Matthew Kerswill
- wildcat
- wildcat
- Africa/Johannesburg
- Yes
- No
MC-1037![[Mojang] Nathan Adams](../../../data/assets/gravatar/dinnerbone.png){kind=small}
- Windows 7 Professional 64-bit,
- I have observed the issue described in this report while using many different Java versions (both 32-bit and 64-bit) over the course of more than a year of playing Minecraft (since 1.7.3) and on two different computers.
- Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
,- I have observed the issue described in this report while using many different Java versions (both 32-bit and 64-bit) over the course of more than a year of playing Minecraft (since 1.7.3) and on two different computers.
- Windows 7 Professional 64-bit.
- I have observed the issue described in this report while using many different Java versions (both 32-bit and 64-bit) over the course of more than a year of playing Minecraft (since 1.7.3) and on two different computers.
The new rain sound effects introduced in 16w04a are not spatialized. Details and a solution are provided below.
Expected behavior
In previous versions of Minecraft, the impression I get is that rain sound effects are generated in the environment surrounding the player. The positions of these sound effects correspond to locations where the rain is actually hitting the ground. The result of this system is a unique, dynamic, and quite impressive rain soundscape in which the player can hear whereabouts the rain is falling.
Observed behavior in 16w04a
The rain sound effects no longer sound like they're positioned in the environment. It sounds like it's raining in the center of my head. The volume is equal in the left and right channels at all times.
To be clear (regarding the actual sound effects themselves): I like the new gentler rain sound effects. The problem is the lack of spatialization on those sound effects.
The cause & the solution
The new rain sound effects are stereo sound files. OpenAL only spatializes mono sound files. You must convert the new rain sound files to mono to solve the problem. I have confirmed that this solution works by creating a resource pack that contains mono versions of the new rain sound effect files.
Related issues
The rain sound effects are not the only sounds in Minecraft that lack spatialization. The cat sound effects (meows, hisses, etc.) also suffer from this problem. I originally noticed this when cats were first introduced into the game but I just accepted it. Now, I have investigated and it turns out that the cat sound effects are also stereo sound files.
Please consider going through all the sound files in the game and converting them to mono. (This obviously doesn't apply to music or any other sounds that are not meant to be positioned in the environment.)
Just for interest's sake: A
nnote about HRTFsMinecraft uses OpenAL Soft, which is capable of applying head-related transfer functions (HRTF) when rendering stereo audio for headphones. HRTFs can be enabled with a simple config tweak: Create a text file called alsoft.ini inside your %APPDATA% folder and add the line hrtf=true to it. Now, when playing Minecraft with stereo headphones, you can enjoy wonderful 3D audio. You'll be able to perceive sounds coming from behind you, above you, and below you.
The rain (in versions before 16w04a) sounds particularly impressive with HRTFs enabled. It would be a real shame to lose this so please fix the problem I'm reporting here.
Fantastic! I look forward to testing it. Is there one of those weekly builds I can try or is 1.4.3 coming soon?
I can also confirm this issue exists in 1.4.3 pre-release.
I've tested 1.4.3 and I can confirm that looking up and down is now applying the expected changes in sound directions. Sounds great!
In case you're interested, I recently asked for help on the Minecraft forums regarding this issue:
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1907764-using-a-different-openal-driver/
Many thanks to Grum (Erik Broes) for the work-around steps. I don't actually have the problem being discussed here but this issue is not the only case where a user might want to use a different OpenAL library. My case is that I have a superior OpenAL implementation called Rapture3D that I want to use.
I think that the best solution to this problem would be to provide the player with the option to change the OpenAL device in the game's options menu. The way I see it, it would look something like this...
There would be a button called "OpenAL audio device..." in the options menu. When you click it, it would open a new screen that looks similar to the language selection screen.
The first item in the list would be the default and it would be called something like "Use the OpenAL device provided by Minecraft (recommended)". This option would be for using the OpenAL library contained within the lwjgl-platform-2.9.0-natives-windows.jar file.
The rest of the items in the list would be the names of other OpenAL devices that are available on the user's system (if any). On Windows, these libraries can be found in System32 and SysWOW64. As far as I know, the OpenAL API provides the ability for a programmer to get a list of devices available on the system, so hopefully this wouldn't be too hard. Also many other games that use OpenAL provide this sort of selection box in their options menus.
http://connect.creativelabs.com/openal/OpenAL%20Wiki/Enumeration%20with%20OpenAL%20on%20Windows.aspx
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Alternative solutions would be:
In my opinion, the ideal solution to this problem would be to provide the player with the option to change the OpenAL device in the game's options menu. The way I see it, it would look something like this...
There would be a button called "OpenAL audio device..." in the options menu. When you click it, it would open a new screen that looks similar to the language selection screen.
The first item in the list would be the default and it would be called something like "Use the OpenAL device provided by Minecraft (recommended)". This option would be for using the OpenAL library contained within the lwjgl-platform-2.9.0-natives-windows.jar file.
The rest of the items in the list would be the names of other OpenAL devices that are available on the user's system (if any). On Windows, these libraries can be found in System32 and SysWOW64. As far as I know, the OpenAL API provides the ability for a programmer to get a list of devices available on the system, so hopefully this wouldn't be too hard. Also many other games that use OpenAL provide this sort of selection box in their options menus.
http://connect.creativelabs.com/openal/OpenAL%20Wiki/Enumeration%20with%20OpenAL%20on%20Windows.aspx
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Alternative solutions would be:
It's actually not the hand position that changes - it's the field of view that gets slightly narrower. Indeed, it is a feature.
This issue seems to be fixed now... I think. Can anyone confirm? I need confirmation because Mojang doesn't seem to have even acknowledged this bug report yet and I'm worried that maybe something changed in my Minecraft installation that accidentally fixed it somehow.
Do all snapshots for 1.9 share the same sound library? I ask because now this issue seems to be fixed for all 1.9 snapshots.
By the way, the cat meowing sounds that I mentioned in the 'Related Issues' section are still stereo sound files and therefore are unfortunately still not spatialized.