Ok here it goes, I've been out of the loop for a long while. I had S1 installed but haven't played it in a long while. I just upgraded to s2 but for some reason my sound sounds all muffled. Every noise in the game is muffled, engines, wind and so on. Is this normal? It almost sounds as though, for example I'm getting 8 bit sound when i should be getting 48 or I'm listening to the game through a concrete wall or something to that effect.

I have no issues with my rig and other games and believe me I play them all.


Thanks for any help.

try sit in your car write /edit_eng like a chat then shift+a now you can get the sound the way you like it

Have you tried turning the car volume up and wind etc under the audio options menu?

It's true that the lfs sounds has changed, a more muffled sound would indeed be an appropriate description. As already mentioned there's a way to tweak the sound in-game, but there's also CSR.

Happy tweaking ...

Ok thanks guys for the tips I'll be trying those tonight.

I just bought a new 22" widescreen monitor and the new trackir unit and am dusting off all my old racing games to play in large screen glory.
Thanks again.

For as long as I can remember my LFS sound has been hideously muffled and extremely reverberant. Whenever there's a new patch I come back and see if it's fixed but it never is. A couple of years ago I was told it was a Creative Audigy issue that would be fixed. I've been through a lot of motherboards, processors, graphic cards and sound cards since then, plus numerous OS reinstalls but this one seems set in stone. Nothing in the SHIFT-A menu makes any decent difference - the muffling and reverberance stay. So, what am I missing? Maybe I should download fresh instead of patching all the time.

Just installed afresh from a new full download and the audio is still totally messed up. I just can't race like this - it's like being at one end of a long tunnel with the car at the other end.

I've been through a lot of motherboards, processors, graphic cards and sound cards since then

Really? Sounds unbelievable. I mean, it definitely sounds like a rare hardware problem but if you have used several different sound cars...

Have you ever tried contacting the devs (Scawen)?

One thing more, are you sure you know how it is supposed to sound? I mean because of the very different synthesized way LFS sound is produced compared to other sims, might it be just that...?

Trust me, no realistic driving game should sound like this. My analogy about the car at the end of a long tunnel is spot-on. Maybe I'll record a sample. When it first turned up, after a while away from LFS following the original S1 release, I had upgraded from my old SBLive card to an Audigy. I was told (not by the devs) that it was an identified problem with Audigy cards so I went away. Later, with an Audigy2 I found it was still there so I went away again. Now, with a fresh download, an X-Fi, new motherboard, memory, processor, hard drives and install of XP it's STILL there. No other game does it. I've supported LFS from the very start but I can't see me shelling out on S3 if it ever arrives.

I've uploaded a sample of my audio to http://www.digiwake.co.uk/blackwood_straight.mp3. Tell me this isn't how the game should sound ;-)

This is exactly how mine sounds - muffled like that. Earlier versions of S2 didn't sound like that, but at some point the developers changed the sounds, I have no idea why.

Keep in mind that LFS simulates the sound as it sounds inside the car with a helmet on. This will muffle the sound a fair bit. I'm not trying to pass it of as perfect (it isn't), but it's not that far off. Personally I find the earlier S2 sounds much too harsh in the upper frequencies.

Are we ever going to get real recorded sounds or just crappy-plasticy cheap-synthetic-horrible-nylony ones?

Quote from JO53PHS :

Are we ever going to get real recorded sounds

Hopefully never, as I hate them. But a decent sounding synthesized engine would be nice (and as Todd has proved, is possible)

Quote from Jakg :

Hopefully never, as I hate them. But a decent sounding synthesized engine would be nice (and as Todd has proved, is possible)

Well I don't mind so much where the sounds come from, but more realistic sounding than now...

You can't really do that much with Shift + A

A quick update. I fancied trying LFS again so I fired it up, auto-installed Patch Z and the muffled sound is STILL there. Not just a bit muffled either. Imagine a long empty tunnel at night with a car at the other end of it. That's how it sounds, inside the car and out, even spectating. The startup demo replays have the same sound problem. I like to support independent developers but titles like Race07 look good, play well and sound great. Has LFS missed its time?

I'm only listening through my laptop speakers, but that sound that you've linked to earlier sounds almost spot on. Maybe the wind noise is a bit high, but other than hat it's fine. Don't forget the Blackwood straight has a big wall on one side of it

If it sounds terrible at your end (and someone else who's heard it) but fine here, maybe your speakers are set up wrong? Disable all audio after-processing anyway, as that could cause it. If you've gone through (what sounds like) several computers, then it's hardly an LFS problem. I've ran LFS on 8 computers in total, and it's sounded perfect on all. Can you make a recording, say, at the autocross track? Straight down the middle, where there would be no echos. Should be easier to find it's your setup or LFS then

Hope that helps a bit...

Thanks for responding. That sound is just an example. All tracks, all cars and all views are the same. the whole of Blackwood sounds like that, not just the straight - that's just the bit I recorded.

And if I've been through several sets of hardware and several OS reinstalls, surely that means the game IS to blame, as the only constant factor. No other game or application has this problem and I've been a specialist IT tech for 15 years so I'm fairly handy with this stuff ;-)

I'm also pretty certain that none of the real race meetings I've been to have sounded like that ;-) It's a real game-breaker for me - I simply can't race with it sounding like that.

Quote from AMacdonaldLFS :

A quick update. I fancied trying LFS again so I fired it up, auto-installed Patch Z and the muffled sound is STILL there. Not just a bit muffled either. Imagine a long empty tunnel at night with a car at the other end of it. That's how it sounds, inside the car and out, even spectating. The startup demo replays have the same sound problem. I like to support independent developers but titles like Race07 look good, play well and sound great. Has LFS missed its time?

I'm 99% sure it's your sound card / machine. (If the game was to blame everyone would have a simular problem, or at least more than you)