Make rocket engines Saturn V loud?

[Sax Man Aeronautics]

Since I am using Nova punch's saturn-v like rocket, I want to add some more realism to it, like, make the engines WAY louder, as loud as the Saturn V. Is this possible to change the loudness of the engine sound, or can I not?

[DerekL1963]

Try the volume control on your computer.

[KvickFlygarn87]

You'll blow your speakers out.

[Hannu]

You can not make sound louder by software. You must buy high power amplifier and speaker system which can produce more sound pressure. Cheap PA-equipment with subwoofer on the 1 kW power class should be enough and quite affordable (maybe cost about the same than computer which can play KSP).

Saturn V was one of most loud devices which man has ever build. Sound level was about 190 dB. It is absolutely impossible to produce such a extreme sound level with any existing electrical audio equipment. It would need a small powerplant to make that energy (tens of MW acoustic power and typical efficiency of speakers is (far) less that 10 %). And be happy that it is impossible, because such a noise would kill you immediately and make everyone deaf in range of kilometers, break windows from half city, produce structural damage to nearby buildings etc.

[Tiberion]

Well, I don't think he meant literally as loud.

Sounds are fairly easy to replace on any engine, the difficulty is mixing a new WAV file with the rocket sound you want, it has to be formatted to loop in the proper way.

You can find the default sounds in YourKSPFolder\GameData\Squad\Sounds

They're all in the format sound_something_something

From one of the NP engine configs you'll see the sound FX entries:

// --- Sound FX definition ---

sound_vent_medium = engage

sound_rocket_spurts = running

sound_vent_soft = deactivate

sound_explosion_low = flameout

You can see it calls 4 different sounds, the first one when the engine is "staged" and activated, the 2nd one loops while its throttled up, the 3rd when it runs out of fuel or is deactivated, and the 4th is the special "flameout" case which is mostly used for jet engines

If you listen to sound_rocket_spurts.wav in that folder, you'll hear what sort of format its expecting; Then you need to find a recording of the Saturn in a similar format, convert it to .wav and add it to the sounds folder (or put it in NovaPunch2/Sounds

Make sure you don't name it the same as one of the stock files. Something like sound_rocket_saturnV.wav

Then just edit whatever engine you're using, changing the 'running' line to this:

sound_rocket_saturnV = running

And that should do it.

Keep in mind, the loudness level is going to depend on how loud it was in the recording, as well as how high you have your ingame sound turned up. If you have a sound editor on your computer you could boost the levels in the file manually to make it louder than the other sounds, but that's going to require a bit more knowledge.

Edited September 15, 2013 by Tiberion

[Sax Man Aeronautics]

I don't see NovaPunch2/sounds in my NP folder though. However, I don't know where to find a Saturn V engine sound

Edited September 15, 2013 by Sax Man Aeronautics

[Hannu]

I suspect that high quality audio files from F1 do not exist but

has quite nice sounds if you have a subwoofer and about 100 W amplifier power. If you have just small computer speakers there is no reason to change sound files. They just can not produce low frequency sound at such pressure level that you can feel it.

[Tiberion]

I don't see NovaPunch2/sounds in my NP folder though. However, I don't know where to find a Saturn V engine sound

You'd just create the Sounds folder to keep them separate from the stock sounds.

I would also say that from about 1:50 to 1:60 in that video would make a very strong rocket sound for KSP.

edit: Try this out: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46506740/sound_rocket_shuttle.wav

make a Sounds folder inside GameData/NovaPunch2 and put that file in there, and then select an engine you want to edit (in Novapunch2/Parts/Engines) and edit its "running" line to be sound_rocket_shuttle

Don't have time to test it out here at the moment, let me know if it works.

Edit again: I lied, I tested it out. It doesn't seem to work, even if I put it in the Squad sound folder. Probably something I am forgetting about the sound format Will poke at it later.

Edited September 15, 2013 by Tiberion

[Sax Man Aeronautics]

Thanks for all you can do to help me anyways, TiberDyne.

However, was there something to resolve that problem?

Edited September 15, 2013 by Sax Man Aeronautics

[rodion]

If you try to amplify any digital sound past its peak volume it doesn't actually get any louder, it just distorts, like a balloon being inflated too much inside a box of a fixed size - the outsides press against the barrier and flatten out, same thing happens with the signal shape (it clips). You can't really scale up sounds on your computer in such a way.