Re: Need For Speed has little to no low frequency content in game effects or music

Hi Tom,

Thank you for the reply. I've checked the thread you've specified, however it does not seem to fit my problem.

People on that thread had issues with misconfiguring their sound output to 5.1 while playing back the game on 2.0 systems (speakers or headphones).

I have correctly setup my PS4 to output 2.0 sound by setting the output to Optical 2.0 PCM instead of HDMI and avoiding all the multichannel codecs (dolby, dts).

I have a very good 2.1 system that gets the audio from my PS4 via optical.

Audio works fine in all other games and for playing back music via the PS4.

My issue is more related to the quality of the 2.0 output that i'm getting from Need for Speed. 

The audio is both very low as volume compared with other games (i need to turn the volume very high to get comparable volume levels).

In addition the in-game mix (sound effects + music) has very poor low frequency response - there is almost no bass in music and/or game sound effects. 

I can easily see this because my subwoofer is doing nothing at all, whereas normally while playing the kind of bass-heavy music that Need for Speed  uses, or in other games is very active.

I am not missing any part of the audio thou, i can hear sound effects, the phone ringing, cutscenes, etc. 

So i think this is a technical issue with the game running on my PS4.

Might be related to how the game audio works for 2.0 optical output, or how the downmixing of the game multichannel track is performed. Maybe during downmixing, the volume levels are messed up, or maybe there is a dedicated channel for low frequency effects that works ok for 5.1 via HDMI but accidentally gets discarded in 2.0 downmixes via optical, thus robbing away all the bass. Anyway, i can't imagine Need for Speed sounding this dull.

Could you please transmit this issue to your technical team? I'm very happy to support them get to the bottom of this.

Thanks!

Hi Tom,

Any news related to my issue?

Any chance a fix to this would be included in a future patch?

Holding off playing until this is fixed because the audio is a big part of the experience...

Thanks!

@ubikutz,

I am so sorry that I didn't get back to you earlier. This issue has been forwarded to our team but at the moment I have no further information to give you. Should we require more information or have any updates, I will be sure to let you know.

--Tom

Hi Tom,

OK, thank you!

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,

Alex.

@ubikutz / Alex,

Can you give me some more information on your exact sound setup. Are you using speakers or headphones, if so which? I am not certain about that at the moment.

As for other steps, have you also tried our troubleshooting steps as provided here:

http://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues/READ-ME-FIRST-NFS-Basic-Troubleshooting/td-p/4908815

I am investigating this further for you, but so far you are the only report about this issue. Since we are several weeks into the game right now, that leads me to believe that it could be related to your hardware or settings. Of course, I will investigate this further.

Hi Tom,

Sorry for the late reply i was away on holiday.

I've tried reproducing the issue again after patch 1.03 and things have improved a bit, but not to the whole extent that i would expect from a game with high quality audio.

The exact system that i'm using is a pair of Genelec 8330s studio monitors connected to a Genelec 7350 studio subwoofer. This calibrated combo reproduces anything between 19hz - 20khz with great precision as they are made for music production.

The Genelecs are connected to the PS4 via optical out. The PS4 is set to output 2.0 PCM audio via optical out.

In NFS, all audio sliders are set to 100%. I've tried setting sound to "Home Cinema" and "Headphone". "Headphones" sound better with a bit more bass.

For the purpose of reproducing this issue, one would just need a pair of 2.1 speakers (2 speakers and subwoofer) connected via optical out to the PS4.

Audio must be set to 2.0 PCM not 5.1.

If you than mute the speakers and let only the subwoofer play, one can easily monitor the low frequency content of the NFS sound track and in game effects.

If the subwoofer is not doing much, than there is little low frequency content on the sountrack and the game will not sound so good.

The issue that i'm reporting is that there is little low frequency content in the game, certainly less that i'm getting while listening to bass heavy music, as the NFS sound track should be.

For example, my Genelec have digital volume.

At -40db, which is very loud, while listening to normal music outside NFS, the subwoofer ouputs a great amount of bass. In NFS at -40db i can barely hear anything from the subwoofer.

At -30db, which is extremly loud, while listening to normal music outside NFS, the subwoofer feels like it's tearing down to room. In NFS at -30db, the subwoofer finally starts moving a bit.

Does it make sense what i'm saying?

Does your team have any way to monitor the NFS sound track using a subwoofer?

Later edit: Just had the change to do a comparisson with StarWars BattleFront that is also a title with a lot of action and a good sound track.

Compared with NFS, in SWBF each action is nicely emphanised with low frequency effects so you can feel each shot and explosion. At -40db in SWBF the subwoofer is very active.

It would be useful to look into this a bit, otherwise NFS will sound pretty dull with higher end 2.x systems when connected straight to the PS4. 

@ubikutz,

Thanks for taking the time to write this detailed post.

I have forwarded your request to see if this is something we are able to investigate further. I will update this thread once I have more information.

Yeah, I'm having low audio issues too. I've got a Samsung Dolby Digital 2.1 CH sound bar including a subwoofer. The audio isn't very "balanced" I guess you can say. Very similar to ubikutz. I gotta up the volume on this game a little to get it to match the volume on the other games I play. Maybe the subwoofer isn't doing much on Need For Speed.

Glad i’m not the only one with this issue :-)

Yes the game sound is overall a bit low compared with other content - not sure why this is happening; it can get quite loud if you turn the volume all the way up, but even with loudness comes comparatively little presence and impact.
Without the enchanced perception that low frequency effects brings to the table, the sound is just agressive and does not seem “full”.

For example, one of the things that caught my attention is with the car engine noise.

When starting the car from a complete halt, there is, during the initial acceleration phase, a bit of subwoofer action which makes the start seems a bit more real.
However, once the car is in motion, the subwoofer stops and does nothing at all.
So basically you’re driving with a sports car with the engine screaming at 8000rpm, yet there is no subwoofer output, hence you feel no vibration, no impact in the game - It feels a bit fake.

There may be many reasons for this - hopefully the tech team will look a bit into this. I’m thinking … :
- maybe it’s related to the downmixing… maybe NFS uses a multichannel 5.1/7.1 audio track in the game engine and when the PS4 downmixes to 2.0 to output via optical it completly drops the .1 LFE channel that contains the low frequency information or it messes the volumes of the individual channels being downmixed
- maybe the original audio resources contain the full spectrum of information, but maybe somewhere during processing / mixing / compressing the low frequency information got lost along the way?

….

Definitely, the volume doesn't seem "full" and impactful as other games. I'm sure it's the subwoofer now, maybe if someone can test it on different outputs and try it on 5.1 ch see how it differs.