There must be a better way to find sounds

[benjamin]

I suppose the big gap here for many people compared to ME is my VAST and detailed knowledge of what there is in Syrinscape and where might be a good place to look.

One of the things we have done (for our SuperSyrins) is things like the:
Elements Rain (a collection of all the rain elements in Syrinscape all in one place)
Elements Wind (the same for wind)
And the Music SoundSets that contain just different moods of music.
And Element Horror (a whole pallette of sounds for craft horror soundscapes)
Are people using these? Should we do more of these.

ALSO:

1. We are working on making searching better and better. Do people think the search functions in the Online Player as better than those in the Fantasy Player (because we will be porting those through soon) (and continuing to make those search functions better everywhere too) (based on the feedback here)
2. Maybe I should do some good demo videos of the steps I take to find and craft sounds together (perhaps a capture of me actually improvising at a live event?)

What do you all think?

[dorpond]

I am not aware of any of those things you mentioned. I’d love to see more videos on how to better use this tool.

[dorpond]

Regarding those elements, I was not aware of them, and now thinking about it, as an improv user, I think all sound can be broken down into the following categories, for tagging, organizing, grouping, and whatever else the devs or you can do moving forward, to make thing easier to find and manage:

• weather (rain, snow, wind, thunder, etc)
• ambience (anvil, bell, crickets, walking, )
• creatures (goblins, orcs, trolls, dragons, etc)
• vocal (“you shall die this day!”, “taste my fist!”)
• Narrative (all the module character talking stuff)
• music (combat, calm, suspenseful, sad, romantic, etc)

Those are just an example, but I could see myself searching and maybe even looking for soundsets moods, and even sample tags, organized in a similar fashion?

I will experiment and see if perhaps I make my own soundsets this way, if it will make things easier during session. In addition, I will search for for “elements” that you mention above.

One things for certain, is that we need to make this process as easy and as obvious as possible for new users, so maybe even having those tags in our face somehow, to make it obvious that everything is lumped into these categories for easy finding, might be another option?

Let me chew on this a while, experiment, and report back.

[Dulux_Oz]

You really need to take a look at the DOM:SoundLink Module

I’ve already done the work, all 6000+ Sounds and Moods, catalogued, searchable, and ready to go.

Of course, it is a Fantasy Grounds Module, so it only works with Fantasy Grounds, but as FG is arguable the best VTT out there…

[DrVesuvius]

I suppose the big gap here for many people compared to ME is my VAST and detailed knowledge of what there is in Syrinscape and where might be a good place to look.

@benjamin I think we might have an alternative to @HECook 's brains then.

(brings out spoon)

[HECook]

The simplest way that I’ve found to learning the sets is just to play with them a lot. I’ll have them running as I’m surfing the net and let them soak in, so when game time rolls around I have a better idea of what’s available and where.

So, soak your brains in sounds and also maple syrup. Helps a lot.

[DrVesuvius]

More seriously, I find it really interesting, @benjamin that you say you designed Syrinscape to support yourself as an improv GM, I don’t dispute it in the slightest and I really think you’ve hit the nail on the head with why that works for you but maybe not so well for us other mere mortals.

I’ve kind of built myself into that same position with the 3rd party soundscape playlists I’ve built up… I know what’s in them, so when my players take a ride on a modern subway, I know that (redacted) produced a suitable soundscape for it which I saved in my modern city playlist. And if there isn’t something suitable, I can fall back on the various music playlists I’ve created, again because I know what’s in them.

I think the Elements soundscape idea is a good step - I discovered them last week, along with things like the Classic Adventure community soundset - generic content that might not be perfectly tailored to the situation, but are more easily accessible.

I will say that I’ve found on-the-fly soundscape management an order of magnitude easier since the creator functionality was folded into the online player.

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, I think the difficulty is the huge range of content available, especially to Supersyrins, that makes tracking down the perfect elements appear so daunting. Which is kind of a good problem to have… but it’s still a bit of a problem.

Disclaimer because Internet: I’m still a fan - Syrinscape broke my long-held aversion to subscription services (though I’d still prefer a bought and owned app, just sayin’) and I’m continually impressed with what it does and how it’s improving. I just know that I’m still not making the best use of it. Please think of the above as not so much a whinge but more a shared meditation on how to improve that, whether through changes to the service or changes in how we as customers make use of it.

[dorpond]

Ok, so we all agree that Syrinscape is great for people who know the material very well, I think if we all put our heads together to make it just as easy for new users, it will be a huge win for everyone.

Thankfully we have a great team of people here to brainstorm with. We’ve got this!

[evildmguy]

I’m sorry for my erratic posts.

Going all the back to HECook’s first response to me, I have made campaigns for myself.

I also use the search feature.

Hmm. Okay, I don’t want this to be a really long explanation. Let me step back.

I just find the experience lacking. Or I don’t understand the search algorithm. My post was asking people for specific steps on how to find the sets needed. Here is an example of why I find it confusing.

I go to all soundsets and search on ‘elements’:

The first one in the result, RSAC Temple of Hram has this:

Already, I’m looking at the soundset where the title nor the choices don’t have the word element in them. Huh?

Neither does Cleric Spell (Kyra), nor Clockwork Entities. Elemental - Earth at least has the name in it. This is what I find confusing.

What it seems to come down to is having it memorized and I just don’t have the time to devote to do that. Or the ability with music. If that’s what it takes, which is fine, I will have to accept this will always be a struggle for me.

I’m disappointed because I see the potential in this. I could make the sound groupings (I don’t remember the term for the middle column and elements off the top of my head.) It seems to me that there need to be a way to find the base elements, or building blocks used, to be able to piece things together into groups.

I’m talking about these:

I would need search functionality on these, so I can pick and choose what I need for my own soundsets and then make sure I name them well.

Thanks for the replies!

[HECook]

I’m given to understand that the SoundSet Creator has a more detailed and tagged search that will give you much closer to what you’re looking for, and at some point in the near future, that same search will be put in the players as well.

If I recall correctly, the reason that a search for “element” would bring up seemingly unrelated soundsets and sounds is that they were initially categorized on the files used to make the sounds, which might not always match up with what they’re called in the sets. (Correct me if I’m way off-base with that @benjamin) That’s why the Creator search function is being brought over.

I know why Cleric Spells and Wizard Spells come up for “element” though - because each has a one-shot called “endure elements”.

For the current search function you sometimes have to get quite specific. If you want to bring up the four “elements” sets (fire, wind, horror, rain), you need to type the word "elements " Notice there’s a space after the S? Putting the space matches the formatting of how the “Elements - Whatever” are titled, so only those four sets show up.

[sonofconan]

@HECook @evildmguy Correct.

In the genre players, your search term will be compared against the name of all soundsets, moods, elements, and samples. The sample names are not visible anywhere in the genre players, and there’s no indication or grouping in the search results (soundset list) as to why a particular soundset is showing as a match.

In the online player, your search term will be compared against all of those things plus “tags”, and the search results will indicate why a soundset is being presented as a match. Results are also prioritised and ordered based on the type of match (soundset first, then mood, then element, then sample, then tag).

Tags are derived from individual words in the names of soundsets, moods, elements, etc.

We definitely want to improve the search capabilities of both the genre and online players, and bring them into alignment.

[evildmguy]

Sorry about the late reply. We missed a week and then had a remote player, so couldn’t use sound much.

I can only point back to my previous post about how search doesn’t work as I think it should. I do see that playing with the online player search at least puts those that match my search term (“element”) up top.

BUT

I still think there is too much memorization that needs to happen.

Searching for combat gives:

Searching for battle gives:

Searching for fight gives:

Searching for bar gives:

Searching for tavern gives:

Searching on inside gives:

Searching on outside gives:

Now, I’m getting too detailed here and I apologize. What I’m trying to do is explain my frustration. Maybe tags need to be better? Maybe moods?

Searching on City, I’m currently running in Waterdeep, and the Waterdeep soundset is nearly three quarters down.

Searching on “undead battle” does give me the one soundset that is called that, plus another.

But it doesn’t give me “Nightgaunt Battle”, “Zombie Battle”, “Wraith Battle”, “Wyrmwraith”, “Castle Ravenloft”, “Ghoul Battle”, and probably more. Further, this didn’t give me all of the Moods that have it.

So, again, into the details but this is what I mean by I have to memorize it. I have to know I can’t search on Undead because of all the things it doesn’t give me. Please remember, I’m winging it and trying to find it fairly quickly. I can search for specific undead I remember and maybe I can find something that will work for what I want or not. It’s a crap shoot and then I end up using some generic battle sound that probably doesn’t work as well as it could, given all that Syrinscape has.

The other thing is themes. Searching on haunted gives some decent results including Elements - Horror, which would probably work. But then it has “Disjunction Chamber”, “Trollskull Manor”, “Whispers in the Wind” and “Wraith Battle.” Hmm. Wraith battle.

Okay, I look at that (easier to show in the desktop app):

Here’s the other frustrating issue which reminds me of the potential of Syrinscape but not the tools to use it this way. I clicked on this to see if I could use it and the elements (Unsettling noises, Rat Scratches, Deep bass bump, Deepness, Weird Presence, Mad voices) and think well darn. I could make what I need from those elements. BUT. I have to remember where these were, go to custom, or make custom, start the sounds, find anything others I want, then add them to the custom set. That’s also part of the memorization that I don’t have time to do.

So, again, please understand. I LOVE Syrinscape. My games are much better with the sounds that this allows me to have in the background and my players have definitely mentioned sounds! I think my issue is that I have used it as a casual user for a long time and now I want to really dive into it, make my own things, and tailor it for me. Maybe that will take more time and I will have to accept that I can’t do it. I get it. I’m just trying to explain how I use it (improv) and what I would need to take it to that next level. If it can’t do that, again, I can accept it. I do think there are some thing it could do to help and that’s what I’m pushing for.

Thanks for reading!

[sonofconan]

@evildmguy Thanks for your detailed feedback. Improving search in both the genre and online players is definitely on our agenda. It might help if I explain a bit about how it currently works, so that you can perhaps choose search terms that are more likely to yield the results you want while we do the work to improve it further.

The title of every soundsets and every mood and element in each soundset are broken down into individual words and these are saved as tags.

The search function will look for soundsets, moods and elements that directly match your keywords and will indicate if the match came from the soundset, mood, element, or tag.

We group and prioritise soundset matches first, then mood matches, then element matches.

We also add a few generic tags. Here are some examples of non-titular tags:

• fantasy, sci-fi, boardgame (category);
• dungeons-and-dragons, general-fantasy, pathfinder (subcategory);
• official, community, private, custom, original (status);
• dh, bo, hbs, isos, eoa, dd, mod, bc, etc. (adventure pack prefix);

So, “undead” will only match a soundset, mood or element that includes “undead” in its title. It will not match a plethora of undead creatures.

I hope this helps. Rest assured, we are working on this. But I can’t promise when any specific changes will become available, or go into too much detail about what we have planned.

However, if you want to help us further, it would be great if you could elaborate on what you expected or hoped to see in the various scenarios you have described above. For example, are you expecting to see the currently playing soundset near the top of search results, even when it only has an element match and many other results have soundset and mood matches?

[evildmguy]

Thanks for the positive response! And thanks for the ask of feedback. I do admit, I haven’t played with this near enough to be able to respond in a timely manner. That is definitely on me.

Yes, I would like to know what is playing and have a way to go straight to it. This goes down to the element level. For example, I did a search on drums and started several different drum elements going. Five different elements later with several distractions, and I don’t know which is which anymore. I want to see the elements playing, turn the volume up on one, lower the others, etc, to know which is which.

I want to be able to play multiple moods. + click on anything I want to start stop? I’m already into custom territory, so I need a way to know what is playing. It doesn’t help me to save it if I don’t know where it came from. For example, recently in my session, the group fought some drow but they did it in town. I want to start a town soundset, say Brindol Town -> Busy Market Day or Bustling Port Town -> Market and then I want to overlay on top of it, DH Alley -> Ambushers or EOA City Gone Mad -> Meet the Mob. (And I would still be able to remove the people screaming at them because it doesn’t fit in this case.) What this is does is let me have my specific background sound needed (city of some type) with a fight overlaid onto it.

I guess that made me realize that the soundsets are awesome but specific. It comes back to memorizing the difference and knowing them all to be able to pick things on the fly. In other words, how is EOA City Gone Mad -> Meet the Mob different from EOK Old Korvosa -> Pilt’s Mob and different from BBH Haunting Part 2 -> Angry Mob? (There’s also a Cthuhlu mob that might work for fantasy as well?) What I’m looking for are more generic things for layering purposes. A background type noise and then combat noise?

Or maybe results like this, so it’s easy to pick one, see what elements it has, and then pick another? Again, maybe I’m looking for more generic?

This is already long, so why not make it longer?

Last time we played, we started at dawn with the group in Waterdeep (big fantasy city) in their rooms. So, Waterdeep -> Pleasant Sprint Day or Brindol Town -> Setting up for the Morning Trade. The one character talks about how he was just at a place and their ally was attacked and they should go back. They head to the estate in town. For this, I want a spooky or haunting theme? Something that says there might be danger just around the corner. A search of “spooky” has underground results, which don’t fit. DH Gralhund Villa -> Inside? EOA World’s Meat -> Daytime But Spooky. Wow, that’s it. I did have time to click through and find it. But what did I miss? SDG Death and Virtuosi -> Workshop or Carowyn Manor? Would they work as well? Wow. Lots of options but okay I pick something and keep going. They do end up fighting some bandits. I guess RASC Brigand’s Corridor -> Bandit Battle. Oooh, tone down that bass. No, GOS Sinister Secret 1 -> Bandits Battle without the music is better. After the fight, they go to a contact in the Mage’s Guild. Hmm. This does take a bit of searching. Library of Arcana -> The Stack and then Restricted Section are close. What I really want are a library type sounds, rustling paper and cloth, overlaid with an alchemy lab. With more time and searching, I think FOP Ranger’s Request -> Forest Laboratory is good with the bubbling sounds I want, including Steam Release, and then add a few more elements but now it’s custom. Now, how do I see all of the elements playing, pick the ones I want, put them into a Custom Item for Mage’s Guild and then keep going?

That wasn’t terrible for searching time and playing around. I think a generic set, as I showed above, with city sounds, add in fight. Then remove fight, back to city. Then remove all and have mage guild sounds.

For the UI, I want a complete overhaul. I want to be able to customize everything. I personally want to get rid of the SciFi sounds on my fantasy player and put in generic spell and combat sounds. In fact, I want a tabbed one shot area where I can customize and name each one shot tab so that I can create an arcane tab, a divine tab, a combat tab, a town tab, and put things into those tabs. So, instead of Cleric Spells being a soundset, I want that on an easy tab with those one shots to do at any time.

Hopefully this was more helpful than babbling. Thanks again for the positive response and reading!

[evildmguy]

There more I think about it, the more I really want this.

I want this area:

To be completely customizable so I don’t have SciFi sounds in my fantasy player.

OR

I want the big generic (fantasy) sounds on tabs in that area.

I’m talking cleric spells, wizard spells, fighter sounds, etc. All of the big one shots in one place.

Again, these:

onto their own tabs to be accessible with one (tab) click on the right.
Cleric spells | Wizard Spells | Weapons/Martial

The point being to have all of those in one click.

(Hopefully this would easily translate over to the SciFi player although I don’t know what to put on the tabs as default.)

[benjamin]

All good stuff.

Just checking:
You do know, if you CLEAR Modern Weapons from the Fantasy Player then all the Global OneShots that come with that SoundSet will disappear, that is, all those Sci-fi OneShots you wish weren’t showing won’t be showing any more.

And then in fact, then you can make your own special SoundSet in the Creator with Only Global OneShots and install only THAT SoundSet in the Fantasy Player (ie CLEAR Bugbear Battle Normal) and you’ll have your special customised Global OneShots done.

Check out this video for how to do that:

Sense makes?

[evildmguy]

Okay, thanks!

That mostly worked. Still looking to clear these:

Not Dramatic note but the rest. I got the others.

Working on customizing to have the spells.

Thanks!

[evildmguy]

Okay, the other customization worked. Thanks!

I would still prefer tabs, although I see that would require changes on the web interface since it’s a checkbox, but at least I have an option.

[shanethrapp]

It is startling to see that this thread is so old, and yet there are no noticeable improvements to the program in comparison.
Just adding my notes to the list.

Needs a filterable search bar by tags. There are a thousand duplicates for anything related to a search, and it makes the search function clunky af. A good example to use is here:
Incomptech Search

You need to have filterable by:
Genre
Mood Keywords
Sample Keywords
Remove Duplicates/Copies from Search
At the very least, And others that have been mentioned here. Your search engine is shite.

Need to be able to multi-delete objects out of a SoundSet and Mood.

I think it’d be smarter to have click-and-draggable Elements and Moods to build custom sheets of our own.

Also can we PLEASE get something so that we can see what all is playing. I had to completely shut everything down because when I hit stop there was still stuff playing from other music sections.

[Steve]

Thanks for the feedback. You’ve posted on a very old thread though, which is why there are no updates here.

To find out what’s happening search wise and to follow updates on its progress you should take a look HERE