VA sound volume low

[CJH]

I use VA along with CrewChief4 in RFactor 2 in VR. I have several voice commands that talk back to me (like "what time is it?" so I can find out it's 2 a.m. and I should have been in bed hours ago). The volume settings in VA are set to full. When I just have VA running, the volume is fine. But when running in-game, it seems like the VA sound gets relegated to some far off speaker somewhere. Often I simply cannot understand the response from VA. Do sound channels from different apps get prioritized? Is there a way to sort of bring VA to the forefront? Is this just the way sound from different apps works or is it a sound driver issue? Tough as it will be, educate me on sound and let me know if there's anything I can do?

[Pfeil]

Does the audio output from VoiceAttack actually get quieter when you launch that game (even with no ingame engine sounds, etc...)? Or is it that the game sounds are so loud, VoiceAttack sounds quiet by comparison?

Make sure the "Audio Output Type" option on the "Audio" tab of the VoiceAttack options window is set to "Integrated Components", and that the volume in the Windows volume mixer is set to match your overall volume (I.E. the gray line).

[CJH]

After more experimentation, I found that the sound from VA drops drastically as soon as I start driving. Even when I turn down engine and other noises, it's barely audible. When I'm in the garage doing setups, however, it's fine. I don't think it's a VA thing at this point; I believe it's related to RF2 itself

[Pfeil]

Have you checked whether the volume in the volume mixer changes when this happens?


Are you using surround-sound?

It shouldn't apply to this (or cause the effect you're experiencing), but just in case, hold the Ctrl key on your keyboard and click the wrench icon on VoiceAttack's main window, then on the "Communications" tab choose the "Do nothing" option and click "OK"

[CJH]

After spending more time with this, I have concluded that it's not just VA sound that is dropping. It's all sounds generated by windows text to speech. For example, in CrewChief4, if it does not have a sound file for a name it will use text to speech to generate the sound. When it does, the volume of the text to speech is extremely low.

[Pfeil]

Do you have the "Audio Output Type" option on the "Audio" tab of the VoiceAttack options window set to "Integrated Components"?


Have you checked whether this issue occurs with non-Microsoft text-to-speech engines (E.G. from Ivona; Not intended as an endorsement, other brands also available)