Hi! I’ve been exporting my game for an upcoming release on Steam. I’ve worked on it entirely on Windows, but I noticed when I exported and played a Mac version of the game, that it plays sounds/music at very different volumes than what I’d been accustomed to on Windows.
Some sounds are fairly normal, but in other cases, previously quiet sounds have become loud, and some loud sounds have become quiet.
This may be because I used both .wav and .mp3 audio files, but I haven’t been able to confirm that. I also haven’t yet confirmed if the issue manifests when my game is played on a different windows computer either.
So if anyone else has encountered this problem or knows some way to ensure my audio remains consistent on different hardware, that would be much appreciated!
The simple solution is to implement a volume slider for each sound category.
There are many audio speakers and each audio speaker has its own quirks and advantages. So a laptop might have a good speakers, some laptop might have a very flat feeling speaker.
Sometimes some people install software to modify the equalizer system wide, which affects every application, your game too.
This is normal.
What surprises me is that the differences were pretty distinct, even with headphones plugged in, which you’d think would largely reduce variability in audio levels.
And some of them aren’t subtle either, the differences between the Windows version and the Mac version can, in various cases, be very noticeable, with some sounds becoming virtually impossible to hear while others are almost piercing.
Again, it may just be due to how GDevelop encodes projects for different operating systems. I plan to test this theory soon by playing my game on other Windows devices to see what happens there.
Sliders are definitely a good idea in most cases though. Unfortunately, my game is very large and has many layered sounds in some places, so not too much can change in that department, but maybe I can look into it.
Maybe because both of them use different equalizers?
How come could it be hard?
Its an easy yet lengthy process.
You just replace the sound parameter with a variable that can be changed using a slider.
If you mean by testing AAA games or other games that are popular, these games may implement some workaround to make sure that these sounds are optimal by doing fixed adjustments based on operating system.
I’m not sure if this is correct, though, just me making a guess.
Yeah, could definitely involve equalizers. The issue seems most pronounced with short sound effects rather than longer music tracks (though I’m not 100% certain of that yet). Anyway, since music tracks obviously play for longer and have a wide range of tones they hit as they play, any differences in EQ may be less noticeable in the long run, whereas brief and basic sound effects stand out more when they are pitched up or down.
I’m hesitant about sliders for a few reasons which are difficult to describe. One of those reasons is that since some areas have sound effects which seem completely unchanged whereas other sound effects are too loud or too soft, I’d likely have to add up to 5 sliders in some areas just to control certain sounds. Cause raising or lowering all the sound effects in bulk would only serve to fix some of them, only to ruin the ones which were already fine beforehand.
Still though, I don’t think I’ve ever thought to use a variable in the place of the volume parameter. Do you by chance have any images or discussion thread examples of what that would look like exactly?
Thanks! That’s helpful!
For anyone in the future who may have similar audio questions, here’s how I set it up. You’d of course need to change this a bit if you wanted to independently turn up or down different tracks in the scene or use sliders instead of buttons.
I still plan on sending my game to several friends and seeing how the audio sounds for them, to get a better idea of just how differently Windows computers can interpret GDevelop’s sound. Will update as soon as I can!
If you go to your sound properties on Windows, there’s an ‘Audio Enhancements’ section which can either be turned off or set to ‘Device Default Effects.’ My default effects were on, as I assume is the case for most people. However, if you choose to turn it off, you end up with the exact flatter, uneven sounds I was getting on Mac, which makes sense.
So I’m left a bit torn on whether I should prioritize the default effects or no effects. But at least I’ve found the source of the problem!
EDIT: Turning off Device Default Effects also seems to reduce static and pops which occur when I have some sounds play or fade in and out, which was another problem I was encountering. So for those who may struggle with that, hope this helps
