Sound only playing when ear directly faces source, regardless of VolumetricAudio being enabled/disabled

Bug Reports Studio Bugs
#1

Description

I have been working on a rocket simulation. I was creating the launch sound and parented it to the rocket body (with VA enabled), yet every time I play tested it in Studio, it would inexplicably and randomly choose between sounding full and hearing from all sides and being extremely quiet unless facing the center of the body (MeshPart in a Model). I also had the Reverb set to Plains and turned it to NoReverb but that didn’t seem to have an effect.

I then decided to move the Sound parent to an Attachment, only for it to be consistently the problematic thing, where it was almost inaudible from any angle except where my camera was rotated such that my left or right ear would be facing the Attachment. I turned on and off VA to the same resulting sound profile.

I left it for a day and came back earlier, to the same thing. I then parented it to Workspace, it sounded global (as it should). I parented it to the SpawnLocation in my game, and it sounded as I expected it to, I could face it head on and hear it well, from any angle and hear it well, and it was slightly focused on the ear that was facing that directly (as it should for VA). I turned off VA and it sounded the same. I moved the Attachment to a part in the Workspace, same result as the SpawnLocation. I moved the Part as a child of the rocket body, same (good) result. Moved the Attachment back to being a child of the rocket body, same result. Moved the Sound parent to the rocket body, and somehow the same result. I turned VA back on and it seemed to say as it should.

By randomly testing with turning off VA and changing the parent of the Sound which is created and parented during runtime, it doesn’t exist in Studio. I don’t know what I did or what might have changed, I only have the steps I took.

Where

Roblox Studio for PC. Local .rblx file.

When

I believe it’s been happening in the project for a few weeks, possibly a handful of months, don’t know an exact time. Yesterday it was happening around Nov 13 5:30pm EST, and today I tested around Nov 14 11:00am EST.

Reproduction

RocketSimulation.rbxl (115.3 KB)
In the “Client” ModuleScript under StarterPlayerScripts, on line 108 the Sound is created and the second argument of the function is where the Sound is parented.

As stated before, I don’t know how to accurately reproduce the issue or what conditions factor into it happening, it just happens.

Problem with sounds
#2

Hey TimeStandsStill; unfortunately Volumetric Emission was never implemented for MeshParts; only simpler shapes like Blocks, Balls, and Cylinders.

If you would like it to sound like audio is emitting from the entire surface of your mesh, you could create a bounding Ball, Block, or Cylinder part to wrap it, and reparent the sound there

#3

Thank you for the response!

My concern is more so over the inconsistency of sound playing in Studio (which happens to be from a MeshPart), rather than Volumetric Emission. When I tried parenting the sound to just an Attachment in the Workspace, it still exhibited the same behavior (whether VE was on or off). I would appreciate any clarification about what I have been experiencing or how to help address it.

Thank you!

#4

Are you able to capture a recording of the phenomenon? When a sound is emitted from a single point (such as an Attachment) it’s expected that this sounds very “narrow”; you’ll only hear it emitting from a single direction.

#5

Here is the video of the unexpected behavior

And this is the more expected behavior

To get the unexpected behavior, I repeated ran solo testing in Studio, closed and reopened Studio several times, opened another file then opened the demonstration file, then restarted my computer, solo tested again a few times, watched a video, let Studio sit, and then solo tested again. Before the recording of the expected behavior, I play-tested to make sure the demonstration file worked, and the first time it produced the unexpected behavior, and when I went to record it corrected itself.

Demonstration file here:
SoundDemonstration.rbxl (62.2 KB)

#6

Ah; thanks for the videos – yeah this sounds off; when you face the emitter head-on, the overall volume goes down to near 0. Normally, the overall volume would stay the same, and only the L/R panning would change as you rotate the listener.

when I went to record it corrected itself.

Out of curiosity, what audio device(s) are you using? Some headphones have a virtual surround-sound mode; if there’s a center channel that we’re unintentionally dropping that might explain this behavior

#7

Steelseries Arctis 7 Wireless.

Checking the configuration in the software, I am in 7.1 surround sound mode, it didn’t even cross my mind.

#8

Interesting! Does the issue go away if you switch to stereo?

#9

It seems to still persist after turning it off, turning off then on the headphones, and restarting my computer.

Audio from YouTube seems to sound different so I don’t believe it’s a software error.

#10

Bump! I’m having this problem as well, i’ve seen another post talking about it being a windows problem but I still don’t know how to solve it, perhaps it’ss outdated as the recent commentators have the same problem, any staff going to help? Seens to be a problem since 2019