Hello,
I just came up with a little idea that would change the multiplayer game very much. How about making the game to synchronise people's individual shift+a sound setups? I mean everyone would hear what your own car sound like and everyones would sound different. I'd absolutely love that.

I thought of sharing this idea too many years ago but I suddenly visualized the facial expression of other users the moment they would hear my car passing by. To have it optional would be amazing, if we find other people's car annoying we can just disable it or better, having it disabled by default.

I suggested this a while back - I still think it would add a lot to the atmosphere and make the game sound a bit less drone-y... even if people did make daft noise setups.
But an option to switch them back to default would sort that nicely - that's a really good idea

The idea is good, but with the amount of options you can set and turn on/off in the Shift+A menu, it could get out of hand if people abuse it. For instance, you can turn off the engine sound completely, and that's not very realistic

But if you still had the gear whine, it would sound like an electric vehicle...

I think switching off the engine sound goes a bit far... I like to be able to hear what the engine and gears and all the other aural cues are telling me. I believe switching them all off would affect your own driving more than others.

And as Skytrill said, a good option would be a default audio switch, maybe added to the connections list and/or in the menu if you prefer the permanent solution.

Fun fact: Race cars of the same make and type also sound the same in real life...

In addition, practically every engine sound in the sharing-thread is REALLY awful, there are maybe a handful that are even worth hearing - so I can do without everyone trying to blast my speakers...

Quote from bbman :

...practically every engine sound in the sharing-thread is REALLY awful, there are maybe a handful that are even worth hearing...

That's not what we're talking about here. Shift-A allows for the volume adjustment of certain sounds within the orchestra that is your engine sound. Things like gear whine, air intake suction, turbo pressure changes, etc.

There are always subtle differences in the way cars sound, even in single-make racing. Everything from a mechanic's personal approach to tuning, to wear-and-tear on parts. It's these subtleties that we want to be able to vary among cars in the same grid to lessen the "flanger" effect (sound engineering term for when two identical sounds drift in and out of sync, producing harmonic interference).

I've been to quite a few race tracks and have seen a variety of series... I couldn't hear shit of those subtle differences from the grandstands, and I doubt anyone without a spectrum analyzer can (same goes for under a helmet)...

Unless I've missed something major here, those files that are being shared are nothing but the individually set and saved shift+a adjustments. As such, you'd hear exactly those noises, would you not?

The thing about subtlety is that you don't need to notice it for it to work.

It might be that I'm missing the thread you are talking about - I didn't know there was a way to share the Shift-A settings... I thought the sounds being shared were completely new samples taken from sound recordings. If I'm wrong it won't be the first time.

Honestly, I don't even understand what difference it should make - the exhaust note of every single race car I heard just droned out every other sound on and around the track... Gear whine and turbo/intake sounds would be noticable in the car, but also only from your car?

It's this one... As the samples used to generate LfS' engine sounds are bangs of a specific millisecond(?) range, I understand everyone gave up adding new samples quickly and just tried to make the loudest, most clipping sound they can achieve with the standard samples. I didn't bother to find out in a while though...

After looking up the flange effect I'm afraid I can't agree with you there either - I feel the sounds are in sync too much so that they amplify themselves until they hit some sort of limiter and start to clip, almost as if every engine in LfS fires at exactly the same time. I have no way to prove that though, and Scawen is probably the only person who could shed some light on how that part of the game works...

Quote from LTU-72543 :

Hello,
I just came up with a little idea that would change the multiplayer game very much. How about making the game to synchronise people's individual shift+a sound setups? I mean everyone would hear what your own car sound like and everyones would sound different. I'd absolutely love that.

How about this for setups?

+1 for shift a synchronization.

just reborning this topic, i think its important nowadays spc w/ mods

not really

Im writting a mod called LFSEx and this should be one of the features in the future sometime.