Sound Editing/The Sidhe Sound Library

So well... There're lots of units in the library, many of them don't have sounds, or they have the same sounds cloned. Ergo, some sounds had to be made from scrach, others edited. So here're some insights into sound production for Civ3...

1. Civ3 has a really high gain applied to sounds... It looks like 200% or so boost (or something like +9 dB or more). Hence, everything will sound very loud. Sound files maximised to +0 dB (or clipped into oblivion) carry the risk of bursting the player's speakers (for the likes of explosions anyway). Not that it's high, but waves with nasty square waveforms at +0 dB sound very harsh, not to mention they're out of tune with Firaxis' stock sounds (which rarely go over -3 dB, more commonly -6). After some experimenting, appropriate caps are:

For background sounds ("default" event, idle sounds), something like -18, -22 dB;
For walking sounds, -9 or thereabouts;
For machine sounds, -6 or less (-9 is also OKish).

Explosions, death sounds, etc. are fine at about -3 dB, maybe with a peak or two going close to 0.

2. Doppler/volume shifts Civ3 applies will exaggerate delay effects (flanger, chorus, reverb). It even looks like Civ3 has some kind of ambient reverb effect built-in. Civ3's sound mixer will also exaggerate natural reverb, so if you've got very wet sounds, they will sound unnaturally hollow.

Now, why it's silly on behalf of whoever programmed the game to exaggerate volume like this... Amplitude in digital audio is limited by 1 bit of resolution assigned to each 6 dB of volume scale. For 16-bit, max. value is 2 to the power of 16, that's 65536 at 0 dB. Half that at -6 dB, 32768. 16384 at -12 dB. 8192 at -18 dB. You get the picture, don't you? With each 6-dB drop, there're less amplitude coordinates available. To human perception, that sounds "colder" and "duller" and "hollower", more unnatural. So an ambient waveform at -24 dB has only 4096 coordinates for amplitude (divided across negative/positive, so in reality it's only about 2048 effective).

Because of the game's huge loudness boost, there's detail loss as you have to scale waveforms down, and in 16-bit, that's quality loss (really you'd be using only 15-12 bits of resolution).

Anyway, here're some sounds made for some units. Some are original (like the Flying Castle ambient).

Only two for now, ambience and bomb sound... Lightning and fire sounds there're aplenty on the 'net...

This is original, generated with software synths.

This is a mix of some sound effects from Freesound.org (big fan and prop aircraft moving). Who knows how the real thing sounds, but it likely is way more impressive than this. The only big military hovercraft I've ever seen was a much larger transport, and it sounded like an airfield full of propellers. With echo. Audible within >20 km. or so (not kidding, it was an awful amount of noise).

These are the original sounds by Ares de Borg, edited, volume adjusted, and mixed (the fidget is a bit more interesting now).

Cute USSR-made fast tank, derived from the M1928 tank originally designed by John Walter Christie. Christie's tank was rejected by the US Army, but it was bought by the bolsheviks from the man himself and smuggled to the USSR as a tractor, with no guns mounted. Long story short, BT-7 is a descendant of Christie's tank and the "daddy" of T-34 (via BT-8, A-34 derivations).

Sounds are not original, the cannon sound is actually an M1A1 firing sound transposed.

The movement sound is real, the cannon sounds more like the Chieftain tank (but the sound is from a British MBT). These are off 11-KHz MP3 files, and it shows, but still, they sound quite decent.

Just don't use them for the Mi-24 or other Russian helicopters, that one has a heavier whistling engine/rotor sound, and the weapons sound different too.

Attack sound is a real US Gatling minigun fired off a chopper. Edited to fit the Strafe.flc animation.

Possibly the oldest unit made by Kinboat.

Torch attack sounds, yes.

Includes a very nice hover sound for the idle event. The hover & run sounds are real.

These are real, except for the attack sounds of course. Taken from the T-50 No. 2 first flight video from Souhoi website.

Quality isn't ideal, but it blends in the game. Harley-Davidson sounds, a tad too bassy for German WWII motorcycles, but hey, it works.

...which are a blend made from spare T-50 sound clips and an EF2000 airshow sound. Works surprisingly well.

These are real T-34 sounds from a Youtube video. The gun sound was recorded inside the tank, so it's mixed with a Chieftain cannon firing sound.

If that sounds like a big tractor diesel engine, that's because it is. The same 500-HP diesel engine was used on heavy tractors post-WWII. The simple genius of T-34 was that it had a diesel engine, unlike tanks from other countries. Now it might seem obvious that tanks use diesel engines (diesel fuel is less flammable), but back in WWII the USSR was the only country with powerful tank diesel engines. By comparison, Sherman tanks were called "Tommy cookers" by the German troops (Civ3 default tank unit looks like a Sherman). Even the much-feared Tiger tank used a 500-HP (later more) conventional Maybach engine. Which wasn't enough for the weight (>50 tons). The situation wasn't that simple anyway, later in the war Sherman tanks were upgraded with new shell storage that made them superior to T-34 tanks after a hit, ammo stores no longer exploded as easily. Also, the T-34 made an awful amount of noise when moving, the Shermans were "smooth car-like cruisers" by comparison.

The German Tiger was in many ways a reaction to the T-34 and KV-2/KV-1 tanks, which it was designed to outperform. It did outgun the T-34 and KV, but it just wasn't as efficiently designed as the T-34 or later IS tanks. Anyway, as usual with Soviet designs, the T-34 and IS tanks' Achilles heels were poor ergonomics and mechanic reliability (transmission failures) - Soviet tankers used to say that the German tanks were inferior, but had better build quality and could run greater distances without breaking down.

always a welcome addition, new sound files thanks for sharing. do you take requests?

Possibly, you say what's needed and most likely it can be made or found...

how about first and second gen biplane fighters? or more specifically, WW1 era aircraft?

Do you have any videos or movie names?

And yes, there're some biplane sounds Can you link the Civ3 units?

here's one flick off the top of my head.

wyrm's WW1 aircraft. i can get a link if needed...