Sound Scatterer Question

Hello and thanks for reading.

I am new to Fmod though I have read through most all of the manual at this point. A couple times.

I have a very simple situation I am trying to set up, however I am not getting the results I am expecting.

I am trying to use Sound Scatterer to play through my playlist (so far so good), with Intervals Between Sounds (hey there is a slider for that!).

It seems easy right? One sound plays, then it SHOULD wait for a time, based on the “Interval Between Sounds” slider. Then it should play the next sound. At least, this is how I understand it.

I cannot get it to wait/pause. -.-

If Sound 1 plays in the playlist, I want it to wait for 3 seconds, then trigger Sound #2, then wait for 3 seconds, then trigger Sound #3… (so on and so forth).

The Scatterer module simply goes through the playlist, triggering the next sound as soon as the previous is done playing. It’s as if the Interval Between Sounds slider does nothing at all…

I’m up a creek here with no paddles, no sandwiches and only enough juice in my cell phone to make this call… to you lovely folks on the Fmod forum, who can hopefully help! :smiley:

Thanks VERY much for your time and for reading/replying.

Best,
Liam

Are you using a Loop Region? If so, I believe it will just retrigger on each loop and ignore the interval setting.

Try using a Sustain Point instead. That appears to work correctly with the interval.

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The “Interval between sounds” property specifies the amount of time that passes between the start of one sound and the start of the next. This is because the intended purpose of scatterer sound modules is to support ambience where many small, discrete sounds are starting and ending independently.

If your sound files are of a consistent length, you should be able to achieve the effect you want simply by adding the length of the sounds to the value of the Interval between Sounds" property. If they’re of varying lengths… Well, there’s a number of possible ways to go about it, but without knowing the details of what you’re trying to achieve it’s hard to know what to recommend.

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Hallo Joseph,
i have exactly the problem you describe, my sounds are of “varying lengths”, like you’ve written.

I have several sound files of different lengths, that i want to “daisy chain”, ie when one finishes playing, a randomly picked one of the others should start playing, with a constant pause in between. (2s sample - 0.3s pause - 10s sample - 0.3s pause - 3s sample - 0.3s pause etc). also that means, of course, every sample should always finish playing ie not be cut off. also, never should be 2 samples playing at the same time.

You would help me tremendously if you could point me into the direction of how one would go about achieving that.
thank you! Micha

One way would be to use timeline logic: Lay your samples out along the timeline with gaps between them. At the far left end of the timeline, place a number of transition markers equal to the number of samples in the event, and assign a random trigger percentage to all but the lowest one; This serves to randomize which sample plays. (We sometimes call this a ‘logic node.’) Finally, place a transition marker that leads back to the logic node 0.3s after each sample’s end.

Alternatively, you could create a multi sound module that contains one event sound module for each sample your event needs to contain; The timeline of each of these event sound modules should contain the relevant sample followed by a 0.3s empty multi sound module.

Alternatively, you could bake the silence into the end of each of your samples.

Incidentally, comments aren’t the best place for follow-up questions, because we don’t necessarily receive notifications about them. It’s generally better to ask a new question, or to send an e-mail to support@fmod.org.

fantastic, thank you very much!