Warning: Danger ahead!

[Aord]

I wonder if I am the only one about to suggest changing the alert sound into something less of a jump-scare. Last time I heard it I had my heart nearly stopped. Not only the alert sound was much louder than general ambiance and music, but also very jarring and at maximum volume upfront. I wonder if the effect was aimed at making players wet themselves.

My suggestion: either change it into something less violent or just add a bit of a fade-in to tone the suddenness of the effect down a bit.

[shauma]

Totally agree! A hundred times over. Also the sound when you pick up a quest item; way to jarring.

[Silkt]

There is way too many sounds that seem to disregard any player set volume control, I agree with both the above are way over the top volume wise as well as that god awful ding that comes from some skills even if used by another player nearby, 2 triggers I can think of are Deer form Doe eyes and Priest skill Corrupt Hate. I am certain there is more.

Surely a fix that makes Master volume slider cap the level of every sound in game would be feasible. Every sound mixer I have ever used since the start of the internet has had some form of max volume limiter in it somewhere.

EDIT: Can add pyro goat to list of sounds that wake the neighbours even with low master volume.

[Citan]

Looks like srand is doing some volume tweaks based on this thread, so if there's a really loud sound you hate, please let us know here now! (The more specific you can be, the better.)

Background info: the master volume DOES affect every sound. But there are still lots of mixing problems because the raw wavefiles of each sound can have any volume, and some are naturally louder than others. We've coded a way to fix that by manually lowering the volume on specific sound effects... but it requires us to manually tweak each sound individually.

It's also possible that some sounds are being played as "2D" sounds instead of as "3D" sounds, which means the sound has the same maximal volume no matter how far away the source is. That's another thing we can fix, but we have to manually set the appropriate setting for the sound.

Volume is also a fairly subjective and complicated thing -- headphones versus speakers, ambient noise vs. music, etc. So I doubt we'll ever have a perfect volume, but hopefully your reports will help us fix the really jarringly loud ones.

(Also, I did make the boss warning screens intentionally loud and terrifying... but I think Sandra's veto'ed that, so it'll be softer next update.)

[Silkt]

Thanks for looking into this, yes max volume does affect all sounds, so if a player wants to tone down the maximium possible they don't hear other sounds.

My suggestion is turn max volume into a db limiter and allow the other sliders to control the different groups of sounds.

[ProfessorCat]

Looks like srand is doing some volume tweaks based on this thread, so if there's a really loud sound you hate, please let us know here now! (The more specific you can be, the better.)

There are 3 horn sounds from the Bard skill that randomly come from the abilities: disharmony, blast of fury, blast of defiance, thunderous note, and blast of despair, and also a low note sound that comes from entrancing lullaby.

All of these sounds are great! They just seem to be at 150% volume compared to the other combat sounds, and I end up turning my volume down until all I hear are the horns. It's certainly more prevalent when it's coming from first person as the "caster" as opposed to when someone else in the group is playing a horn.

Thanks for giving a platform for this!

[Mikhaila]

I'd love to see a setting that turned off quest update sounds. If the guild is doing Kur or Labyrinth, i turn off GUI sounds because the updates for a guild quest where a group is going to kill 200 mobs in an hour just get horribly annoying. But I miss the other sounds.

[ProfessorCat]

The Wind Instrument skill, with the Gemshorn abilities 2-5 are too loud when compared the other performance sounds.

Number 4 and 5 are so loud, I can usually hear them in the other room when I step away form the computer, and I use headphones.

[Mbaums]

As someone who plays with sound nearly off... I must bring up the sound of spiders.
Oh a fire dot? RIII RIIII RIIIII RIIII RIIII RIII

[Mikhaila]

As someone who plays with sound nearly off... I must bring up the sound of spiders.
Oh a fire dot? RIII RIIII RIIIII RIIII RIIII RIII

I was running through kur last night when a spider goes by, on fire and screaming that. Was frightening. Must have one in to a bombsheep.