Sound FXs seem disconnected

[fishcakes]

I've been playing around with sound, looking at other peoples scenes as well as trying things out on my own. The problem I'm finding is the jarring disconnect between sounds and what my eyes are seeing. They never seem to match up in any convincing way. I'm talking specifically sex sounds such as wet sloppy insertion sound FX and groan/moan effects. I'm never convinced the sounds are coming from the actual people... it reminds me of the English dubbed European porn from the '80s! Kind of funny, but a bit of a turn-off. Personally, I find the disconnect very distracting and a real buzz killer. To the point where I prefer not having any sex sounds at all.

I've yet to find a scene that manages to do it well enough. In a perfect world, I shouldn't even be thinking about the sound, and just enjoying the scene - it should just sound natural and believable. At first, I thought it was simply a case of sound samples not being good enough. But I've looked at scenes with very high-quality samples when listened to in isolation, but in-scene, the disconnect is quite bad. At least to my ears/eyes.

Am I alone here? Are there some scenes people can suggest that do it really well that maybe I haven't seen? It would be awesome if I could find a scene that nails it ( excuse the pun! ) to give me hope that its possible to create sex scenes that blend sound and visuals together naturally.

Thoughts?

 

[MacGruber]

The reason is that many scenes play some sound and do some animation, but these have no relation to each other. If the audio is just one long file that is played, it can also de-sync from the scene if your PC (or the creators PC who made the scene!) has trouble keeping up with physics updates.

You might want to try the Life04 demo scene included with my Life plugin, though. You very likely have it already, since the plugin is used for VaMs default scene nowadays. With Life animation is generated by breathing audio, rather than the other way around. Sound effects for slaps, bed squeaks and lube is also synced. The plugin can be a bit intimidating to setup, but there is also a tutorial available.

 

[fishcakes]

Thanks MG. I have played around with Life a bit. To be honest, its not really a problem with syncing. Even when the timings are spot on, I still don't really feel like the sounds I'm hearing are coming from the people in the scene. Although that could be down to my quirky perceptions more than anything else.

Tell me, does Life work with Timeline? The demo looks like it uses VAM animations which I don't like to use.

 

[MacGruber]

Life uses its own specialized internal system to drive breathing animation. For the "thrust" part of the animation the demo uses AnimationPatterns, but you can also have it drive an VariableTrigger atom, which in turn can connect to anything in VaM that exposes a float parameter. That includes Timeline.

For the next version of Life, which is planned to release soon, you will be able to connect directly to anything without the need for the VariableTrigger atom. I have integrated the LogicBricks tech into Life already, but I still need to build new demo scenes. There is also now a specialized trigger module that will replace the awkward old ThrustSFX module and allow you to trigger anything in sync with thrust animation, including SoundFX.

 

[hazmhox]

This is funny that you post that, because yesterday I added this thread in VAM suggestions.
The fact that you are paying attention to that is a really great thing !

First, read the thread, you'll see why this perception of depth and location is kinda broken. Most of the creators are often setting a wrong configuration of the attenuation.

Second, if we assume that the moan voice / sfx are top notch (which in most cases isn't the case). 95% of the time, the issue about realism and a nice depth perception is voice effects like reverb or echo. In a normal room, every surface reflects sound, and you should not get a "dry sound" like if the surroundings had not impact whatsoever on what you hear.

Third, quality plays a huge role. And as I was saying, most of the time, sounds used are not that great. White noise, clicks and hisses... all the things that reminds you unconsciously that this a recording and not a real person.

You can checkout 2069, the first story I released. I tried to get a nice voice, but it is heavily modified to make it feel like a cyber-girl. Attenuation was not really well setup and I might update it at some point... but I think that compared to most of the things I tried it is not bad at all.

And I'm also working on VAMMoan which is a plugin dedicated to moan sounds aiming to correct all these issues. You can find a beta on the scripting discussion on discord.

Sound is complex subject. I cannot even start to imagine how much time MacGruber spent to get Life as good as it is. Nailing the sound in a scene is time consuming and needs a bit of knowledge... and not everyone wants to spend time on that part. Imho, it's a loss for their scene, because it could reach a whole other dimension if it was well implemented... but well, what can you do

 

[MacGruber]

(...) Even when the timings are spot on, I still don't really feel like the sounds I'm hearing are coming from the people in the scene. Although that could be down to my quirky perceptions more than anything else. (...)

Make sure to use headphones (or a VR headset) and the AudioSource you are using has "Spatialize" enabled and "Spatial Blend" is set to 1.0. That will allow your brain to locate the sound source in 3D space. Also the 3D position of the AudioSource in VaM needs to be somewhere reasonable. As far as I understand a Spatializer works by applying not just volume adjustments between left and right channels (known as good old "3D sound") but also doing some magic with timing and frequency, "simulating" sound waves around your head and ears. Works surprisingly well, but only with headphones.

 

[ClockwiseSilver]

I've been playing around with sound, looking at other peoples scenes as well as trying things out on my own. The problem I'm finding is the jarring disconnect between sounds and what my eyes are seeing. They never seem to match up in any convincing way. I'm talking specifically sex sounds such as wet sloppy insertion sound FX and groan/moan effects. I'm never convinced the sounds are coming from the actual people... it reminds me of the English dubbed European porn from the '80s! Kind of funny, but a bit of a turn-off. Personally, I find the disconnect very distracting and a real buzz killer. To the point where I prefer not having any sex sounds at all.

I've yet to find a scene that manages to do it well enough. In a perfect world, I shouldn't even be thinking about the sound, and just enjoying the scene - it should just sound natural and believable. At first, I thought it was simply a case of sound samples not being good enough. But I've looked at scenes with very high-quality samples when listened to in isolation, but in-scene, the disconnect is quite bad. At least to my ears/eyes.

Am I alone here? Are there some scenes people can suggest that do it really well that maybe I haven't seen? It would be awesome if I could find a scene that nails it ( excuse the pun! ) to give me hope that its possible to create sex scenes that blend sound and visuals together naturally.

Thoughts?

(Resurrecting an old thread )

You aren't alone . I'm not sure which spatializer (that's the bit that emulates positional audio) VaM 1.0 is using, but I agree that sound never seems quite localized. The Oculus spatializer works really well, but I don't know off the top of my head if that can be used in a SteamVR/OpenVR application (and that could be what's used in VaM for all I know, but not sure why the positioning sounds off). It might be possible to tinker with these (see the last post in this thread). Not sure if AudioSettings is exposed but could be fun to play with!

 

[hazmhox]

(Resurrecting an old thread )

You aren't alone . I'm not sure which spatializer (that's the bit that emulates positional audio) VaM 1.0 is using, but I agree that sound never seems quite localized. The Oculus spatializer works really well, but I don't know off the top of my head if that can be used in a SteamVR/OpenVR application (and that could be what's used in VaM for all I know, but not sure why the positioning sounds off). It might be possible to tinker with these (see the last post in this thread). Not sure if AudioSettings is exposed but could be fun to play with!

I think you may have not read the thread I was refering to in VAM Suggestions.
You can add whatever spatializer you want... if attenuation / propagation setup are bad, audio spatialization will sound bad.

If you check the thread, you'll see the issue I'm talking about with the default value at 500. Now, take any scene you like where you find the sound not well spatialized and check either : audio sources or head audio sources on the characters. If any of the sources have a max distance value above 10, you will have a poor spatialization feeling.

To avoid that, clever UX and QoL on audio source has to be made to make the user/creator understand how to properly setup an audio source.
Without that, you can have the best audio implementation ever... even with raytraced reflections and propagation... if your source is configured badly, it won't change anything : )

 

[fishcakes]

The thing is, you can make the technical side of things perfect, regards attenuation / propagation / spatialization, but none of that means much if the sounds themselves do not match the scene properly. As I said in my first post, the result always sounds like dubbed european porn from the 70's! Even with the best voice actors, its very difficult to make sounds that actually sound like they are coming from the actors in the scene.

Firstly, making a voice that suits how the person looks is tricky. Everything might be perfect, but if the voice doesn't sound as you might expect when looking at the persons face/body? As an extreme example, having a quiet cute voice coming out of a 6'+ girl with a mature chiselled face is not right, no matter how well you set it all up.

Secondly, making sound match every nuance of the animation. Every expression change. Every body movement. Its not something that can be done easily.

Right now im definitely leaning towards not putting sound in my scenes. Bad sound is worse than no sound, when we are talking about porn. I find its a real buzzkill, not only in any of my attempts, but pretty much in any scene ive looked at so far. Not meaning to critisise other creators - some of you have done an amazing job with the tools you have. But I just don't believe it's possible to bolt sound onto a sex scene and do it 100% convincingly. In the 70's and 80's lots of european porn was dubbed using english voice actors - and they never managed to get that right.

 

[ClockwiseSilver]

I think you may have not read the thread I was refering to in VAM Suggestions.
You can add whatever spatializer you want... if attenuation / propagation setup are bad, audio spatialization will sound bad.

If you check the thread, you'll see the issue I'm talking about with the default value at 500. Now, take any scene you like where you find the sound not well spatialized and check either : audio sources or head audio sources on the characters. If any of the sources have a max distance value above 10, you will have a poor spatialization feeling.

To avoid that, clever UX and QoL on audio source has to be made to make the user/creator understand how to properly setup an audio source.
Without that, you can have the best audio implementation ever... even with raytraced reflections and propagation... if your source is configured badly, it won't change anything : )

I did and I agree with it! But I think the localization might be a separate, if related, issue. I feel like sound location is off, even after adjusting the audiosource (or using MacGruber's excellent attenuation script). That could definitely just be me.

 

[fishcakes]

Brown chicken, brown cow... Still watch the old euro stuff sometimes.

One man's trash.

To be clear - nothing wrong with old euro porn.... as long as its muted!