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WHYYYY!!!! WAV file but 3D sound not playing......

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This is just ridiculous. Is it me or WE simply does not let imported sound files play in 3d. It's 22.050Hz 16-bit mono (1-channel) wav file exactly as W3 requirements and I check 3D and it doesn't play. I attach to unit/point...doesn't work. Obviously when I don't tick that option it plays but I need the 3D positional audio! Here are the wavs. Hopefully someone can tell me what is wrong!:ogre_rage::ogre_rage::ogre_rage:
 

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Dr Super Good

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It's 22.050Hz 16-bit mono (1-channel) wav file exactly as W3 requirements and I check 3D and it doesn't play.
It is playing, just you cannot hear it as the sound is infrasonic. The threshold of human hearing is approximately 20Hz so you need a sound sampled at 40Hz or more to get anything remotely audible due to the nyquist theory. That said 40Hz is even far too low to do anything remotely useful next to a very low and annoying humming or irritating people would pressure waves if they have high quality audio equipment.

For telephone quality audio you need at least 8,000Hz (or 8kHz). People will understand what is being said but it will sound pretty poor (like telephones).

For studio quality audio you need to sample at 44,000Hz (or 44kHz) as this gives you the full 20-20,000Hz hearing range humans are capable of + 4,000 Hz for anti-aliasing filters. It also gives some tolerances for humans with slightly higher hearing ranges since the range is only approximate.

To conserve file space you might want to compromise at some sampling value like 22,000 Hz (22 kHz) since that has half the information per second and due to natural behaviour of sound the lost higher frequencies inherently are less used. Humans with good hearing or who specialize in sound processing will be able to hear the difference however as high frequencies still have some information in them.

I think what has happened here is you have become confused between International and European delimiters. In mainland Europe they use "." as the thousands delimiter and "," as the fractional delimiter. In the UK and internationally (such as America etc) use "," as the thousands delimiter and "." as the fractional delimiter.

As such "22.050 Hz" means a value of approximately 22 kHz on mainland Europe and approximately 22Hz in the UK and America. Where as 22 kHz will produce reasonable sound, 22 Hz will most certainly not.

Also do note that Blizzard uses a special audio format for some WC3 sounds. This is defined by the MPQ archive format itself. Although they are called ".wav" files they are actually stored in a completely separate PWM style lossy compression format. Importing ".wav" sounds in the editor may or may not take advantage of this. When played they should resolve back into .wav for logic sake but they could also maybe be passed internally as PWM files straight to the sound part of WC3 in which case it may affect the performance of 3D sounds.
 

Dr Super Good

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I converted my original mp3 to wav using PCM compression based on this http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/a.../t-151147.html
You mention PWM compression? What's that? Why is it required for 3D sounds to work in Warcraft?

I am not sure exactly what it is called anymore but the idea behind the compression is based on how Pulse Width Modulation works. It is not an actual audio format but instead is a storage method built into MPQ archives. It produces a ".wav" file out but it might also be fed directly into the sound system for all I know.

However according to that thread it makes no difference as all .wav files are automatically compressed with it.
 
Your 3D sound file is not playing because you haven't ticked the "Stop when out of range" option. Both of "3D Sound" and "Stop when out of range" must be ticked in-order for the 3D sound to play successfully.

To play a 3D sound, create a new trigger - Sound - Play tardis_landing <gen> at 100.00% volume, attached to Arcane Tower 0000 <gen>.
 
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Problem solved...I set the minimum range to 1000, max range to 2000, cut-off at 2000 and I can hear it in 3D! But the problem is that the sound is not loud enough...but I can fix that in Audacity.

I would appreciate if a thread was stickied to clearly state the requirements of 3D sound as I've had to get the working config from like 3 posts!

The WORKING encoding is in uncompressed PCM format at 22.050 kHz, 16bit, mono. Range of sound needs to be 1000 since it's like a sphere of influence projecting from the object of attached sound so if, you, the observer, is 1000 range from the ground that's the actual minimal range to hear the sound.
 
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