Cfs aircraft sounds

aleatorylamp

aleatorylamp

Charter Member
Sonorous question

Hello Folks, Hello Smilo, hello Ivan.

There is something about aircraft sounds that I have always found strange, but never noticed consciously until Smilo pointed it out and started experimenting to see exactly what´s going on.

Using the same alias to call an aircraft sound, there is a difference between how CFS1 .air files and FS98 .air files present the sound change for accelleration from idle to maximum RPM, and of course the other way round, for decelleration.

It is much more gradual and begins sooner for FS98 .air files than for CFS1 ones. The latter will not change the sound at best until after 40% throttle with an FS98 stock aircraft sound, and up to 70% with a CFS1 stock aircraft sound.

I was originally using an FS98 .air file from an old Ju-52/3m model, before making a new CFS1 .air file. The difference is clearly noticeable - the two .air files deal with low RPM sounds very differently.

In the event of absence of Record 505 for CFS1 engines, the Hp setting in record 500 applies directly to the sound and engine power, but if Record 505 exists, Hp is calculated from the engine parameters entered, and the resulting Hp seems to regulate sound in a different way, possibly ignoring lower RPM values except idle power.

I wonder if anyone has found how this can be corrected.
Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
greetings all,
i figure the best way to start this thread
is with the above post by Aleatorylamp.
it, pretty much, states the cfs aircraft sound dilemma.
with any luck at all, we will be able to solve
the problem in a relatively short period of time.

i think i'll start by asking this convoluted question;
have you ever noticed,
when you start a stock cfs aircraft
and throttle up from idle,
there is an inordinate amount of time
spent increasing the engine rpms
before there is any change
in the sound pitch above idle?

it's true, i've checked them all.
generally, the sound doesn't change
until throttle percent is above 40%.

sorry folks, this just isn't realistic
and i intend on finding a way to fix it.
 
Record 500: "Maximum HorsePower (CFS AI sets sound level)"

Hello Smilo,
After your e-mail notification relative to your trial
modifications on Record 500, in the parameter
"Maximum Horsepower (CFS AI sets sound level)",
I thought "well, this presumably won´t alter engine
power except for AI aircraft, and if interpreted correctly,
will only change engine sound behaviour on flyable aircraft".

And it does!
Smilo, that was a great idea!
Here we were all busily putting in the correct Hp
for our aircraft engines, when the power calculation
coming from here really only happens in an FS98 .airfile,
and in CFS1 applies only to AI aircraft Hp.

So, I radically increased the entry for the P51d,
from 1590 to 3590 and it only made things worse.

Sound changed at 96% percent throttle - Well...
obviously going the other way will be interesting...

So I radically reduced it to 100, and lo and behold!,
sound started changing as of about 10% Throttle.

:medals: Again, Smilo, that was a great idea! :icon29::icon29:

Of course at full throttle, RPM and Power was the same
as with the 1590 Hp setting, but the tone of the sound
was noticeably higher pitched. However, this could be cured
by using a lower frequency tone for the ne4.wav and xne4.wav
sound files.

I don´t know if it could be corrected by using the "rparameter"
lines in the Sound.cfg. If that worked, one wouldn´t have to use
a different sound .wav file. One would have to try that out first...

So, this .air file parameter in Record 500 shouldn´t be called
"Maximum Horsepower" at all. It should be called something like
"Engine RPM starting sound scale position."

Quite a different matter would be to see how this affects AI Aircraft
performance, because with their simplified FD, they might use that
parameter also for their power, and thus, the AI P51d would probably
need the 1590 Hp there. But that would be no problem, as an AI aircraft
has its own .air file anyway.

So, further investigation would be necessary, because you can´t have a
P51d sounding like a Cessna, can you? But it´s a first step, perhaps.

Update: There is another problem - RPM increases progressively up to about,
25%, where it seems to be reaching maximum frequency sound, and from then
on stops increasing, the sound staying the same all the way up to 100 %
Throttle. Obviously not good either!
What this "system" does is only lower the short range where there is a progressive
sound-pitch increase.
-Obviously further reasearch is needed!

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
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your results are, in deed, interesting.
this morning, i tried the same experiment
except, with the spit mkI.
sadly, i was unable to duplicate your results.
very strange, as i was a few days ago in the p-51.
what to do, except, clear the board and start over.

i decided to start by comparing the sound.cfg files
for each and every cfs stock aircraft.
oddly enough, with the exception of the wave file calls,
all of the aircraft.cfgs are the same.
with the exception of the p51d cfg
which adds additional high rpm wave file calls.
how weird is that?

during my run up from idle tests,
i noticed the pitch didn't change
until i approached the point
where the aircraft starts rolling.
sure, why not?
as i've said before,
nobody cares about low rpm sounds, right?
well, i do.

logically, the answer has to be within the sound.cfgs.
narrowing it down to the rparams and vparams entries.
from what i've read, the vparams is suppose to be rpms.
okay, fine...what kind of rpm is 0.271000, for example?
some algorithm to figure out?:banghead:
jeez, does anyone know the formula?

so now, as i try to come up with a work around,
the old memory banks kick in
and i remember a merlin sound package
by an old friend, MinuteMan.
just for the heck of it, download it
and plug it into the p51d.
check out the low rpm sound effects.
heck, plug it into the spit mkI.
have a look at the sound.cfg.
the rparams and vparams numbers are there.

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/local_links.php?catid=21

next step will be to check if it will work
for other wave sounds, like, say, a radial.

onward through the fog....
 
Last edited:
A different cause...

Hello Smilo,
I´ve downloaded the Merlin sounds, and they are really
very good - a lot of body - but the main thing, they
seem to be quite progressive!

In this case, my theory on the Record 500 Maximum Hp
setting would not apply at all. Perhaps it places the sound
scale, but won´t affect its range, so in this case it won´t
help us.

So, what is it, that´s going on with the normal sounds?
Why do they work so badly in CFS1 and so well in FS98?

So in CFS1 it seems to be a balancing act between the
frequencies of the .wav sounds themselves, and the
RPM parameters set into the sound.cfg, and it looks like
the Merlin Sound Set has been carefully fine-tuned to fit.

Looking at the numbers in the FS98 Sound.cfg and comparing
them to those in the CFS1 Sound.cfg with all those decimal
positions, I wonder... Even the whole numbers are totaly different.

One could of course experiment with the new Sound.cfg from the
Merlin Sounds, but using different, renamed sound .wav files and
see what happens.

All quite mysterious and confusing, I must say!
Hopefully we can progress a bit notwhithstanding!!

Update: I got interesting results using the Sound.cfg that came with
the Merlin sounds, but calling the Extra-300 .wav sounds (I was using
those because I thought they sounded a bit more like radials).

Now I´m getting quite good progressive sound. So it´s starting to look
like CFS1 engines really need quite a different way of balancing out the
4 .wav sounds compared to the usual default way we were mal-accustomed to!

An interesting exercise could be comparing the values of the Merlin Sound.cfg
to another one, for example the one from the P51d.
Strangely enough, the difference is greater in the volume parameters than in the
RPM parameters, and I can´t see a pattern to help discover what´s going on.

At least one thing is clear: MinuteMan has done a very good job!!

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
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i, too, had high hopes for the 505
Engine Power Sound Level? [HP] theory,
but, so far, it has not panned out.

seeing as how it does most of what i want,
i think i'll now turn to the merlin sound.cfg.
basically, i'll drop it into another sound folder,
do some editing to call different wave files
and then, see what happens.

keeping an open mind and crossing fingers for luck
 
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well, that was easy enough.
i just did the merlin sound.cfg swap
into the stock p47d sound folder
and renamed the wave entries
to match stock p47d interior waves.
so far, so good with lower rpm acceleration,
but, the higher rpms fade above 50% throttle.

am looking into it now....it's always somethin'
 
Hello Smilo,
I was just testing MinuteMan´s Sound.cfg with the Propliner
sounds by Tom Gibson, although those are really more fitting
for a DC4 or DC6. The sound progress and "distribution" however,
did seem to be a lot better all around.

The propliner radials are probably a bit too big and have an
excessively throaty sound.

Funnily enough, the Extra-300 sounds that I thought sounded
so good for radials with the default Sound .cfg, now sound
more like a Cessna at high revs.

Well, at least it seems we´re getting closer!
Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
do you have a link to the propliner sounds?
i'm curious how multi engine sounds are accomplished.
 
Old Propliner Sounds

Hello Smilo,
I finally got back in - the server was too busy for an hour.
The FS98 propliner sounds are from Flightsim.com, and
according to Tom Gibson´s California Classics Page,
there are quite a few of them available there.

The FS98 propliner sounds at Flightsim.com are:
bigbird98.zip
dc3sndpk.zip <<< this is the one I use
dc4sound.zip
dc6snd.zip
connesnd.zip
consnd.zip

The one I use, uses the default Cessna 182 Sound.cfg, so for
multi-engined aircraft sound configuration I believe this will not
be of much help to you.

The sounds themselves, may nevertheless be interesting!

I believe there is also one for the B-25 Mitchell and/or the
B26 Marauder.

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
P47d sounds with the Merlin Sound.sfg

Hello Smilo,
I was intrigued by what you said about the P47d max. rev sound fading
away, so I substituted the default Sound.cfg of the P47d for Minuteman10´s
Merlin sound.cfg, and substituted the Merlin Sound calls for the P47d ones
in the Config.

I noticed that the P47d has two high rev sound files called te4 and te4b,
with the same Sound.cfg entries, so I just duplicated the 4th sound file
in the Merlin Sound config, and added a "b" at the end of the name.

Then I renamed all the links to the files in the paragraphs, and the sound
works perfectly without fading away. It must be the second P47d sound
ending in "b" that avoids the fading away of the high rev sound.

Then, just to make sure the rest of the P47d´s sounds were complete and
worked as well, I also included the Startup and Shutdown in the Config and
made sure that those .wav sounds were in the sound folder.

I just thought this was very interesting.

Minuteman10´s Sound Config could deserve to be a Sticky, don´t you think?
...so everyone knows about it!

Anyway... Cheers!
Aleatorylamp
 
the merlin sound package sticky is done.
thank you, Stephan, for the suggestion.

i've spent several hours dissecting
and experimenting with the merlin sound.cfg.
mainly, trying to understand
the rparams and vparams entries.
more to the point, what do the codes mean?
basically, the vparams tell the filename wav
precisely when to increase and/or decrease
it's sound volume level at specific rpms.
in other words, when to fade in or out at what rpms.

you wouldn't want the idle sound
to be heard at full volume
at maximum rpms, would you?

as far as i can tell,
each vparams has a maximum
of eight entry sets with two numbers each.
the first, a six digit decimal less than 1.0.
i haven't done the math, but, as far as i can tell,
this number might be a gnats ass percentage of max rpm.
the second number is also a six digit decimal
with 100.000000 maximum and 0.000000 minimum volume

i don't really know why such accuracy is necessary,
i'll continue to look into it.
BUT, now, i understand that by lowering
the first vparams number in the first [SOUND_ENGINE] call,
engine sound pitch will start to increase at lower rpms.
ie, closer to idle.

needless to say, much work still needs to be done.

stay tuned for an explanation of rparams
that's the tricky one.

ps...at one point, i tried to substitute
rpms for the vparams six digit numbers
like it's done in an fs98 aircraft.cfg.
simply put, simple rpm entries don't work.
(at least, it didn't for me)
 
Hello Smilo,
Very interesting, your preliminary findings.
I have also wondered why six decimal places are needed, and
it´s the same in the different .cfg files for the newer simulators too.
OK, whole numbers won´t do, but I would have thought one
decimal place should be enough! Anyway...
Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
Thanks for the email, Aleatorylamp.

I still haven't had a chance to experiment with it because now I have no running CFS machines at all!
Neither one has worthy speakers anyway. Neither set of speakers cost over $10 when they were new and that was one or two decades ago.
I know the package is one of the FS98 SDKs, but which one? I am hoping that if I can find a host site, they will have some further documentation.

When this discussion about sound files started, I was thinking that this would be a great opportunity to rework some aircraft sounds to match the equipment that they actually used: An inertia starter sounds very different than the standard electric starter. Perhaps we can even put in a Coffman Cartridge starter?
One of the reasons I never released my Ohka 11 is because I never got the sounds to work and had no idea where to begin but perhaps this will solve that problem as well.

- Ivan.
 
as i see it, the problem with the fs98 sdk
is that cfs engines are much more detailed,
which, in turn, causes problems
with fs98 aircraft sounds when run in cfs.
of course, for most of us, it doesn't matter,
because we just hop in and go,
not paying much attention to whether the sounds
are realistic or not...for most of us it's close enough.

i've spent the past few weeks,
perusing flight sim site libraries,
searching for sounds, mainly, radials.
the cool thing is, waves from newer sims will play in cfs.
they just need to be properly configured or called.
as fs98 is limited compared to cfs, so is cfs limited
when compared to newer sims...captain obvious.
the trick is figuring out how to make it work.
did you know, cfs will play a stereo wave?
i didn't. this might open the door
for more accurate multiple engine sounds.
speaking of which, there are issues
with multi engines i'll talk about later.

suffice to say, there is a whole "new" field
of cfs endeavor to be taken up here.
the question is, do i have the patience and desire?
that remains to be seen...for now, i'm into it.
the thing is, most if not all of the past masters
were cfs2 and fs9 guys and they are long gone.
so, i can't ask them if i can use their wave files
or ask for help figuring out how to configure them.
not to mention, i get to learn how to use
the sound editing program, audacity.
which in turn, begs another question,
do YOU have the patience and desire to listen?

for starters, might i recommend head phones.
you don't have to go out and spend a lot,
but, remember, you get what you pay for.
...and you won't bother the family late at night,
unless you crank them up full blast like i do.

okay, about inertia and shotgun starters.
i think they are doable, but first, two things,
quality recordings need to be found
and a way needs to be figured out
how to extend the duration of the cfs start sequence.
(did i see it somewhere in an air file?)
especially, that sputter and spitting at the beginning
when the engine just starts to catch.
i gotta tell ya...i love that sound.
it gives me goose bumps up my back.

for a little hollywood dramatization;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwYzAF9bZLI

or, the newer version;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQo-KzhPv1Y

and one more;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65qrzgbTTcQ

finally, yes, i've been thinking about the Ohka 11.
there's a whole other kettle of fish.
...carried to altitude in the belly of a betty,
with distant multi radial sounds.
dropped like a bomb,
we have the bomb release sound.
flies like a glider,
we have the wind sounds.
then the rockets are ignited.
that sound may take some searching.
all in all, it could be an interesting project.
doable, but, i make no promises.
 
Hello Smilo,
Sounds like an interesting and useful new path for research and activity.
Let me know how I can cooperate.

Granted, given the more rudimentary aspects of FS98, their SDK would be
simpler too. I thought that some of the concepts would apply, but it appears
that their adaptation appears to be a bit more elaborate than I expected.

I don´t know which FS98SDK version I have here, but it is from 1998.
I have also got the FS98PanelSDK, that refers to panels and gauges only,
but I expect it would be included in the other one.

I was trying to prolong the sound of the engine firing up, and appended the
wav. sound with a few more explosions (I have CoolEdit 2000 which is great
for playing around with sound files, but I understand that Audacity is
excellent as well). However, this simple mod. of lengthening of the .wav file
didn´t work, and even took away the single firing sound, so obviously, the
way to do it is different...

Anyway, I´m very interested in the subject, and for the moment, am limited
to using MinuteMan10´s Sound.cfg with other sounds from other aircraft.
Most of them work, but not all - why, I don´t know...

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
spent the morning searching
the air file for that elusive,
"make engine start more slowly"
line i spoke about earlier.
honestly, i was starting to think i was dreaming.
but, NOOO! i found it in the 505 entries
(DBL)Relative Starter Torque, 0.030
am still playing with it,
trying to find that sweet spot
where the start sequence is a little longer,
but, the engine still starts.
granted, the E key always works,
but, i like magnetos and start switches, too.

while i'm on the subject of magnetos,
has anyone seen hurricane type magneto switches,
for a second engine?

i'm curious, Stephan, which other aircraft
does the merlin sound.cfg not work in?

side note;
i was able to find some me163 rocket sounds.
these might also work with the ohka 11
 
Hello Smilo,
Is the DBL entry in Section 505 that you mention as Starter Torque,
the 8th one down?
In my AirEd it´s Propeller Start delay, so it could well have some
influence on startup duration.
I´ll try changing it and see if I can find any effects.

With the Merlin sound.cfg., there were 2 wav. sounds I had the
impression that would not work as well for progressive accelleration
as other .wavs I tried - the Extra300 and the propliner sounds.

Nevertheless, they do work better with the Merlin SAouns.cfg
than with the sound.cfg they came with.

Then, unfortunately I have only seen Engine-1 magnetos...
another incomplete feature which reduces possiblities for
mousing multi-engined panels.

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
yes, it is the eighth 505 entry.
i still have a lot of experimentation to do with it,
so, i won't comment more.

as for the merlin sound.cfg,
i'm using it as the basis for my work.
although, i had to take a break for a few days.
that loping radial at idle was starting to get to me.

i have been able to add a second idling engine,
but, so far, am unable to separate them at startup.
i hope this isn't an issue i'll have to live with.
we shall see.
 
Hello Smilo,
Out of curiosity, I tried out the parameter you mentioned,
and it seems to define how long it takes for the engine to
fire up, but won´t affect the duration of the starter sound,
which is 5 or 6 seconds.

A normal setting of 0.035 or 0.030 delay, will fire the engine
up after about 3 seconds. Reducing this to 0.015, makes the
engine need about 5 seconds. Further reduction won´t let
the engine start at all, and the starter sound just stops.

This is all using the short, default CFS1 startup sound called
Startpis.wav, although as you will probably have already seen,
a different sound can be implemented at the end of a given
Sound.cfg.

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
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