ACCEPTED Immersive Sounds - Compendium (by lazygecko)

[Mousetick]

1 hour ago, CorneliusC said:

How will this impact the various singular sound replacer mods in Step, the various animal sounds and bows & crossbows? Did you set up this mod at the end of the 'Sounds & Music' section?

Good question. As far as I can tell, there are 2 mods that require further attention: Ultra Realistic Bow Shoot and Improved Horse Step. The others are still used as long as they are sorted after both AOS and ISC on MO2's left side. Most of them overlap only with AOS and don't conflict with ISC.

• Realistic Bow Shoot is "lost" in favor of ISC.
• IHSS needs conflict resolution in xEdit.

If you look at ISC's folders, you'll notice some folder names have a '_is' suffix while others don't. The '_is' folders don't conflict with anything, and their associated sounds' priority must be resolved by plugin patch. The plain folders use standard vanilla path names and overwrite whatever is before them, so priority is resolved by sorting on  MO2's left side.

If you want to keep the various singular sound replacer mods that only contain audio files without plugin, sort them after both AOS and ISC on the left side.

As for the 2 remaining special cases:

• You'll need to listen and compare bow shoot sounds from Ultra Realistic Bow Shoot and ISC to determine which one you prefer. You can do this simply out-of-game by playing the .wav files:
  • URBSS: /sound/fx/wpn/bow/fire
  • ISC: /sound/fx/wpn_is/bow/fire

If you prefer URBSS and want to keep it, you'll need to patch ISC's plugin to revert to vanilla sound paths and override ISC. If you prefer ISC, you can just uninstall URBSS.

• Same with IHSS and ISC but each use custom paths:
  • IHSS: /sound/fx/Crystan-Sounds/IHSS
  • ISC: /sound/fx/fst_is/fst_horse

If you prefer IHSS and want to keep it, you need to ensure its plugin wins over ISC in the LOOT order (MO2's right side). If you prefer ISC, you can just uninstall IHSS.

You can use these same guidelines with other sound replacers that you might to install later on top of the STEP baseline. Ready-made patches can often be found on Nexus for non-trivial cases and popular mods.

I haven't done any auditory comparison myself, I just kept all the singular replacers and made sure they win. That's based on the assumption that they're still better than everything else, including ISC - which may be completely wrong. They were better than vanilla or AOS, but may not be better than ISC. All this requires further comparison testing, which I haven't done because I'm lazy.

I only gave up URBSS in favor of ISC because I'm lazy.

 

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I'd recommend installing this fix (or merging it in the CR patch, as it's tiny): Immersive Sounds Compendium Drinking Sound Fix.

Spoiler

Quote

This patch is to fix the silent drinking sound problem of Immersive Sounds Compendium 3.0. If you used the new Immersive Sounds Compendium 3.0, you might have noticed that there is no sound being played when you drink water, potions or ales. This mod fixes the problem by reverting the sound output model record ISC changed for the drinking sound. It is a single entry change and it works.

What is changed exactly?
000B6435(ITMPotionUse) - Sound Output Model: SOMMono01400  -> SOMMono01400Player1st

 

[z929669]

Install priority is a good point. Since AOS is our long-adopted primary sound replacer, I have situated ISC above that to favor AOS. The smaller replacers have always been prioritized higher than AOS, so their assets win as usual where applicable.

Which specific sounds are best in any given situation where there is conflict, I have not determined my own preference.

I believe I have patched for IHSS, but I will need to check.

This is my testing install order:

As far as the drinking sounds go, it depends again on user preference. I can't recall the vanilla sound, but if it exists in vanilla, it shouldn't be silent in our build.

[Mousetick]

35 minutes ago, z929669 said:

As far as the drinking sounds go, it depends again on user preference. I can't recall the vanilla sound, but if it exists in vanilla, it shouldn't be silent in our build.

ISC doesn't give you a choice: its plugin replaces the drinking sounds with its own, using a custom path /sound/fx/itm_is for the audio files. The record override for ITMPotionUse in the ISC plugin is bugged. Install the aforementioned bugfix patch and look at it in xEdit, you'll see why it's bugged and needs to be fixed.

It takes more effort to explain than to understand the problem by looking at the plugins in xEdit

[Mousetick]

1 hour ago, z929669 said:

This is my testing install order:

[...]

As I've tried to explain in my previous remarks, even if URBSS looks like it's overwriting something and "winning" on MO2's left side, it has no effect in-game: it's ignored/bypassed when ISC is used - unless the ISC plugin is patched - because the ISC plugin overrides the sound record(s) with custom paths for the audio files. As it is, URBSS just occupies disk space.

Again it's more complicated to explain in words than to understand by looking at the plugin(s) in xEdit. You can look at record ID 0003DAE8 <WPNBowFireSD> for example, with Skyrim.esm < AOS.esp < ISC.esp, to see what's going on and why URBSS has no effect.

[z929669]

IHSS assets and Sound Descriptor plugin records override ISC where they conflict, so no worries there.

URBSS assets override and one EditorID 'WPNBowFire' needs to be forwarded from AOS to give the vanilla paths (URBSS files) priority under AOS governance (Step's previous config without ISC). This is one I had missed, so thatnks.

Whether or not ISC has a better bow fire sound than URBSS is subjective, so give your opinion if you have one. URBSS only covers firing a bow and no other bow sounds (no crossbow sounds covered by this mod).

 

[CorneliusC]

I've set this up in MO in an order reflecting the suggested load order of the plugins by Dylan James (the AOS author)

So the only left pane conflicts you have are two files from 'Regional Sounds Expansion' and eight files from 'Better Animal Footsteps' overwriting 'Immersive Sounds'

In the right pane / xEdit it looks very very different and needs a lot of patching (WACCF, Deadly Spell Impacts, Cutting Room Floor).

Maybe one suggestion if adding ISC and the AOS-ISC Integration might be to think about dropping singular mods like 'Improved Horse Steps Sounds'?

Edited December 9, 2022 by CorneliusC

[z929669]

3 minutes ago, CorneliusC said:

I've set this up in MO in an order reflecting the suggested load order of the plugins by Dylan James (the AOS author)

So the only left pane conflicts you have are two files from 'Regional Sounds Expansion' and eight files from 'Better Animal Footsteps' overwriting 'Immersive Sounds'

In the right pane / xEdit it looks very very different and needs a lot of patching (WACCF, Deadly Spell Impacts, Cutting Room Floor).

Maybe one suggestion if adding ISC and the AOS-ISC Integration might be to think about dropping singular mods like 'Improved Horse Steps Sounds'?

The plugin order is independent of asset order in the MO left pane, so just order as I posted previously, which will be how the guide will have it. Plugins will sort correctly with LOOT.

[CorneliusC]

11 minutes ago, z929669 said:

The plugin order is independent of asset order in the MO left pane, so just order as I posted previously, which will be how the guide will have it. Plugins will sort correctly with LOOT.

Thank you. I know 'plugin order is independent of asset order'. Regarding the two mentioned overwrites it actually comes down to the same, i'm changing the order now. LOOT sorts the plugins correctly like suggested by the author ... All good.

Edited December 9, 2022 by CorneliusC

[ButchDiavolo]

Because of my modlist, I am not able to use the STEP patches. So I wouldn't know if it works better or worse. All I know is that I have had these mods installed for years and never noticed any audible strangeness. The sounds are crisp and clear and appropriate for the situation.

With the new system/ addons, it sounds even better in my opinion. But again, I don't use the patches, so my experience may be completely different to those that do.

Also in my experience with the new system and using Wrye Bash to iron out conflicts with a Bashed Patch, I have noticed some sound settings are overwriting each other, so they need to be manually corrected. Which is, I guess, based on personal preference then, aka using AOS, ISC or the new addons as the preferred settings.

[CorneliusC]

16 hours ago, z929669 said:

URBSS assets override and one EditorID 'WPNBowFire' needs to be forwarded from AOS to give the vanilla paths (URBSS files) priority under AOS governance (Step's previous config without ISC). This is one I had missed, so thatnks.

Whether or not ISC has a better bow fire sound than URBSS is subjective, so give your opinion if you have one. URBSS only covers firing a bow and no other bow sounds (no crossbow sounds covered by this mod).

After testing in game, i still prefer the old 'Ultra Realistic Bow Shoot Sounds' (could also be because of habit ...). But as i understand it, you will already add this to the CR patch, giving vanilla paths and URBSS files priority? Thank you.

[z929669]

7 hours ago, CorneliusC said:

After testing in game, i still prefer the old 'Ultra Realistic Bow Shoot Sounds' (could also be because of habit ...). But as i understand it, you will already add this to the CR patch, giving vanilla paths and URBSS files priority? Thank you.

Yes. All of our existing sounds mods have priority over ISC where conflicting.

[DoubleYou]

I added fomod instructions to the wiki page. I didn't follow the instructions in the OP, so it is just what I thought about when installing it, and it will likely need changed, but at least it's a start.

[z929669]

50 minutes ago, DoubleYou said:

I added fomod instructions to the wiki page. I didn't follow the instructions in the OP, so it is just what I thought about when installing it, and it will likely need changed, but at least it's a start.

Thanks & no worries.