I get the feeling that the sound bursts occur when enemies stream in the player’s vicinity – tanks and hunters in particular. It almost always seems to be followed by the distant thumping of a tank or the whirring of a nearby hunter that haven’t been alerted to your presence yet. Correlation isn’t causation, but I’ve successfully replicated this numerous times now.
Glitches like these intrigue me since I’m an audio engineer in my profession (though not a programmer, mind), so fwiw, my hypothesis is that the corresponding sound file(s) is sometimes loaded immediately at an enemy spawn-in/stream-in request, before the NPC logic knows the exact spawn point (i.e. distance, position in relation to the player, and possibly other sound-altering variables), causing the raw file to be loaded at full volume without ambient adjustments (amplitude, reverberance, echo etc). As soon as the absolute parameters have been determined, playback is abruptly halted and restarted with the proper values applied, causing it to sound like a few milliseconds of loud static.
A decoding glitch is possible but unlikely, since it’s not actual static and the decoder needs to be told to load a specific file for a reason. I don’t know what type of encoding is used in GZ, but I’m willing to bet that it’s either Ogg or (more likely) Opus, and considering how well behaved the latter codec is even under duress, not to mention the amount of documentation available for open-source codecs, sound issues like this shouldn’t happen.
Edit: I just wanted so say that I am in awe of the people responsible for the sound design of this game. It honestly puts most AAA games to shame. The mixing is fantastic, weapons and explosions sound deep and burly yet the soundscape never feels cluttered.
This being purely a sound issue (as it manifest as sound) makes sense to me. My initial thought was too many sounds playing at the same time and the engine having issues with it (see the eternal struggle of PUBG sound). But on the other hand it happens even in very quiet locations.
At any rate, these burst do not have any resemblance to actual game sounds for me. A mere lack of volume attenuation and location properties does not seem plausible to my ears. Or would you say that what we hear indeed is massive clipping due to missing environmental normalization?
I figured a while ago that the static sound must be the same as the one from the tv’s we encounter in the world. Note that you always seem to hear it when you approach houses. Lately I’ve been starting to hear that beeping too, from the PSA on some tv’s…
I have the same issue, can be very annoying when volume is pretty high. Hope they can get it fixed for next patch. I use the motherboard internal sound device. No other sound problems in other games. Mobo: Asus Z170-A with i7 6700K.
It might sound the same, but the complete randomness indicates rather that it is most likely caused by a bug in the game’s sound engine or any of the soundfiles of the game.
Nice post, as good a theory as any. It sounds like data being improperly converted to audio to me not as a peaked out sound effect but that’s just my ears talking.
To some of the comments I get the sound as much in the middle of nowhere as near any structures. I think a lot of the crashing and problems are related to enemy spawning in and out though just from observation. It’s all kind of speculation on my part I guess driven by the desire to find a solution so I can play it.
As to the sound design of the game it is truly marvelous. The sounds the robot makes are horrifying. The gunshots are perfect. The Tank’s sounds paralyzed me with fear on my 5.1 system the first time one came near me over a ridge. I just heard the thunderous steps and then those awful beeps followed by the trilling sonar or whatever it is meant to be. The ambient sounds are so realistic that, myself living in the lush country, it has at times been hard to tell if it’s really the water, wind and birds outside or in the game.
That brings me to another supposition which is that there are a lot of DSP effects in use and the noise bursts could be due to an improper gain applied at certain times or during the initialization of certain DSP effects which could point again to INTERPOL’s theorizing that the proper levels aren’t getting set in time directly after a spawn. I have also witnessed defects in the DSP system whereas the reverb, reflections and such are set way too high to the point of distortion.
Yeah, maybe I’m just overthinking it. Totally forgot about the TV static sound effect, but in my defense (for me) it still usually manifests out in the open, far away from any TVs, and in 90% of the cases is followed by machine sound effects.
I’m 99.997% certain it was introduced with the October update. Of course, it can be dependent on system specs/performance or something so it could have been there for others earlier. But not for me.
Audio goes through a pretty decent high power hi-fi sound system here and the first time I heard that sound I seriously thought for a split second that I blew my amplifier.
Which, by the way, I actually managed to do in the past by brainlessly plugging in a microphone without turning the (high) volume down (that one time).
That was a very similar hair raising, teeth grinding, horribly miserable sound that marked the end of my beautiful Heathkit AA-1600 power amplifier. It was sort of a “traumatic” experience and it still makes me sad when I think about it. So I can’t imagine I would have missed it beforehand.
In my case the little issue started after the August update, Iirc. At least I remember talking with a friend about what’s good/bad about GenZ and I said that this “new” occasional white noise burst here and there was a bit game breaking or better shaking…
Meanwhile it’s reduced to a little annoyance, I nearly don’t hear it anymore. It’s just like in those houses where the opening door to the dining room crashes that lamp on the sideboard. At the beginning I nearly jumped out of the chair… - every time… - but now…
Yeah … that lamp caused several skipping heart beats. My goodness, the first time that happened, I sincerely thought something went through the window here …
This looks similar to my experience. I always get the feeling that when these sounds occur, an enemy of some sort has spawned in the vicinity of me. Almost all the time I hear it, and scout around for a bit, there’s an enemy around.
I continue to be sure that it is related to enemies being spawned in and especially when there are errors in their spawning. Enough time in the game and you notice when and where enemies spawn in the map and under what circumstances. When enemies appear when/where they should I don’t tend to hear the noise burst. When I am some place/time when they are supposed to spawn but do not appear I often hear the burst. Memory violation crashes occur within minutes of it almost invariably for me.
Randomly when I start my game my audio makes static sounds whenever a more intensive sound is played such as explosions and gunfire. This doesn’t always happen and won’t just randomly start happening mid-game it only happens when I start a game and won’t go away until the game is restarted but a lot of the time I still hear it after I have restarted.
