Audio System
Introduction
The setup of the flight deck audio system is an
extremely important factor in achieving the
best possible 'reality feeling' on the flight deck.
It is not the full blast which makes the difference,
it is more important to have the right situational
sounds and a good loudness ratio. Together with the
tactile sound system the imagination of flying an
airplane gets perfect.
Configuration
The audio system consists of 5 sub-systems,
distributed on 4 PC's:
- Main system for the sounds from the FS9
- System announcements, e.g. aural warnings, and
mechanical sounds
- First officer announcements, e.g. V1, rotate,
transition altitude
- IVAO / IvAp voice communication (ATC sound)
- Mechanical sounds for the tactile sound system
For a description of the tactile sound system click 'here'.
Overview of the audio system, incl. the tactile sound
system. Headset jacks are installed the captain’s
and copilot’s side consoles. Individual speakers,
installed on the platform are used to monitor the
ATC.
.Click the icon to see the audio configuration full size.
Most of the sounds are event triggered, e.g. for
flaps transition, speedbrakes, gear transition and
some more. To manage that I have installed instances
of pmSounds on 3 of the client computers. Each
instance of pmSounds controls one specific group of
sounds. pmSounds is very flexible and allows to
enable / disable sounds just by 'clicking', as well
as by script on offset changes.
Snapshot of the pmSounds user interface.
Typically pmSounds runs minimized in
the
WINDOWS system tray .
Example for pmSounds soundlist.txt:
|
nsteeringsound,
5616, .3, 1, on nbrakesound, 6DC1, .0, 1, on |
- nsteeringsound (scrubbing effect) gets triggered with bit 3 of the offset 5616 on 1.
- nbrakesound gets triggered with bit 0 of the offset
6DC1 on 1.
Both offsets are not FS9 standard, but controlled by
TSR B737 System utility. For the full soundlist.txt
click 'here'.
Audio distributor for ATC (TeamSpeak) sound. The
audio signals are distributed
to the headsets of the captain site, FO, and to the
speakers on the platform.
In order to avoid interference on long audio lines
the ATC USB sound device has been
placed inside the electronic compartment. The output is
distributed to the headsets and the platform
speakers.
Further
Development
Recently FSPS has launched their 'Real Cockpit Sound
System' for FS9 and FSX. The description of the
utility sounds very promising. As soon as I have time
I will test the system. Stay tuned for the review.