Help with sounds and speakers

Hi guys, is there a way to get the sound to come out of all of the speakers all of the time?

Currently I get 1 set of surround sound speakers in-cockpit and another when in external view.

Thanks

I don't think it's FS doing it.

In the cockpit and using FSX advanced sound (which is in stereo) you'll hear the engines panned L+R based on head positions (looking L+R) *IF* that's programmed into the sound file for the aircraft.

In chase view (again with FSX enhanced stereo) the engines will pan *IF* that is programmed into the sound file for the aircraft.

Distance views such as Tower are in mono, so your surround sound will want to send mono to all speakers if it's configured that way.

Add-ons:

All the default aircraft I've inspected so far have stereo sound.cfg files, so based on my explanation above, you'll get different quad assignments based on originating position.

Add-ons and in particular PORTED aircraft from FS9 and earlier will more often than not have a more primitive sound.cfg file with no or elementary engine panning. How your surround deals with the mixed bag of poorly or non-converted sound files will be unpredictable.

In addition, there is ATC and AI voices which are mono. Your surround probably mixes those to Center (all four speakers.) Likewise, alt callouts and custom sound dlls from special aircraft, etc.

There are no L+R panning controls within FSX. There are no Front-back panning controls within FSX.

One reason many add-ons have poor sound files is they are difficult and tedious to convert into the enhanced FSX format from earlier versions and most people just don't bother. The amount of data in the files nearly double.

-Pv-

Tags: FSX Sound Surround stereo mono pan panning

This is what aliases are for.

-Pv-

Bump from a duplicate thread.

... Where it was explained FSX is not a 4 channel audio simulation, only stereo.

The only quad sound you are going to get is when your sound adapter synthesizes it. It looks to me that you started an identical thread because you didn't like the answers. All you had to do is post to the same thread again. This is called a "bump" which raises it to the top. There are utilities built into this forum which lets you see every thread you have posted in by clicking on your forum handle.

BTW: You are going to have a rough time finding ANY game which has true four channel sound designed into it which would make the sound files created for the game twice as large in storage space. Take a look at the original sound file storage for FSX (around 400 megs or more) and double it, then consider all the add-ons also have to produce twice the sound for their products and you'll get the picture.

It's just not practical or financially profitable for the 1-2% of the FS market which might demand such a thing. Now imagine the poor FSX:SE people getting 450 megs added to their installation download....

-Pv-

BTW: You are going to have a rough time finding ANY game which has true four channel sound designed into it which would make the sound files created for the game twice as large in storage space.

Plenty of games support 5.1 surround sound, and have for many years. Large downloads also don't seem to have stopped people from buying through the likes of Steam. Far Cry 4 is taking up 32GB on my machine, for example.

http://satsun.org/audio/

FSX is really the odd one out when it comes to audio.

FSX is over 8 years old and the disk version is frozen code. That's not going to change.

-Pv-

No not surprised by the question, but the determination so...

There never will be a surround decoder built into FSX Boxed from MS and again, it's going to be a low priority in the new developed versions due to the high demand to get add-ons and frame rates with DX11 effects added. It will take years to do those things.

However, if a person wants to create an encoder and record their own sounds, then there is nothing stopping them. Since the phantom center channel is an out of phase signal on the stereo mix, you can create your own surround files.

It will probably be tricky to get past FS's own sound mixer. I don't know if the encoded phase will survive when three or more sound sources are mixed together. Only one way to find out. Seems like a lot of effort for very little pay off.

There's a lot of processing going on between the wav files on the disk and the speakers. FSX's own mixer, the OS sound processor, and the sound mixer built into your sound card. Then if you are using a Home Theater System, that too has it's own mixer. Lots of components to test.

Add to that, I suspect users who care about such things are wanting certain kinds of sounds in certain locations like the ATC in the center of the room or something.

The ATC sounds on the disk are not accessible. Depending on your surround synthesizer, I suspect these are always going to get interpreted as front or rear mono. This means you can only do something about engines and add-on stuff like call-outs. Not a very interesting project to me, but some people just might enjoy making a career out of it and sell the result.

-Pv-