1768 Steam Audio bug
closed
ulti․
Opened VRChat and joined an instance with a significant amount of people. World and avatar volume is not affected, but voices sound significantly muffled despite no adjustment to audio settings, and voices of players who are directly in front of me sound like they are becoming behind me. Spatial audio feels completely broken.
Restarting both VRChat and SteamVR does not fix the bug.
I already struggle with poor spatial awareness due to a health condition, and this update makes it far more difficult for me to play comfortably; I am completely unable to tell where people are standing relative to me now and it is very disorienting.
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Tupper - VRChat Head of Community
updated the status to
closed
Thanks for the feedback! This isn't exactly a bug report - Steam Audio _does_ sound different from our previous spatilizer. So, nothing is broken or bugged, but you are hearing a difference because there is one.
In short, audio might sound muffled because the system we used before (ONSP) incorrectly boosted several frequencies. Steam Audio is (mostly) flat in comparison. This is an oversimplification of reality, but close enough for a quick feedback response.
We fully expect people to perceive the difference, especially if you are _very_ used to ONSP. We'll take your feedback into account as we continue to tune Steam Audio for our use case!
Hasax
Tupper - VRChat Head of Community Currently this system is not ready for use the way it is implemented now. It doesnt just sound different, but the audio doesnt give proper sound levels in the right sound canal to indicate where the source of the audio is. Sounds to the left should also have sound on the right as your right ear also picks up the sound, but right now it is not giving the right levels. This needs much further testing before it can be properly implemented. So yes it IS currently a bug.
NyoDesu
From what a friend of mine told me, the VRChat Devs changed the audio system (codec or whatever it is they use to process voices) they used because some players were complaining that voices in the original one were "too loud" (...have these people EVER heard of Earmuff mode or just TURNING DOWN THE VOICE VOLUMES?), so they decided to change it to the same audio system SteamVR itself uses. I'm not sure if it's gonna stay or not, but I've also noticed it myself when I was on a couple of days ago for an RP. I hope they at least address the issue in a future dev blog and or update.
Tupper - VRChat Head of Community
This isn't exactly correct, so I want to make sure the correct reasons are out there instead of someone reading this and assuming it's true:
We didn't swap to Steam Audio because some players complained that voices were too loud, we swapped for a variety of reasons. We address it in our patch note video, but in short form, ONSP is old, isn't getting updates, and is hard to work with or improve.
It isn't accurate to call Steam Audio "the same audio system SteamVR uses." Steam Audio is used by tons of games across both VR and flat surfaces, so it's battle tested.
Either way, please let us know if you run into any bugs -- broken audio, not just "I think this doesn't sound right". For the latter, give it some time. Audio is incredibly subjective, and the brain is really good at adapting to sound and audio over time.
ulti․
Tupper - VRChat Head of Community
Does broken spatial audio not count as a bug? As highlighted by Hasax above (and also by my post), there is an issue with player voices travelling from the complete wrong directions. Someone to the right of me should not be extremely loud in my left ear, and someone standing directly in front of me should not sound like they are behind me. It is extremely disorienting and while the muffling effect is understandable I can't help but feel there IS a bug with the way spatial audio is implemented in this update.
JackCracker004
This is also affecting me.