FadeOut not working - PlaySoundResult.ActingVariation.Stop()

Hi Brian.
If I can activate a property called "Use Custom Fading" which has two floats "Fade In Time" and "Fade Out Time", I will assume that FadeIn is coupled with Playing the sound, and FadeOut is coupled with Stopping the sound. I have almost never wanted/needed to abruptly stop a sound without at least a small fade out (~0.125-0.250s) before stopping it, especially loops since they are the ones that most often need fading to sound good.
I also want to stop the sound to save resources, cause a sound at lowest volume is still going to take some memory/CPU, unless MasterAudio does some magic behind the scenes and stops the sound for me, which in that case the name "FadeOutNow()" doesn't really convey that that is happening.

What I mean is that other in audio middleware applications, if you have added settings/modulation for fading out, they fade out the sound for you on Stop. Eg. FMOD has a bool "allowFadeout" when you're stopping an event, which you can override if you don't want to allow the event to play out its FadeOut when you stop it. Else the event will fade out exactly as you have designed it, which I would see as expected behaviour.

So what I would like to have is a Stop() method which receives a float for fading out (or just takes the values from the SoundGroup's "FadeOutTime"-property), and optionally gives you the alternative to send in a method/action that is going to be executed when the sound has been stopped, eg:

// Default Stop function - takes the fade out time (if any) from the SoundGroup
void Stop(System.Action onStoppedAction = null)

// Overload where the user can force a fadeout
void Stop(float fadeOutTime, System.Action onStoppedAction = null)

Or use a nullable float if you want to make it into one function:

// Using nullable float to avoid having two functions
void Stop(float? fadeOutTime = null, System.Action onStoppedAction = null)
Hope this clarifies the reasoning behind my question.

Regards,

Pablo Sorribes Bernhard
Composer, Sound Designer & Programmer

contact@pablosorribes.com

pablosorribes.com

Hi Brian,
From a programmer's point of view, then yes, "Stop means Stop".
From a sound designer's point of view, calling "Stop" on an event which has been setup with a custom FadeOut should not mean "Stop your sound immediately and completely ignore the settings you've setup for your sound in the inspector". If so, the sound designer wouldn't have added any FadeOut-settings, or would have otherwise specified that the sound should be stopped abruptly for this specific instance / game event.

So it may not concern you what other middleware does, but the users of your product will most likely have a set of expected default behaviours from those other programs. And to completely ignore the FadeOut-option - which the user has specifically activated and setup for that sound - when calling Stop(), is in most cases not the expected behaviour. You even mentioned that yourself:


So it seems like several users are expecting a different behaviour, and the documentation isn't clear enough about that "PlaySoundResult.ActingVariation.Stop()" doesn't use any possible fades and just stops the sound abruptly. Maybe you could change the summary of the method to be something like this instead:

/// <summary>
/// This method allows you to stop the audio being played by this Variation.
/// <para>
/// This will stop the sound immediately without respecting any fades.
/// For fading out before stopping the sound: Set <see cref="MasterAudio.stopZeroVolumeGroups"/> to TRUE and
/// use <see cref="FadeOutNow"/> instead.
/// </para>
/// </summary>
/// <param name="stopEndDetection">Do not ever pass this in.</param>
/// <param name="skipLinked">Do not ever pass this in.</param>
public void Stop(bool stopEndDetection = false, bool skipLinked = false) {
---

I was obviously already calling Stop(). What I would want is to have an option to either respect the FadeOut-settings I added in the inspector, or to specify that I want to Stop the sound immediately instead.

---


Your suggestion works, but it's more of a workaround and really isn't an obvious way of achieving what we wanted to do. It's not obvious because the user has to know that they should go to the Advanced Settings, enter a submenu of settings, check one specific bool and then (most importantly) call "FadeOutNow()" to stop the sound using the fades that have been setup for the variation. And calling a function called "FadeOutNow" to stop the sound isn't in any way clean and readable code. 
Also, using your logic from before, normally: "FadeOutNow" doesn't mean "Stop". This workaround effectively makes "FadeOutNow" = "Stop", which isn't really in line with your logical standpoint from before.

Another issue with this workaround is that since this is a global setting, it removes the possibility of eg. fading out a SoundGroup, have it be quiet but still looping, and then after a while fade it in again. Now you'll have to trigger "Play()" in-between that and the sound will not continue playing and updating its position. 

Finally, I think I've made my request and improvement suggestion clear, but if you can't see the point here, then let's agree to disagree.

------

WORKAROUND:

If someone else runs across this problem, we made this function in our GameAudio-class (a static class which wraps some of the MasterAudio functionality for us, etc) which gives us the ability to stop a sound and use the fades (if there are any) before stopping it OR to override any fades and stop the sound immediately instead. It's a workaround, but it gives us the functionality that we want and makes the code cleaner and more readable for us.

This is how you would call it:

//Allow any Fades to play out before stopping the sound.
GameAudio.StopSound(playSoundResult);

//Override fade-settings and stop the sound immediately instead.
GameAudio.StopSound(playSoundResult, stopImmediate: true);


 
And here's the function:

public static void StopSound(PlaySoundResult soundResult, bool stopImmediate = false)
{
   if (soundResult == null) return;
   if (!soundResult.ActingVariation.IsPlaying) return;

   //Ignore any fading settings in the variation and stop immediately
   if (stopImmediate)
   {
       soundResult.ActingVariation.Stop();
       return;
   }


   //No fades setup in the variation, will stop the sound immediately
   if (!soundResult.ActingVariation.useFades)
   {
       soundResult.ActingVariation.Stop();
       return;
   }


   //Incorrect "Advanced Fading Settings" in the MasterAudio-prefab for
   //automatically stopping the sound when fully faded out.
   if (!MasterAudio.Instance.stopZeroVolumeGroups)
   {
       Debug.LogWarning($"Trying to fade out a SoundGroup on Stop, but the Advanced Fading settings aren't correctly setup. \n\n" +
           $"Go to 'MasterAudio-prefab > Advanced Settings > Fading Settings' and set the 'Sound Groups'-toggle to TRUE. \n\n" +
           $"Meanwhile, we'll do a hard-stop instead.");

       soundResult.ActingVariation.Stop();
       return;
   }

   //Use FadeOutNow if all requirements are met, since the "Advanced Fading Settings" in
   //the MasterAudio-prefab should take care of stopping the group when it reaches zero volume.
   soundResult.ActingVariation.FadeOutNow();
}
Hope that helps someone else down the road!

Regards,

Pablo Sorribes Bernhard
Composer, Sound Designer & Programmer
contact@pablosorribes.com
pablosorribes.com

Hi Brian!

Cool, thanks for the reply. Seems like very good additions to the API, I'm looking forward to using them. In what version are these changes present?

/Pablo