First of all: Thanks for your continuous hard work Scawen! I appreciate your efforts very much.
So, I've now tried U35 + U36 sounds myself and while some of them are "good", some are barely "okay" and there's a few I really don't like at all.
I don't want to sound ungrateful or like I was up for a rant, but I just want to give my honest (and hopefully constructive) criticism on the new sounds. I may also emphasize that this is strongly "imo" and since I've come straight from U9, I think my ears are fresh enough to be able to evaluate the new sounds critically.
Mind you, I've still been using U9 up to now and I've never had any real complaints about those sounds so far. Plenty of information, crisp skid sounds providing vital feedback to make up for missing g-forces from the car.
Now hearing the changes in the recent versions for the first time, I must say that indeed the muffling irritates my ears quite a bit. I've read through most of the thread and I've seen many people complain about the sounds being too muffled, which some say has significantly improved in U36. Can't say I agree, to me it sounds pretty much wrong and unnatural. Anyway, ultimately the only relevant comparison is before (old sound system) - after (new sounds system).
I'm now gonna write up my opinion on each of the cars I've tested:
RB4: One of the worst imo. I had the feeling that it doesn't really sound like a car engine - there's a kind of "nasal" sound to it that makes it sound almost funny. It sounds like someone trying to speak while squeezing their nose (
http://www.jyi.org/articleimages/278/img0.jpg)
XRT: Basically similar in tone compared to the RB4. Not quite that annoying, but also very "nasal" and hollow sounding.
FXO: Also similar to the former two. Appears to have lost some of the grunt and character it used to have. There very nice "roar" at low revs seems to be is gone now. Also the turbo sound (~17-18 KHz "tweeting") during full throttle becomes quite annoying and fatiguing after a short period of time. (maybe I should use very bad headphones instead which aren't able to reproduce that noise
)
LX4: Sounds very much like the XRT.
LX6: Much of the "raspiness" from U9 is gone. Very smooth and sine-like. Sounds okay but worse than U9 imo.
FZ5: Pretty good but a little too smooth and muffled.
FXR: One of the few I think sounds better than before. There's some nice harmonics going on and it sounds more like a car than any of the others. A little less raspy than before but overall gains a lot from the added gear whine.
FZR: Nice tone but overall too muffled. Could be improved with a little more raspiness/distortion like it used to have.
XRR: Reminds me of the XRT very much - with a little more midbass and gear whine. Sounds almost the same except for that.
BF1: Nice in a certain way and certainly closer to being realistic - but too tame and quiet. TC sound is very good, except for a little too much bass (as has been mentioned before)
FO8: I'm a bit undecided on this one. Sounds okay, but I'd say that up to 7k rpm this is how the road cars should sound. Doesn't sound too much like a high-powered single seater race car.
Conclusion: overall I feel kind of irritated by the new muffled sounds. A lot of feedback is lost compared to U9 when the skid sounds (and even scrub sounds just before the tires were about to lose grip) were clearly audible. Actually it's necessary for virtual drivers to compensate for not feeling the g-forces. One can do that by looking at the speedo and listening to the sounds (skid + engine). Both of which have been made less useful - while this may be more realistic, it doesn't really help to compensate for what's missing.
Also, it's somehow like ears lack a point of reference now - I don't feel like I'm sitting in the car, I just wanna wake up and remove the damn pillow from my ears!
Alright, I've never heard tires squealing hard from inside a real car but what's most important here is that LFS sounds good. And I'm safe to say that this doesn't sound so good to my ears.
Most of the new sounds appear to have lost character too - character that made the cars seem more different from one another. Now in U35 I almost instantly had the feeling: "ah well, this is the same synthesizer generating the sounds for all cars, just with a few small mods here and there" while before they sounded less alike.
