Engine Sounds, best way?

Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Beginners Area/Engine Sounds, best way?

CodeOrc(Posted 2009) [#1]
So I read an article that it is best to do engine noises via real-time sound creation (math) rather than audio files.

Is this true? and if so, are there any examples on it for B3D?


Kenshin Yurihara(Posted 2009) [#2]
Idk honestly I think it depends on what if you'd rather have better sound speed or better quality but I also don't know of any way to do this in Blitz,sorry.


BIG BUG(Posted 2009) [#3]
You can use the ChannelPitch command to modulate your engine sound dependend on its running speed.

In order to create an engine sound for my F1 racing game I used a sound from a casual car and increased its frequency in a sound editor.
This sound is then modulated further in Blitz3D via ChannelPitch. I've implemented a gearbox system which doesn't affect gameplay but nevertheless it's important for the modulation of the engine sound.
I would say it sounds okay:
Download F1 Racer(2MB)


jfk EO-11110(Posted 2009) [#4]
I can hardly believe this (the thing in the article). Maybe you can do a 80ies disco synthesizer sound that way, but not the imperfect, dirty sound of a real engine.

What you could do is: using the replay frequency of the sound in conjunction with the vehicles wheel speed, additionally the volume may be adjusted as well in conjunction with the wheel speed (faster=louder). And then there are the gears, of course, as a multiplying factor for the replay frequency.

I say wheel speed and not vehicle speed because a wheel should rotate faster when there is no ground contact - this might add an extra audio effect when the street ist't that flat.

It's a simple method and it depends a lot on the realism of the vehicle controls/behaviour, but it's defintiely easier to implement than sounds based on math IMHO.

EDIT oops BIG BUG was faster. He's right, ChannelPitch is what I meant too.


CodeOrc(Posted 2009) [#5]
ok ty


Kryzon(Posted 2009) [#6]
Grab an idle car engine sound effect, make a long loop for it (so you won't hear the machine-gun effect), and loop it through code.

I'd recommend crossfading this idle loop with others where the engine is being used, so you don't need to cheat with ChannelPitch when your car is moving (changing the Pitch works, but not that great).


D4NM4N(Posted 2009) [#7]
I made a seamless engine noice once using "Audacity" (a cool little app btw), ill see if i can find it....


D4NM4N(Posted 2009) [#8]
Yes here you go. Its the one i made for my old boat race game.

Use loopsound and channelpich to make it do what you want (eg. if you want it to sound Harley-ish or F1-ish. and to do the revs.)

http://www.d-grafix.com/temp/dan_engine.wav
http://www.d-grafix.com/temp/dan_engine_echo.wav

the second one is with echo and sounds like when you go through tunnels etc.