Audio sounds worse since 1.7.53

[rumpff]

Description

I've found an issue with the game audio since version 1.7.53, it clearly sounds worse as versions before.

I'v also found that running version 1.7.52 with 96khz the game sounds normal, but with 48khz or 44.1khz the game also sounds worse.

Changing the sample rate seems to have no effect with version 1.7.53.

I've ran a spectral analysis on a recording and you can see a strange gap in the mid frequencies.

Steps to reproduce

1. In windows settings set output device sample rate to 96khz or higher
2. Launch BombSquad version 1.7.52
3. Listen
4. Repeat with version 1.7.53

Expected behavior

The mid frequencies should not be missing fromt the background music or sound effects.

Machine

Platform: Windows 11 (version 24H2 build 26100.7562)
BombSquad version: 1.7.53

Spectrals

version 1.7.52 - 24 bit 96khz:

version 1.7.53 - 24 bit 96khz:

Extra

My audio recordings where you can hear the difference:
1-7-52.wav 1-7-53.wav

[efroemling]

Thanks for the detailed report. I'm away from my test PC for the holidays but here's a few ideas if you'd like to try and figure out what changed between those two versions:

• I may have upgraded the OpenAL library between those versions. That library is responsible for audio playback. You could try replacing the openal dll file in the newer version with the one from the old to see if that makes a difference.
• Perhaps the ogg audio files got recreated with worse quality somehow. It could be worth comparing one or two files between versions or dropping old version ogg files into the new version to see if it makes a difference.

[Loup-Garou911XD]

the checksum is different for the ogg file so it definitely changed

[rumpff]

Listening to the music ogg files i can hear no difference, there is also no gap in the spectrals.
Checking the metadata of both versions there is no difference in bit rate, sample rate and they are exactly the same size. So I don't know what would've changed then.

Replacing the openAL dll makes the newer version sound better, but again only when my output in windows is 96khz or higher. It still sounds bad when my windows output is on 44.1khz

[efroemling]

I just noticed there's a new OpenALSoft version as of 4 days ago:
https://github.com/kcat/openal-soft (check the releases section).
Could you download that and drop the dll in and see if that makes any difference?
Or could you drop in the last few release versions or compare them to what 1.7.52/53 have so we know which specific version of OpenALSoft started sounding worse?

[rumpff]

with openal 1.25.0 (i grabbed router\win64 from the binary release) the audio sounds much better with 44.1khz as well. there isn't any audible difference between 44.1khz and 96khz too.

a strange thing i do notice is the menu select sound sounds a bit different from when using the dll from 1.7.52

you can see it in the waveform (top is dll from 1.7.52, bottom is dll from openal 1.25.0)

1-7-52dll.wav openal1-25-0.wav