Audio Damage VST AU Pack 19 10 2010 AiR ArCADE
Franziska Alcini
Just took armored train extract on lighthouse as a scav after getting juiced up on some rogue loot and holy shit the train horn was so loud that I have no doubt it damaged my hearing. It's safe to assume that most players play on higher volume levels in order to hear foot steps as clear as possible yet sounds like the train, air drop, and many others are just so unbearably loud for no reason that they surely cause hearing loss.
As for the effects themselves, we'd have to say they're every bit as good as Audio Damage's other efforts. Stutter repeats small sections of audio, creating buzzing and bleeping noises; Modulate is a ring modulator; Bitcrush is aptly named; and Replicate is a slightly watered-down version of Audio Damage's Replicant.
Our diverse audio team is looking for an additional Project Audio Lead. As an experienced leader and people manager you will guide a project team to stay on track and will provide them with meaningful feedback to help them achieve their tasks and goals.
You will help to create a safe space for learning, career growth and working together as a team. As the Lead of a Project you are not asked to be the best sound designer, the most technical person or being the best planner: With over 60 supporting staff across audio design, technical audio and audio production you will be assisted in those roles so we can succeed as a team.
For the purpose of onboarding and working closely with other departments we prefer hybrid or on-site applications. We realise this might be something to consider further down the line though. For the right candidate Frontier Developments and the audio team can support fully remote or working abroad.
As one of the Audio Programmers in the game engine team, you will be working in the Platform segment which is responsible for the audio engine, audio authoring pipeline and tools across the studio's products.
As our new Senior Audio Programmer, you are someone with a strong interest in audio processing and creating an awesome audio experience. You should be comfortable working with both programmers and audio content creators, as you will be working closely with both teams. You would use your game development experience to own the audio technology pipelines and custom audio too set for our games.
For more than twenty years, Criterion Games has entertained millions of players around the world with our award-winning games. Our experienced people have expressed their passion for phenomenal game feel, AAA audio-visual quality, and technical innovation across many beloved franchises including Burnout, Battlefield, Star Wars Battlefront and Need for Speed.
As a Senior Technical Audio Artist, you will work with the audio design and programming teams to create, implement, maintain and debug complex audio playback systems for our games whilst improving and creating workflows and processes. You will bridge the gap between creative and technical implementation challenges.
Reducing volume in software is basically equivalent to reducing the bit depth. In digital audio, the signal is split up into distinct samples (taken thousands of times per second), and bit depth is the number of bits that are used to describe each sample. Attenuating a signal is done by multiplying each sample by a number less than one, with the result being that you're no longer using the full resolution to describe the audio, resulting in reduced dynamic range and signal-to-noise ratio. Specifically, every 6 dB of attenuation is equivalent to reducing the bit depth by one. If you started with, say, 16-bit audio (standard for audio CDs) and reduced the volume by 12 dB, you'd effectively be listening to 14-bit audio instead. Turn the volume down too much and quality will start to suffer noticeably.
Another issue is that these calculations will often result in rounding errors, due to the original value of the sample not being a multiple of the factor by which you're dividing the samples. This further degrades the audio quality by introducing what's basically quantisation noise. Again, this mostly happens at lower volume levels. Different programs might use slightly different algorithms for attenuating the signal and resolving those rounding errors, which means there might be some difference in the resulting audible signal between, say, an audio player and the OS, but that doesn't change the fact that in all cases you're still reducing bit depth and essentially wasting a portion of the bandwidth on transmitting zeroes instead of useful information.
The result of reducing the volume in hardware depends on how the volume control is implemented. If it's digital, then the effect is much the same as reducing the volume in software, so there's probably little to no difference in which one you use, in terms of audio quality.
Ideally, you should output audio from your computer at full volume, so as to get the highest resolution (bit depth) possible, and then have an analogue volume control as one of the last things in front of the speakers. Assuming all the devices in your signal path are of more or less comparable quality (i.e. you're not pairing a cheap low-end amplifier with a high-end digital source and DAC), that should give the best audio quality.
If the previous two aren't possible or feasible, simply turn down the volume at the OS level, until you've reached the best compromise between the usable range on the analogue volume control and audio quality. Keep individual programs at 100% so as to avoid several bit depth reductions in a row. Hopefully there won't be a noticeable loss in audio quality. Or if there is, then I'd probably start looking at getting a new amplifier that doesn't have as sensitive inputs, or better yet, has a way to adjust input gain.
@Lyman Enders Knowles pointed out in the comments that the issue of bit depth reduction does not apply to modern operating systems. Specifically, starting with Vista, Windows automatically upsamples all audio streams to 32-bit floating point before doing any attenuation. This means that, however low you turn the volume, there should be no effective loss of resolution. Still, eventually the audio has to be downconverted (to 16-bit, or 24-bit if the DAC supports that), which will introduce some quantisation errors. Also, attenuating first and amplifying later will increase the noise floor, so the advice to keep software levels at 100% and attenuate in hardware, as close to the end of your audio chain as possible, still stands.
This definitely depends on what hard and software you are using. I am using a computer connected by this audio cable with two 3.5 jack plugs with a receiver, and if I put the sound on low on my computer (software) and high on the receiver, I hear a lot of noise. This probably has to do with amplifying not just the sound but also the noise that is being picked up by different components. Whenever I do this, I also hear noise when I'm not playing music.
Of course, to derive optimal benefit from both your amplifier and soundcard (OS), you must first set the volume of your amplifier to the maximum level afforded by the topology, but below unacceptable or undesirable levels of distortion. (Unfortunately, many low-powered 'class-D' audio amplifiers perform acceptably to a degree, but anything beyond that point [often, anything beyond 33 or 50 percent beyond its rated maximum output], often results in audible levels of distortion [as well as compression of dynamics and other undesirable effetc]. If you happen to have an audio amplifier with very low distortion at its maximum rating [provided the rating is of a weighted standard and not useless, like unweighted and measured only at 1kHz], you may have the liberty to set the output of your audio amp at maximum [under clipping range, of course; 'maximum' being contingent on the voltage of the input'. I remember being able to do this with amplifiers from Denon, Adcom, Hafler, and Nikon, in times past.)
The output of audio circuitry in some motherboards leave a lot to desire. In dedicated soundcards, the selection of high-quality soundcards is limited. For integrated audio circuitry, I advise selecting a volume level of no more than 2/3rds of the total range--and leaving it at that volume. (I know that is not scientific in its method, but from testing integrated outputs in many motherboards, I've noticed that distortion and other undesirable effects increase considerably as the output of the circuit approaches its maximum. Limiting the 'OS' level to 2/3rds (or 66%, or for the benefit of brevity and an easy to remember number, 70 [on a scale of 1 to 100; closer to 66% would be 66 on a scale of 1 to 100]) has served me well (while foregoing the need to perform exhaustive tests).
P.S. For the benefit of the initiated (or obsessive-compulsive)--and before an audiophile or engineer goes on a diatribe--I am well aware of the fact that setting the slider at 2/3rds level or the approximate 66 on a scale of 1 to 100 does NOT represent an actual output level of 66% of the total [the actual output will be lower], but it is a quick approach to obtaining an approximation of the cleanest output available from a motherboard's integral audio circuitry.P.P.S. The information provided assumes analog circuitry. If you are using digital circuity (SPDIF, Optical, other similar), you may set the soundcard ('OS') level to maximum with little risk of noticing a difference in the quality of the output from the audio circuity.
Some audiophiles will tell you that once you get the hardware you want to have it, you will never need to touch it again, except to adjust the volume... others will say that software adjustments are better...
When you send an audio signal through a chain of volume knobs (of any kind: analog, digital, physical, software), set each one as loud as you can without clipping or distorting. Otherwise, you needlessly decrease the signal's dynamic range (aka number of bits, aka quietness of hiss). Use only the last knob to adjust the volume of the signal exiting the chain. That optimizes quality, for anything from a laptop videogame to a live transatlantic symphony orchestra broadcast.
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