Varag

Perhaps I'm one of those oddities, but I find that I enjoy playing WoW with the in-game audio and music quite a bit. With Ventrilo or TeamSpeak running in the background, it becomes hard to find optimal volume settings that let you "set and forget" the volume for both applications. It always seems that the in-game music is too soft, the voice acting is too muted, weapon attacks are too loud, and/or Ventrilo/TS voice is blaring at high volume.

Does anyone have any recommendations for optimizing the in-game WoW audio settings, i.e. Sound, Music, Ambience, Master Volume, Windows audio settings, and/or a way to tweak the volume in Ventrilo to play nice with WoW?

Many thanks.

 

Vie

This is a post from our guild forums, which was copied from an unquoted WoW forum post.

This should help with Vent. As for interfacing in game sound with Vent, I'm unaware of any automatic adjustments (similar to the in game voice chat feature). Personally, I set my in game master volume to 30% and Vent typically overshadows any in-game sounds. If you're using Vista, you can also mix each program's volume individually. I suspect someone could get fancy with Windows and automatically lower WoW's sound if Vent's sound is greater than X. I haven't researched this since I can function well with the setup mentioned above.

 

spawnstah

I have two soundcards in my computer.
One is connected to my external speakers and I'm using that as my Default Soundcard. Which means Windows, Winamp, WOW and everything else use that soundcard.
The other is just used by Ventrilo and I have my headphones connected to that.

This gives me the ability to use the ingame sounds, music and whatever I want enabled and get the sound through my speakers. I can of course adjust that volume independently in the speakers versus my headphones.
I've configured Ventrilo to use the default speakers for "page" and when someone join/leave a channel or the server.
Also If I have to go away from the keyboard it's easy to switch in Ventrilo so the outbound is the speakers instead of headphones and it makes me able to hear ppl call for me or listen to the conversation while I'm not at my computer.

This has worked perfectly for me the last couple of years and I will for sure use the same setup in my next computer.

 

rihkama

It is also possible to use a USB headset (or speakers, whichever you prefer) instead of the second sound card.

 

Anedris

My complaint has always been that I want to turn up the in-game music and voice acting but turn down the weapon effects, grunts, pain e-motes, and the like. There does not seem to be a way to seperate the voices from the random combat sounds in WoW however.

 

Octaviann

I think you can change the difference between in-game music, voices, and other sound effects in the WoW options. At least, I know you can individually disable them. However, I don't know how specific it gets as far as volume controls.

 

◊ Kalman

If you're really into it, and want to spend the cash:

2 audio interfaces (onboard, sound card, or USB - you pick)
External compressor *with sidechain*
External mixer
External amplifier to drive speakers or headphones from output of compressor

Send Vent to channel 1 on mixer, audio to channel 2. Now send audio to input of compressor and vent to sidechain input, setting compressor to duck or gate appropriately. Send audio output of compressor to channel 3. Now assign channels 1 and 3 to stereo out, which is routed to your amp.

Same trick works for listening to music while raiding without screwing up being able to hear Vent.

Your minimum hardware cost for this is several hundred dollars, so unless you have alternative uses for the audio hardware, I don't recommend it. That said, some people have too much money.

 

Varag

The Ventrillo normalization was a great help, now what about balancing in-game audio, has anyone found useful settings for it? Say 30% for each bar, or what mix seems to optimize in-game voice acting and music based on folks' experience?

Also, what about the Audio panel in Windows XP, do you set the master volume slider to 50%, or is that tweaked when taking into account the above?

 

MalkuthSB

Just a quick plug for USB soundcards/mics. Super cheap and very effective.

I had a big problem with my noisy laptop, where my audio always sounded like a chopper taking off when I spoke on Ts/Vent. A $5 mic fixed all my problems.

 

Zorick

If anyone is like me, and has an old original X-Box controller sitting around or even an old broken X-Box itself, you can make a USB headset. You just have to have a working controller, and a headset adapter that works.

It's pretty simple to do, splice open an old USB device's cord, and take the end off the cord that plugs into the X-Box. You'll see 5 wires in the X-Box cord...
Red, White, Green, Yellow, Black.
and, 4 wires in the USB cord...
Red, White, Green, Black.

From here its just connect the colors to one another. The Yellow will be unused.

Thats the short version of how to, but here is the link with the drivers you need and pictures and all that.
I-Hacked.com Taking Advantage Of Technology - Make your old Xbox controller into a USB Game pad.

Cheap and easy solution for a USB headset.

 

• Falk

One of my big gripes with WoW's audio engine is that even voice clips seem to use positional audio, in the sense that its playback volume is attenuated/panned according to how far away the point source is from the player. For most raid bosses, this is pretty damn far away, especially when pulling

An issue arises from the fact that it seems the -entire clip- is played at the volume decided when the clip starts. This means for long lines, like Kael'thas for example, you can prance right up to and dance around him, and his monologue will still sound like he's across the room.

Important sound clips, such as encounter voice overs, really should not attenuate at all based on distance. That's my unqualified two cents, of course.

 

Shae

I have been a lot happier since I disabled "Emote Sounds" under Sound options... the laughter (sounded closer to insane cackling to me) of the NPCs around Shat was driving me nuts, especially while waiting for an Arena.

 

Spink

What I have done to balance my own sound more effectively so that I can hear what is important while still being able to enjoy music/game sounds is set my two speaker 1 sub sound system + headphones to act as surround sound, with the speakers being front, and the headphones being rear.

Afterwards so that I could ensure that I could always hear important raid leader type people on vent I changed their properties in vent to make it so that they would always transmit to the "rear" area of surround sound so that they were clearly able to be heard in my headphones.

In order to do this: Right click user > Misc... > Special Effects. > Directional radio button up top > double click back left and back right from the "Available" list to the "Current" list and click ok.

 

Laxxz

Very good stuff, I'll be using this to play me some SNES emulators

 

Whitemane

A bit cheaper way of doing this is to get an X-Fi, enable SVM (Smart Volume Management) and simply turn down World of Warcraft to 30% and keep vent at 100% The sound card will play World of Warcraft at 100% until vent kicks in and will then establish the proper balance as set in your sound options for both.

Done it myself with TeamSpeak, works very nicely. Can highly recommend it.

A little write up about it, nothing technical -> X-Fi Zone: Smart Volume Managment

 

Varag

This solution works great, it seems that SVM does an adequate job replacing the Ventrilo software normalization recommended above.

Just curious, what do you set your Master Volume to in the Control Panel with your setup?

 

Stardawn

The biggest gripe I have with WoW sound engine, is that you can't tweak the difference between "close sounds" and "far away sounds".

Let's say I use the "sound to character" option : sound volumes depends on how close my character is to the source. When I'm tanking a big boss, then the sounds from attacks will be extremely high, and when I'm far away from the action , sound is just a bit too low. This makes setting TS volume quite difficult.

Even when the option is "sound volume depends on camera position to source, not character" the problem still arises.

In the end, I often lower WoW sounds a lot to be able to hear TS instructions clearly. If anyone knows a tweak (hidden setting in .ini file ?) , I'd be more than interested !

 

Whitemane

I'm at my mothers place visiting for easters, so I'll check to make sure when I get back home. Off the top of my head though, it's somewhere around 90 - 100%

 

Geheim

They accomplish two different things. The X-Fi solution sets the volumes of the two applications relative to each other. The Ventrilo compression keep the volumes of different people on vent in a similar range so that you don't have some people with high outbound volumes and others with super quiet voices. I keep the Ventrilo compression filter in place and use the 'Inbound' Amplifier in Ventrilo to set the level relative to WoW how I like it.

That feature to lower the volume of WoW when vent kicks in does sound cool, but I think I'd still use compression so everyone would be at a similar volume on Ventrilo.

 

Gryffon

I have an interesting and probably very common problem. I am rather soft spoken *except during wipes* and folks in vent can hardly hear me. I have a decent headset, placed the mic to where its nearly touching my lips, turned up my outbound on vent, and in properties for my mic. Yet still folks complain that I am difficult to hear. I have suggested vent normalization but in responce I get some lame excuse that it messes up their sound *to which I eyeroll* and some whiny babies complain that it's annoying that I macro some of my stuff to get my point across such as when I burn cooldowns.

So, short of my trying to just speak louder, which isn't always an option and makes me cranky, does anyone have any helpful suggestions on how I can make it easier for others to hear me?



*edit*
been there, done that... changed headsets AGAIN and try to use my outside voice.. Otherwise, still trying to convince folks to normalize vent.

 

cutfang

You've probably already done this, but if you are using XP have you tried going to control panel > sounds and audio devices > audio and turning up your microphone volume? Then there is an addition option called 'Microphone Boost' which presumably increases the volume further still. I am also softly spoken and I found combining those two with maximum outbound volume in Ventrilo made me far too loud.

 

Shadefoot

I don't have Vent on my work computer, so I can't check the exact wording of buttons etc... at the moment but if you haven't tried this already:

Under the "setup" section, I think the first tab where all the main stuff is, bottom left corner of the window there's a function where you can test how your mic is working. I think you have to select one of the codecs or something from a drop-down menu then click the button to test, babble into the mic for a few seconds, wait and it should play it back to you. Hopefully that should give you a rough idea of what kind of volume level is being transmitted to others. You can play with the various settings to try and change that to a more appropriate level if needed.