I have been using http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/39804/?tab=1&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Foblivion%2Fajax%2Fmoddescription%2F%3Fid%3D39804%26preview%3D&pUp=1 for some time and have decided to spend some time customizing it. The mod allows you to add sounds to the game by placing WAV files in the mods appropriate folders. (You can also remove unwanted sounds added by the mod).

I have no experience using midi or any type of sound creating/editing program, so I am looking for pre-existing open source sound files that might be used to add sounds to the game through the mod. In particular, I'd like to see tavern songs that might be appropriate in the Oblivion setting, but I would also be interested in anyone's suggestions for other types of sounds that might supplement the sounds that the mod ships with.

You are totally right. Sound of cyrodil has definitely many songs/audio noises out of place. Why did you go for it instead of Gecko?

Honestly, its because Gecko was not out when I put my load order together so it was not an option. Not sure if I want to uninstall/reinstall now as I have a good character going and want to limit changes to the load order to keep the save in pristine condition. Also, it looks like Gecko has a compatibility issue with All Natural. Also, for combat sounds, which seems to be the prime focus of Gecko, I use Symphony of Violence, which I like very much.

Also, some of the sounds added my Sounds of Cyrodiil, like the general crowd noise added to the market district are less out of place in my game, since my market district is pretty crowded with mod added NPCs.

I listened to the teaser video and Gecko looks well done, but it does not appear, at least from the documentation on the nexus page that gecko is as far reaching as Sounds of Cyrodiil. Sounds fo Cyrodiil has some nice touches, like the sounds of cold wind blowing that can be heard from inside the buildings in Bruma if you stand next to the windows, the sounds of water rushing near waterfalls, the sounds of tavern noise coming out from the door as you approach from the street. Does Gecko add these?

I do like much of Sounds of Cyrodiil and the unwanted sounds can be turned off, so I think I will stick with it for now, although I will keep Gecko in mind for the future.

But what I really want to know here is whether there are some good sound files available that I could add to my game using Sounds of Cyrodiil. Particularly tavern songs. Sounds of Cyrodiil comes with a few but not that many and it gets boring hearing the same old tavern song every time. You can also add other sounds, like your own creepy dungeon noises, birds singing or whatever you want, just by copying them into the sound folder for such sounds in the mod, but I have no idea where to find such types of sounds.

Mod comes with two separate plugins. GOSH.esp is compatible with All Natural, but GOSH Region Ambiance.esp is not.

I like this too, but you'll hear it playing always....regardless of whether there are people inside or not and that is a major immersion breaker for me. Same goes for houses, streets..... SoC badly needs an update and the only thing we can do is to wait for someone with good scripting skills to fix it...

Download http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/27425/? from Skyrim Nexus and use http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/8303/? to automatically extract and convert to .WAV format. Its only 5 songs, tavern music, and I think they fit nicely. You can hear one of the songs on https://soundcloud.com/freebird4481/true-medieval-tavern-music. You can convert other sound compilations also if you want. If you own Skyrim you could extract Skyrim - Sounds.bsa and get the music from there too.

To make songs "SoC-ready" set Skyrim Audio Converter like this:

Sampling Frequency - 44.1K

Audio File Bitrate - 256k

Channels - 1 (mono)

Output Codec - wav

GOSH does not add spatial (ie sound markers that can be traced to a specific location) sounds like Sounds of Cyrodiil does. It adds some ambient sound loops in towns that are always heard regardless of your location, and that's only subtle stuff like very distant pvssyr and noises from the townsfolk that you can barely make out. There are also room tones for a couple of interiors like cathedrals and castles. Nothing more than that though. Same principle with the region ambiance .esp, which does this via custom weathers rather than sound markers (hence incompatibility with All Natural)

I was thinking about making my own set of spatial ambient sounds the same way SoC does, but be much more discriminating about quality and making sure everything fits and makes sense in the world. That would probably take a while though.

I did notice that the tavern noise you can hear from the outside the door only plays during certain hours in the evening when the tavern should be crowded, so at least those sounds don't play 24/7. But you are right that it does not distinguish whether there are actually NPCs inside. I always just imagine that there is more of a crowd in the other room and the room I am in just happens to be a quiet back corner fo the place. The game is a representation of the world and the number of buildings we see and number of people we see in the streets for instance is only representational of how many people are actually there, since the population would actually be much larger if the books are to be believed. It took a mental adjustment because I at first, I had the same reaction you did, but now the background pvssyr in the taverns, both inside and out make the taverns feel more active and alive to me, even when there are few, if any actual NPCs about.

But the individual voices, yelling, burping, laughing, etc. -- I used the silent file to silence all of that (both from taverns and cities). The only tavern sounds I have are the background pvssyr adn an occassional dropped utensile.

Thanks! I will definately have to check this out.

I think such an update would be well received. One of the things I like about SoC is the locational specific looped sounds, like alchemy apparatus bubbling, noise outside the tavern door, wind whistling in mountain passes, as well as the bird sounds in the wilderness and all of the added ambiance to dungeons, the sound of water rushing near waterfalls. If you could make your ambient sounds more locational specific and be more discriminating about when they play and remove incompatibility with All Natural, I think that would be quite an improvement. Many people are turned off from SoC because it has too many unwanted sounds and not everyone has the patience to spend a couple of hours weeding them all out. You are right that it would be a lot of work to put such a mod together, but I think it would be an awesome mod if you did,

Now if you could remove the bug where the locational sounds stop playing after you pause the game to enter a menu (and won't start playing again until the cell reloads) you would be a God. That problem exists not only in SoC, but also in other mods that add locational sounds, like David Brasher's Dwemer Ruins (e.g., enter a dwemer ruin and hear all the familiar hum of the machines that gets louder as you approach that spinning gear contraption, open the chest next to it and all gets quiet while you are in the menu, close the chest and no more dwemer machine sounds until you reload the cell). I am not sure what causes it, but if anyone does a sound mod that solves that conundrum, that will be the mod I use.

That is not a bug. It is simply a result of Oblivion's very primitive audio functionality. The only really dedicated proper system it has for playback of ambient sounds is via the weather system which doesn't interrupt looped sounds in the UI, and that system doesn't work for interior cells.

That's what I figured. A limitation of the engine, like the so-called "stolen-item" bug in Morrowind that is not actually a bug at all, but a limitation of engine. Still, though, if some clever person could figure a way around it, they would be a god. Probably need a new engine for that though.

I recently read in SoC comment thread http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/39804/?on Nexus, that some SoC files are in stereo, and that it may causes (unspecified) problems with engine. Anyone know anything about that?