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Let's talk sound design ! I think general is the best forum for that, if you think it should move, feel free to move it elsewhere 
I decided to create this thread to give you a few tips and hints about sound since this is my field, and well, sharing knowledge is always welcome, don't you think ?
So... I've tried a ton of content since I know VaM. And almost like any type of media that include sound, I feel like sound is left behind -as usual- in term of importance and amount of work put into it.
And the fact is : the difference between a scene with a little bit of effort put in the sound. And a scene with no effort whatsoever makes a huge difference. If you try the Demo scenes of my plugin. The nightclub part feels alive with only three sounds and a bit of effects on them. And the scene has nothing, just plain dark, a character and a few light effects... and still you feel like the scene is alive even with a character that has no animation.
If you take the opposite side, which is not putting a bit of effort in the sound, it has the opposite effect. In the case of VaM, i've tried a few scenes that are pretty well animated. But the sound is really really terrible. Poor voices with a ton of white noise, sound effects that crackles / pop. On me ( but maybe that's because I do pay a bit too much attention to the sound ) it is everything but arousing... so unless your goal is NOT to excite the persons who are going to try your scene, that's a bummer.
Also, you're here and asking yourself why I'm talking about that... you just want to create a good fap scene with a few dirty sounds, it works for you. Then, you can skip the rest. The thread is more based on immersive setups. ( but seriously, even for quick fap scenes, you could improve the sound )
The tips
Do not use mp3
mp3s sucks. It works very well to distribute music, but using it in an engine is not recommended at all. The way mp3 is encoded create a tiny bit of silence at the beginning and the end of the sound. It is going to pop if you're trying to loop the sound. And for another reason, we have way better format with way better quality now.
Use ogg or wav
If you need to reduce the size of your audio content, go for ogg. It doesn't have the same issue when you want to loop a sound. Ogg can have a performance impact on the engine because it needs to decompress it. But to be honest, all middleware on the market uses ogg.
If you have just a few sounds and not really big, go for wav, this is the best quality you can get. If your scene is huge and has a ton of sounds, i would suggest to use ogg anyway. Even if you want to get the best quality possible, you don't want to load 500mb of audio in memory.
Optimize and create your sound depending on its use in the scene
Resample the sound. If your sound does not need to be in 48khz because it sounds really good in 22.5khz, do it. It's gonna be lighter on the engine. I'm not gonna explain you in details the concept behind the Nyquist frequency, but if you're interested you can check wikipedia.
Use mono for positional audio. Use stereo for audio that should play globally. Never use stereo on positional audio sources.
Normalize your sounds
In Unity or UE4, you can control easily how your sound is played (volume, attenuation etc). In the case of VaM not so much. So, gather all your sound and make them sound properly together. Choose a maximum output volume and normalize all assets to be homogeneous. Don't normalize at crazy volumes, peaking at -3db is enough. If you know how to measure LUFS, you could monitor the scene and try to get between -16db and -12db LUFS.
Create a scene with your sound... in your scene
That's a strange sentence. You've created or gathered your 3D assets, sound assets, created your characters, started your animations and staged everything. Now, save this. And just sit there, close your eyes and listen to your scene. Can you picture and tell where your are and what's happening ? If not... your sound is not good enough. A good sound design is something that allows the player to tell where he is by just listening to the sounds.
You don't have to be overkill and spent 10 hours on the sound. Just a few clean sounds found on freesound.org, a bit of clean setup, and your scene will be really cool.
Let me take an example : you did a sex scene in a garden behind a house in the suburbs. Suburbs, garden, outside, ok... let's just find a dog barking, a few kids playing in the distance, a car passing by the house and a global sound like car traffic in the distance. Now you got something that feels right.
I guess that's all for now... feel free to ask about sound. I will gladly answer and update this post if you want.
Cheers guys and gals \o/
I decided to create this thread to give you a few tips and hints about sound since this is my field, and well, sharing knowledge is always welcome, don't you think ?
So... I've tried a ton of content since I know VaM. And almost like any type of media that include sound, I feel like sound is left behind -as usual- in term of importance and amount of work put into it.
And the fact is : the difference between a scene with a little bit of effort put in the sound. And a scene with no effort whatsoever makes a huge difference. If you try the Demo scenes of my plugin. The nightclub part feels alive with only three sounds and a bit of effects on them. And the scene has nothing, just plain dark, a character and a few light effects... and still you feel like the scene is alive even with a character that has no animation.
If you take the opposite side, which is not putting a bit of effort in the sound, it has the opposite effect. In the case of VaM, i've tried a few scenes that are pretty well animated. But the sound is really really terrible. Poor voices with a ton of white noise, sound effects that crackles / pop. On me ( but maybe that's because I do pay a bit too much attention to the sound ) it is everything but arousing... so unless your goal is NOT to excite the persons who are going to try your scene, that's a bummer.
Also, you're here and asking yourself why I'm talking about that... you just want to create a good fap scene with a few dirty sounds, it works for you. Then, you can skip the rest. The thread is more based on immersive setups. ( but seriously, even for quick fap scenes, you could improve the sound
)The tips
Do not use mp3
mp3s sucks. It works very well to distribute music, but using it in an engine is not recommended at all. The way mp3 is encoded create a tiny bit of silence at the beginning and the end of the sound. It is going to pop if you're trying to loop the sound. And for another reason, we have way better format with way better quality now.
Use ogg or wav
If you need to reduce the size of your audio content, go for ogg. It doesn't have the same issue when you want to loop a sound. Ogg can have a performance impact on the engine because it needs to decompress it. But to be honest, all middleware on the market uses ogg.
If you have just a few sounds and not really big, go for wav, this is the best quality you can get. If your scene is huge and has a ton of sounds, i would suggest to use ogg anyway. Even if you want to get the best quality possible, you don't want to load 500mb of audio in memory.
Optimize and create your sound depending on its use in the scene
Resample the sound. If your sound does not need to be in 48khz because it sounds really good in 22.5khz, do it. It's gonna be lighter on the engine. I'm not gonna explain you in details the concept behind the Nyquist frequency, but if you're interested you can check wikipedia.
Use mono for positional audio. Use stereo for audio that should play globally. Never use stereo on positional audio sources.
Normalize your sounds
In Unity or UE4, you can control easily how your sound is played (volume, attenuation etc). In the case of VaM not so much. So, gather all your sound and make them sound properly together. Choose a maximum output volume and normalize all assets to be homogeneous. Don't normalize at crazy volumes, peaking at -3db is enough. If you know how to measure LUFS, you could monitor the scene and try to get between -16db and -12db LUFS.
Create a scene with your sound... in your scene
That's a strange sentence. You've created or gathered your 3D assets, sound assets, created your characters, started your animations and staged everything. Now, save this. And just sit there, close your eyes and listen to your scene. Can you picture and tell where your are and what's happening ? If not... your sound is not good enough. A good sound design is something that allows the player to tell where he is by just listening to the sounds.
You don't have to be overkill and spent 10 hours on the sound. Just a few clean sounds found on freesound.org, a bit of clean setup, and your scene will be really cool.
Let me take an example : you did a sex scene in a garden behind a house in the suburbs. Suburbs, garden, outside, ok... let's just find a dog barking, a few kids playing in the distance, a car passing by the house and a global sound like car traffic in the distance. Now you got something that feels right.
I guess that's all for now... feel free to ask about sound. I will gladly answer and update this post if you want.
Cheers guys and gals \o/
