decompression on the consoles destroys it again. And not that you can stop UEs cooking process from re-encoding audio files even if they are already compressed.

 

It should be more acknowledged, I agree, although it's not just console exclusive issue, but PC / Steam also.

Right on the money with this comment.

Also unless you're wearing headphones and 120% focus with the audio file you're working on when trying to get it loop smoothly, you will miss out on those possible "spikes" either at the start or end of the audio file. If the recording is not clean, the rough edges need to be smoothed and ironed out so that they don't *POP* in annoying audible manner. I'm quoting my old post about audio popping: "I feel this popping is awfully bad on Kassel - Würzburg route specifically because you sit in a trapped vacuum in dark tunnels listening to your comfy humming cab while observing your gauges and signals. There's simply no escape from it and I'm deeply bothered by it"

Even TSG with their phenomenal and my favorite loco in the game, Expert 101 suffers from constant 8 sec looping audio popping at high speeds. Now with their upcoming LZB fun route Schnellfahrstrecke: Nürnberg - Ingolstadt the Expert 101 is highlighted a lot and contributing heavily to that route. Now would be a perfect time to iron out that annoying audio popping that appears at speeds +170 km/h... I don't want to derail this topic, but here it is...

Spoiler

https://forums.dovetailgames.com/th...t-audio-popping-issue-at-higher-speeds.94438/

DTG Lukas Please, I hope you guys at TSG are aware of this. Your feedback on this matter and how to fix it would be greatly appreciated.

 

I call BS! I'm a musician, I worked my whole life with loops and it's not that hard to make a continuous loop of an engine. What I do know is that if you let me make TSW, the audio will be top notch. The problem is that I'm not familiar with making video games which means only the audio will be top notch and the game itself will be very bad. That's what I'm assuming is going on here but the other way around. Don't blame the tools, blame your knowledge of the tools you use.

You can tell me stories on why performance in TSW is not on par with my expectations and I will believe them, but don't tell me stories on why the audio sucks because I will call you out on it. They fixed it once so they can fix it again. Fix the audio instead of telling us BS stories on how difficult it is to make a simple loop. If you need 120% focus to cut loops you admit not knowing what you are doing and are just guessing. The solution is simple don't let developers do the audio because it's not their expertise.

 

There are trains in the game without those popping sounds, also there are trains with the problem, but less loud and annoying.

The 375 from Firefly is mentioned many times already for the good sounds, Firefly also did good work on the performance side of things, so it proves there can be done something, when the right knowledge is there.

About the costs for audio engines, there are many studios, also smaller ones, using FMOD or other engines in their game. It's not really acceptable to release broken products, because tools to do it right are expensive. DTG has a history of never fixed issues, where fixing is possible. The question still remains, why can Firefly (modders and now 3rd party dev) fix issues, DTG was not able to fix?

 

Yeah, waited for that comment. Thankfully you already said you have no clue how video games work. Music is a totally different manner. Making good loops for music purposes is easy (i know that because i did a lot too). Looping swelling motor sounds is a completely other topic and not that easy (you are allowed to prove me wrong with real world examples though).

Because it is free for small game devs. But DTG is not small enough to get it for free and costs the ~15k$ per DLC per year. WWise is even more expensive from what i know. Developing a completely own audio engine might get in the millions range of costs. Not sure if DTG could afford that (i don't believe so).

Often modders can do things DTG can't do. Modders mostly ignore set restrictions for a game they mod for. Modders also mostly mod for PC only where they can ignore those restrictions. Also they have no time restrictions like a company has. If you can spent unlimited time into something (nothing specific) you will get better results. If a profit driven company spends too much time into something the profit flies away and if they do it constantly the company will go broke over the time. I know people are seeing that different from outside a company and as a customer, but higher quality does not automatically produce more profit, it simply costs more time for doing it (that's a bad thing though, honestly, but that is how the world works). I personally have some experiences with that and tend to not overdue things because of not having any benefit from it. Modders can ignore all that, they are doing it often for honor. But honor is not filling the frige or pay the bills.

 

I got your point about modders and the time they can spend on stuff doing it right, however Firefly is now a dev too and they were able to found a solution for blurry textures, where DTG was working on for quite some time.

I totally understand there has to be some balance between perfection and the costs of things for a company, but the quality of TSW does become worse and worse, to the point where I don't buy new DLC anymore. And even worse, GWE remaster has blurry textures as soon as I enable WCML, now 2 train DLC will be released for this route, but what is the point of buying them as I have already blurry textures without them?

On this moment the balance is wrong in favour of rushing releases and not on perfection or do things right. At least there can be a better middle between those 2 things. And btw, this is not any personal attack towards you, to be honest, I appreciate you answers and explanations!

 

No clue about the blurry textures stuff and how to fix that. I never really seen them when playing TSW on my PS5pro nor on PC. And i wouldn't shrink down all i said to just the blurry textures problem. That is just one of lots of other things that need hands on while developing. Who knows what Firefly has been done differently. Maybe they use way less textures, what is a good thing but costs way more time to create the assets then. Maybe something DTG could improve (no idea, really). I'm working on something atm where also shared textures are a big thing and it runs way better than the usual DTG route. But again, i can't say something about that and why it is as it is. Has probably to do with the way how those routes are created, the fast pace in that they are created, and the amount of different people/companies/departments that are working at the same time on it. All that causes "issues" in the optimisation parts i would say. If only one person is creating a route, that person or a maybe small team can handle that way better than when 50 people working at the same time. That's how it is. Normally, and done on the big AAA games, after the creation of the map there is a huge and time consuming (often a year or so) optimisation pass going on, with hundreds of people working out the performance. Something that is not happening on any TS as you can imagine. There is simply no budget for such a huge process. It has to be working with the first pass of doing things. And yeah, that's really tricky and tends to gain issues.

And to be clear, i'm not saying that all is fine, no, definitely not. And i know DTG is trying to improve these things. But that is nothing that happens over night. That can take years or some things might never being done because they can't find the cause. TSW is still not a title with AAA budgets and will never be one. So compromises have to be done here and there.

 

One of the things Firefly has done, is lower the texture resolution for places where high res is not needed. They did this for their own route, but also for SEHS. This seems to save quite some MB's. DTG want to try this also for other routes, but they have to do this per route. But from what I understood, this knowledge is not yet shared with other developers, otherwise you should know everything about what they did, right? So this is what you explained already with a lot of people working on the game, but it seems without sharing important information and a lack of testing / quality control.

I understand the budget side of things, but when people are starting to refuse buying the game / DLC's, because of the lack of quality, the problems will become bigger for DTG.

 

You ate the bait in its entirety. Do not misinterpret - 120% in a nutshell - if you cut corners in this finicky game when you shouldn't, the end result is unclean audio that can be triggered on command and you are stuck with it.

All I'm saying is that it requires attention and care to make a sound loop natural. It can get difficult to distinct some small oversight if multiple sounds play at the same time. From what I understand the sounds in TSW consist of multi-staged sound files. For instance, the Expert BR 101 got all these different stages of realistic and authentic sounds which simply sound sublime. There's no such thing as perfect, but if a looping sound is making constant and loud popping every 8 seconds AT A VERY SPECIFIC SPEED, that is a problem - huuuuuge problem.

 

We already had great sounds though with the class 31 and 37 for example, which had no looping. Since TSW 5 was released you can now hear the looping at 100% throttle. So the sounds were fine in how they were produced, but something has gone wrong along the way

 

The Class 31 had horrendous machine gun AWS warning sound on Playstation, which spoils the driving experience somewhat. The Rivet Class 37 from WCL has the worst silent gap in its looping engine sound on Playstation. It’s practically unplayable with the sound up it’s so annoying. The problem has been around for as long as TSW has. It’s not new. There are more of the crackling pops in recent DLC and not so many of the gaps but it is just an ongoing issue.

 

I don’t own the Rivet version, but the TVL iteration certainly didn’t have any looping when it first came out, even with Ps4

 

The Stuttering in TSW has two causes.

The first is caused by shader compilation and is I believe an MS Direct X issue. There is currently no way to solve this issue. It is possible to do pre-compile but not when a game has 100+ DLC.

The second is a UE (4 & 5) issue called traversal stutter. It is only a problem when a game has a large map area, TSW has huge maps. There is currently no solution to this problem. Games get around this by splitting the map into smaller sections, TSW obviously can’t do this.

Neither of these problems have been solved by the Firefly team in the MildMay line, so I don’t really know what you are talking about. As far as general optimization is concerned DTG and Firefly have been working together to find a solution to the console blurry textures issues. To say the least it is extremely unfair to give the Firefly team all the credit for this as it would be to give it all to DTG.

Calling the Staff of DTG lazy should get people a warning with repeat offenses ending in a ban. Sadly this place isn’t moderated.

 

Considering DTG keep releasing buggy and broken content (MVL being a huge exception) and not fixing it I think they either don’t have the money to actually QA content properly or don’t want to spend the money, at that point we don’t have a hope in heck of them forking up the cash to get a good audio engine.

The only reason DTG are where they are is that they have pretty much 0 competition, people get comfortable (read lazy) when they are in that position and quality of product decreases, if some other company decided to give it a shot (MSTS 2 anyone) DTG would either have to get it together or close up shop when people go elsewhere. It’s a fact of business, if you can get away with the bare minimum you do just that because it increases profit margin.

So yes, I think DTG is lazy and they are very lucky that train simming is niche enough that we won’t get an MSFS2020 style reboot of MSTS.

 

I think lazy is quite fitting considering DTG gave the go ahead of the class 90 dlc with little to no QA. Still no patch in sight to fix any of the issues

 

I'm having a deja vu from a few years ago, before they fixed it on PS5 and gave the same reply. Stop telling your customers that it's normal that the audio sucks. It's BS! It was fixed on PS5, not on Xbox, but from TSW 6 on it sounds on PS5 again like on Xbox. If it worked on PS5 but the issue was still present on Xbox, it means you don't know what you are doing. The looping errors should not be present in products you sell. If we start again with the same lame excuses as a few years ago, I'm done with this game. Take your responsibility and start delivering quality instead of excuses.

 

As said before, in general I'm not a fan of UE, as the engine has quite some downsides. But this doesn't mean you can't minimize the effects of some of those downsides. I'm playing on console, so no shader compilation stutters. I'm also using a VRR screen, so this also reduce stutters. What I'm talking about is the bad performance, stutters caused by low frame rate when there are a lot of trees for example. This is due to bad optimization and Firefly has proved performance can be way better with good optimization.

Firefly came with the idea to reduce texture resolution when high resolution is not needed. They implemented this on their own route and also on SEHS because they took a part of this route for use on their own route. So yes, I give Firefly the credits as they actually did something on the performance side of things. Also if you look what those guys improved in the past with mods, I think they deserve those credits.

The state of the games and DLC's when they're released and how bad the bug fixing is, is saying enough about DTG. Low quality releases seems to be enough for them. I call this lazy, wrong priorities and a punch in the face of their customers. Look at the releases and delays of last month, it clearly shows what kind of mess it is with their schedule and testing. And yes bugs can occur, but the amount of them and the terrible way of fixing them, tells a lot.

And b.t.w, warning and ban vocal people does not solve any problem. I won't call them lazy anymore when they release products with some kind of quality and I will even buy more of their products.

 

First of all, tone it down a bit. Your way of communicating is not helpfull in any way.

Maik doesn't work for DTG. So don't attack him. He's a third party developer explaining to you where the issues stem from - that's all.

You're looking at the problem from a different perspective. Maik (and in a previous discussion, I) have explained to you that how you do loops in music editing software, is not the same as it is for audio subsystems in games. Audio editing software has the complete processing power of your PC at hand when looping audio, and do not generally need compression. Games' audio subsystems do need compression, and tend to cut off a few milliseconds of the sample's start and end, which causes the clicks, pops and glitches on loops.

Yet you keep dismissing that, and throw more fuel on the fire. Stop that please.

The audio looping is annoying, no one is debating you on that. But the fix is not as simple as you think it is.

 

Sorry, but I’m just not convinced. It was a non issue on the PS4, and now we are stating it’s going to be complicated to resolve, despite using improved hardware. We can keep making excuses for DTG, whether it’s audio, blurred textures or anything else. I’ve spent a lot of money on TSW, and I’m prepared to continue to. All I ask is that they are transparent and can actually prove they are trying to fix these things

 

I can understand the frustration, really. Im on your side with that JUST seen from the other perspective as a developer who needs to get something done with all those obstacles that are there. I personally can't change how it works. I can only work with what is there. When i do audio (and i will not do anymore audio for DTG 2nd party work though) i spend a lot of time into those needed loops. As examples i spent about a week just for editing the diesel engine loops for my G6 and the 218, each. The loops are perfect when you listening them with the original files in Wavelab. After importing and using them in UE4 they are not that good anymore, not so speak of when they got cooked to XBox. It is what it is and as a 3rd party dev i have to live with that. Yes, there are some options to get better audio with ignoring the set restrictions like it is done on the 145 Expert. But generally i do not go beyond restrictions. And yes, i know what i say does not help anyone. It's just excuses from your perspective. That's fine. I can't change that. I'm not here to defend anything or anyone, just giving a look from a dev perspective. I can only stop doing this stuff to get rid of all these useless discussions. I'm on that stuff since 2011 and it was the same back there. People are never satisfied with what they get. Even if it's way above the standard specs. I was the one who invented the first TSC ExpertLine withe the BR143 EL in 2011 and even this was not good enough, not to talk about all the following ones until 2018 where i left vR. It was a hell to work with honestly, not because of the complexity of the things, but because of the constant complaining of the customers. Not much motivating to go any further than what is expected as a minimum.

 

I see where you come from and personally, I don't blame you in any way or form. I think the complaining in general is more about DTG and their practices and this is not only with audio. Actually, 3rd party devs in general do a better job then DTG itself. I also see lot of praise on here about TSG, so it seems you guys are doing a good job. Ofcourse there will always be a non constructive complainer, sadly.

I understand you have to work with the tools/engines provided by DTG, so I think it's also up to them to fix the sound and other issues.