SKYRIMLE Kill The Orchestra - By alt3rn1ty

[DoubleYou]

Would we get better performance, then, if we uncompressed all those xwma files so the game doesn't have too?

[alt3rn1ty]

@ Shadriss - A reference for what, and what sounds weird ?

 

In reference to my post I do not know what you are referring to.

 

 

XWMA encoded files https://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=Microsoft_xWMA

 

 

Or Ethatrons research ( I cant link because his site has been down for a while now, it used to be a sub-paragraph on his NIFOpt guide, entitled "A little calculation", which was also relevant to BSAopt and DDSOpt performance of extracting files and loading them up versus loose files loading up, the former being the faster when more compression was used in compressing the BSAs those three utilities can produce )

But I did quote it in the following post ..

https://forum.step-project.com/topic/5819-optimized-vanilla-textures-by-tony971/page-3?do=findComment&comment=96363

 

 

XWMA Sound files being compressed too much and not loading from highly compressed BSAs .. I dont think it is noted anywhere, I have seen it in conversation between mod authors quite a few times, personally I discussed it with Emma and Amgepo on the hidden development part of Emma's site in reference to Vilja and the thousands of voice files Emma has to make  for her companion mod, and also had my suspicions confirmed by CDCooley who has knowledge of the same problem on the BGS forum .. somewhere. I recall other mod authors also being aware of the problem. I cannot give you a link to those conversations though.

I think also the official archiver which comes with the Creation Kit has different compression levels, and for sounds being used in a mod there is a recommendation somewhere ( probably the Creation Kit wiki ? ) not to use higher compression levels when creating a BSA with sound files in them, but to stick with the default compression level.

 

  On 6/4/2015 at 10:04 AM, DoubleYou said:

Would we get better performance, then, if we uncompressed all those xwma files so the game doesn't have too?

I would say no, thats why I am referring to Ethatrons calculations when it comes to performance when a highly efficient compression method is used.

 

In my experience with my laptop ( which I regard as a lowest common denominator machine due to it being minimum specification for Skyrim ), highly compressed = better performance, thats why my other mod Vanilla Reduced Textures utilises BSAOpts very high compression technology. I have tried those 33000 textures installed in many different ways, including different compression levels, high = better / faster loading imho which corroborates Ethatrons findings.

 

( This is why the replacer files in Kill The Orchestra are not just wav files, even though they are now smaller than the original files they replace, I encoded them back to xwm to make them more efficient at loading as loose files ( I would also have liked to put them into a BSA, but the possible combinations of BSAs for everyones choices of music would have been ridiculous to make ) ).

 

 

But as mentioned you cannot compress xwm files too much further in this way

 

I have been a fan of Vilja for a long time, and on occasion I have reduced the textures for that mod .. And tried bundling the whole BSA up again including its voice files - The textures were fine .. The voice files were another matter, a lot of them did not work as they should do, until they were packed in a BSA with a lot less compression than BSAOpt is capable of. The Vilja team confirmed my suspicions, they had the same experiences too.

 

Wav files, which are much further compressed into xwm files, and then even further compressed into a highly compressed BSA = Sometimes they do not get loaded by the game engine.

Edited June 4, 2015 by alt3rn1ty

[Shadriss]

I was asking for a written referance concerning the engine uncompressing audio on the fly. From your last post, there seems to be anecdotal evidence only, but it is certainly compelling. What I was considering 'wierd' was a system where it had to decompress (quite substantially, it would seem) the audio files before they could even be played by the engine. In other games I have done mods for, the engine didn't do this - hence me thinking it odd.

 

THanks for the insight - I'll have to give installation more thought, but the numbers seem much more sound now (forgive the pun...)

[alt3rn1ty]

Yep just about all sound formats have compression, wavs are generally uncompressed ( load one up in audacity after converting it to wav, and you will see Audacity ask you a question about making and working on a backup of uncompressed format sound files ), but they can be compressed with other codecs ( like Skyrim and xwma ). Mp3s are compressed ( variable ), Windows Media Audio ( WMA ) have variable compression ( you may have seen Windows Media Player has settings for saving music tracks with different quality, this is also compression being applied, the less compression, the better the quality, but the bigger the music file ) and so need to decompress as you play them, and your computer has to decompress any file into ram

 

 

 

Similarly, all image formats have different forms of compression, JPG ( Joint Photographic Experts Group ), lossy compression ( loses detail the more compression ratio that is applied ), PNG ( Portable Network Graphics ) Lossless compression

 

.. All developed with different needs and the desire to use less space when stored and less bandwidth when transferred over the internet. But they all have to decompress to show / play them.

 

 

Ever heard of compression artifacts in texture files ?, those particularly make a mess of the vanilla skyrim normal maps on female faces - the blocky nose problem is quite a visible effect of such compression artifacts, its due to the type of DDS compression chosen, and how low they went in reducing the resolution of the file :

 

 

 

That file had to decompress into ram before Adobe Photoshop could display it ( via the DDS Plugin you have to install in Adobe Photoshop so that it understands the DDS formats to decompress them )

Some DDS formats are more lossy than others

 

 

The same can happen with sounds, you want to stream good audio quality retaining as much sound detail as possible .. but at the same time you want it to compress as much as possible

 

Some formats are better than others

 

XWMA encoding is really good at compressing sound files, with very little loss of sound detail

 

Really Zoom in to the detail of a sound track and you will see all the audio detail that you would wish to preserve after any compression is applied ..

 

 

 

Any form of lossy compression gets worse the more you save it too.

 

Load up a jpg with 80% compression ratio

 

Save it again with the same lossy compression ratio .. And because of the compression method, some of the detail is lost

 

Someone else does the same to the same file = More detail is lost

 

Eventually you would have a picture that looks a mess.

 

Or a sound file that sounds awful.

 

 

Edit :

 

See also Audio File Formats table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_file_format

and Audio Compression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_compression#Audio

or Data Compression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_compression

 

  Quote

Compression is useful because it helps reduce resource usage, such as data storage space or transmission capacity. Because compressed data must be decompressed to use, this extra processing imposes computational or other costs through decompression; this situation is far from being a free lunch. Data compression is subject to a space–time complexity trade-off.

 

 

Microsoft seem to be hiding information about the xwma format these days, I had some old links to more details in that post on Emmas Site ( linked in my previous post ) .. But those links in that post are dead now, the new moved link on Microsoft site does not include all the old detail they used to give.

 

Edit : I think MS have renamed xwma to ADPCM compression encoding since https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee415711(v=vs.85).aspx

Edited June 4, 2015 by alt3rn1ty

[oqhansoloqo]

  On 5/31/2015 at 2:36 AM, oqhansoloqo said:

Interesting - so without your mod the USKP .ini edit (even yours, which is 2x larger than the USKP edit) may actually be too low?  This information should be brought up to them (the USKP team) - maybe they can offer some info about it.

 

EDIT: I just sent Arthmoor a message asking for some info about the .ini edit.

 I forgot to get back with you guys.  Arthmoor basically said to me that the Unofficial Patch team has not gotten any reports from anyone regarding issues arising from lowering the uiMaxAudioCacheSize value to what it currently is in the USKP ini.  Also, he is fairly certain that uiMaxAudioCacheSize isn't used by the music - a different system handles that.

 

Also, in addition to this, he stated that issues with spoken dialogue in the game getting cut off on some people's setups is an engine issue and he is not aware of a fix for it, beyond seeing if reloading the game does the trick.

[alt3rn1ty]

Yep I asked about it 5 days ago too, see conversation and posts after this one with a bit of testing https://www.afkmods.com/index.php?/topic/3132-skyrim-useful-ini-settings/page-2&do=findComment&comment=155525

Read on up to post #36

I think he is right that it only applies to sound fx and not music.

 

Apparently its a certain fix for stuck sounds ( though I cant corroborate because I never have the problem, so my recommendation is purely on what I have seen of other peoples recommendations, and at what point lowering the setting fixed it, as far as I have seen publicly noted it did not need to be any lower than 8192, though whoever gave Arthmoor the figure of 4096 may have still experienced the problem .. No idea where the information came from in the first place )

 

And lastly from what I can tell it has no discernible effect on increasing HD activity, so really 8192 / 4096 ... whatever works for those who have the problem use that figure. 

 

 

I have also edited the main description again, one day I will be happy with it :D

I have opted for minimal information.

Any more questions : People have many references in this topic to read up on already.

 

Edit : PS We are still talking about the same setting I think, you said "uiMaxAudioCacheSize" .. I am talking about uMaxSizeForCachedSound= which is the setting that USKP uses aswell as my description recommends .. and the reason you asked Arthmoor reference the same setting, I think ?.

Edited June 5, 2015 by alt3rn1ty

[DoubleYou]

It would make sense that it would not affect music and only sound effects. On another note, I noticed that the audio cache settings also appear in Fallout New Vegas with the comment

 

  Quote

; cache sizes in kilobytes

immediately above them.

 

Below is the relevant section of FalloutPrefs.ini Ultra preset:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Audio]
fASFadeInTime=2.0
fASFadeOutTime=10.0
fRegionLoopFadeInTime=5.0
fRegionLoopFadeOutTime=5.0
fAudioDebugDelay=0.0
bEnableAudio=1
bEnableAudioCache=1
bMultiThreadAudio=0
bEnableEnviroEffectsOnPC=0
; cache sizes in kilobytes
iAudioCacheSize=2048
iMaxSizeForCachedSound=256
bUseAudioDebugInformation=1
fAudioDebugDelay=0.0000
fDefaultMasterVolume=1.0000
fDefaultFootVolume=0.5000
fDefaultMusicVolume=0.6000
fDefaultRadioVolume=0.5000
fDefaultEffectsVolume=1.0000
fDefaultVoiceVolume=0.6000
iMaxImpactSoundCount=32
fMaxFootstepDistance=1100.0000
fPlayerFootVolume=0.6500
iCollisionSoundTimeDelta=150
iRadioUpdateInterval=250
fDialogMinDistance=600.00
fDialogMaxDistance=2000.00
fMainMenuMusicVolume=0.6
fDBVoiceAttenuationIn2D=2.0
fCollisionSoundHeavyThreshold=60.0
fDialogueFadeDecibels=6.0
fDialogueFadeSecondsIn=2.0
fDialogueFadeSecondsOut=1.0
fDialogueHeadPitchExaggeration=2.0
fDialogueHeadRollExaggeration=2.0
fDialogueHeadYawExaggeration=2.0
fHardLandingDamageThreshold=500.0
fWoodMediumMassMin=7.0
fWoodLargeMassMin=15.0
fStoneMediumMassMin=5.0
fStoneLargeMassMin=30.0
fEarthMediumMassMin=5.0
fEarthLargeMassMin=30.0
fSkinMediumMassMin=5.0
fSkinLargeMassMin=30.0
fMetalMediumMassMin=8.0
fMetalLargeMassMin=25.0
fRadioDialogMute=0.50
fFilterDistortionGain=-7.5
fFilterPEQGain=-15.0
fFilterdBAttenuation=11.5
bEnableTextToSpeech=0
fTextToSpeechVolume=0.35
fDialogReverbAttenuation=0.15

 

 

 

If this is in kilobytes in Fallout New Vegas, it likely is in kilobytes in Skyrim. Also note that Fallout New Vegas has our iMaxSizeForCachedSound set at 256, so it probably can be quite low and not be problematic.

 

But then that is Fallout New Vegas and not Skyrim, so things may be different. What if the Skyrim settings are in bytes??? Then those defaults would be equivalent!

[alt3rn1ty]

Excellent find DoubleYou, just had a look at falloutPrefs.ini and concur

 

Being pretty much the same game engine and very similar bunches of settings it would make sense that similar settings would have the same values ..

 

So 8192 kilobytes would equal 8mb, 4096kb = 4mb

 

The default 262144 kilobytes 262mb

 

That sounds about right to me for handling the games sounds

Edited June 5, 2015 by alt3rn1ty

[oqhansoloqo]

  On 6/5/2015 at 5:39 PM, alt3rn1ty said:

 

Edit : PS We are still talking about the same setting I think, you said "uiMaxAudioCacheSize" .. I am talking about uMaxSizeForCachedSound= which is the setting that USKP uses aswell as my description recommends .. and the reason you asked Arthmoor reference the same setting, I think ?.

Crap - you're right.  I got confused.  Once DoubleYou mentioned "uiMaxAudioCacheSize", I kept repeating that.  I mentioned that to Arthmoor too, but what I meant to say was "uMaxSizeForCachedSound" (as that's also what's in the USKP ini).  Hopefully that's the one that Arthmoor was thinking about when he responded...  Sorry about the confusion.

[alt3rn1ty]

Version 3.1 

 

With headphones on loud, I could just pick up a very slight noise in the silent file .. 

Redid the silent file with a newer version of Audacity, to eliminate the noise, and 

re-replaced all the music files with the new one. It wasn't anything you would 

ordinarily notice, but it bugged me anyway - Fixed :) 

[Shadriss]

Still installed, still loving this. Losing the soundtrack made me much more aware of other sounds, and that's actually made the game even better.

[alt3rn1ty]

  On 10/3/2015 at 11:46 PM, Shadriss said:

Still installed, still loving this. Losing the soundtrack made me much more aware of other sounds, and that's actually made the game even better.

[alt3rn1ty]

This mod is also now available for Skyrim SE

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/303/?