Better Crowd Atmosphere Audio 2024-05-06

I was asked to put even more airhorns in, so this is that version!

It sounds quite good I think, so you choice is between one of my previous three, and this one. This one is more or less constant airhorns, and I am exhausting my efforts now

One final thing I'd like to try is to bring more of the cowbells that are in the game files into it, but I am not sure I can, so this might be the final update.

Folks!

I think I have finally cracked it. THIS is the version to get.

After useful comments this now sounds more like WRC than a cycling race

What that means is fewer shouts, more horns. There are three versions, one with some horns, one with more, and one with most. I find it hard to pick, based on the way the game triggers (I am probably between preferring 'some' and 'more' but YMMV)

Enjoy!!

(if you don't like the horns use my previous version, but IMHO this is the best).

This is my final effort.

Since EA updated the Crowd sound volumes in 1.8 my first version was too loud (and too similar sounds; I used very loud sounds to be able to hear them).

This new version has a wider range of sounds, but also sounds more like a rally crowd (some of the EA ones even after they have improved it are a loop of a few people shouting and they still use the mumbling crowd). Now you'll hear shouts, whistles, some horns!

The problems with this are two things.

1. It is probably too loud now! But I really like that. You can finally have any audio balance, have everything on full and really hear the crowd as well, I think that's a big improvement.
2. The volume of the crowd is too much for the size of the crowd, but this is EA's fault, if they were prepared to render larger crowds (even as large at DR 2.0) this would match really well.

I think this adds loads of atmosphere. There are three versions:
V1: Improved crowd with one very large crowd sound swapped for a smaller one
V2: Improved crowd with large crowd sound included
V3: V2 with +2db on all sounds.

This is a better version; more energetic crowds, no dead space and less sudden cut off. Just place the 'crowds_P.pak' file into your paks folder, like other mods.

Beyond experimenting with having a smaller range of crowd sounds that repeat, or creating my own audio to use (I'll post instructions of how I did this incase someone can make better sounds), this is about as good a version I can make.

Also, I think this sounds best if you use the TV balance dynamic range option (regardless of your actual output - I use a surround system) and set engine and surfaces to 70 and co-driver to 15. But that's all personal preference of course.

Update coming shortly, it'll be more dramatic, and without audio files that end in silence...