Overspeed Warning sound driving me crazy: How do I locate the wav file?

[martinlest2 58]

I have an over speed warning that sounds in a Tupolev 154B I am flying (the a/c is from the zip file Tu-154b2.zip, not from Project Tupolev, though I have that latter installed too. Cannot locate the origin of Tu-154b2.zip now - may still be on avsimrus.com). It is SO loud and insistent (I know in the real world it is supposed to be, but I don't want it blasting out at me like this on my PC) I almost jump from my chair - and it goes on and on. (The aircraft is not too good at maintaining speed with the autopilot and Autothrottle on and every 20 minutes or so it goes overspeed (the neighbours must know this too): it corrects itself and returns to the AT setting after a minute or so, but by that time my nerves are a bit frayed! I also know that in the real world Tu-154s do not use an Autothrottle until on approach - but this is not the Project Tupolev 154B or its panel and the A/T should be holding the a/c to a constant speed - some glitch somewhere, but no matter). I am going crazy trying to locate the sound file so that I can edit its volume down: I have played these, and it is none of them: 1. Every wav file in the FS9/Sound root folder2. Every wav file in the FS9/Aircraft/Tu154/sound folder (and all files listed in the sound.cfg there)3. Every wav file in all the FS9/Gauges subfolders for Tu-154 aircraft I also made a search of my whole FS9 folder for the files *warn*.wav, *alarm*.wav, *alert*.wav, *over*.wav .. none of the files that come up is the file in question either! Where could this sound be playing from? The sound is the same sound as when I disconnect the autothrottle, only it doesn't stop of course, and very similar to the default file MIDDMK.WAV (in the main sound folder) - only an octave lower and the rapid beeping is at a constant interval, not rhythmic as is that file. Does anyone recognise what this file could be? I don't really see how the a/c is using this wav file anyway, if it is not in the sound.cfg or any of the FS9?Gauges subfolders.. Thanks! Martin

[martinlest2 58]

This, I can see now, is not an overspeed alert, it sounds whenever there is any a/c problem - low fuel for instance. It's impossible to stop: even when I pause the flight and minimise the FS9 window to the taskbar, the infernal beeping keeps going.

[HoratioWondersocks 4]

Your not talking about a morse identifier type sound IE vor dme etc etc

[martinlest2 58]

No, it's a general 'all purpose' warning, I can see that now for sure. It came on for overspeed and again when fuel was low. It's making the a/c a pain to fly it's so loud and intrusive. I can't see any way to stop it from within FS9... M.

[martinlest2 58]

As I said in the original post, I'm not too worried about how loud the sound may or may not be in real life: it sort of threatens rather than saves lives in my living room and I really don't want the sound this stupidly loud compared to all the other sounds coming from FS at that time .. :-) I did, as I say, try all the Tu154 gauge sounds before (in the Tu154 subfolder), but I guess I am going to have to look further - not sure why the a/c would be using a sound in a subfolder for B747 for example though .. (there are no wav files in the FS9/Gauges root folder). M.

[Jim Robinson 122]

The sound could be compiled into a .gau gauge file, the Grabowski ERJ panel had an altitude alerter that'd give you a heart attack, I decompiled the gauge with reshack, changed the volume of the .wav file, and put it back into the gauge. It worked great. Jim

[martinlest2 58]

.. OK, searched for *.wav in the Gauges folder and played them all - it's not there (there aren't so many in the end). Next thought - the sound must be 'hard-wired' into a .gau file rather than exist as a wav file. Sure enough, with the help of one or two tools like Gauge Explorer I found 154_B2S.gau which has a sound element. I disabled that with a // in the panel.cfg file - and no more complaints from the neighbours! I get the normal fast-clicking overspeed warning instead. Much, much better. The panel has visual warnings for low fuel etc. too. The only (small in comparison) problem is that I have no idea what other sounds I lose by disabling this gauge file - I have tried opening it in FS Panel Studio but can see only bitmaps - I am not sure how to find which sounds this gauge creates. But no matter, anything's better than the cacophony I had to put up with before! So, I can report 'patched' rather than 'solved' I suppose.. Martin Jim, I posted my last reply before I saw yours! You were right (and I should have come to this conclusion a bit earlier). I have never used Resource Hacker for FS9, only for Windows problems/tweaks. Is it easy to use for stuff like this? - or maybe FS Panel Studio can do it? Does anybody know how, if so? As it was not freeware I'd be better off using that if I can! Thanks for the reply, Martin

[Jim Robinson 122]

It was drop dead simple to do with reshack as I recall. I don't remember the exact procedure but somewhere there's an option in Reshack's menu to extract rescources or something like that. You can just dump everything into a folder and find the sound you need to fix. After reducing the volume you need to get it back into the gauge somehow, I think there's an option to update rescource, but you may have to find the specific rescource in the string table, I can't remember. That could be a daunting task if it is a very large gauge with lots of sounds and .bmps to sort through. There is a search function though, so maybe you could at least narrow it down to .wav files or something. I'd certainly give FSPanel Studio a try if you've got it, I don't have it, but if you can extract .bmps, edit, and put them back in, it could just as easily do the same for sound files I believe. I'll have a look and see if I can remember how I did that... Jim

[HoratioWondersocks 4]

Martin. I am glad you have sort of solved your problem. I too have had issues in the past with "heart attack volume " GPWS wav files. I know in reality these warnings have to loud ,but not much point (in sim)if by being SO loud that you nearly die of heart failure each time one is triggered . "PULL UP!!!!!"See what I mean ,far to loud not much point avoiding the ground ,if you suffer cardiac arrest instead.Andy

[Jim Robinson 122]

I had a quick play with reshack, first make a backup copy of your gauge, then what you need to do is drag the gauge into reshack and find the sound in the left pane, expand "SOUND" and then go through the list expanding each rescource folder and then selecting the "1033" sub-thingy and use the "Play WAVE" button to preview the sound. When you find it, right click and choose "Save [sOUND : XXXX : 1033]", choose a folder to extract the .wav to and type a filename, it doesn't matter what you name it. Then edit the sound with a .wav editor to reduce the volume or replace it entirely with a few licks from Jimi Hendrix's version of "Star Spangled Banner" if you so desire, it doesn't matter. Now go back to reshack and this time right click and chose "Replace Rescource", on the dialog that pops up, locate the modified .wav with the "open file with new rescource" button and fill in the blanks below using the "Rescource Name:" of the offending sound. (Here I just grabbed the first one in the list for the example) That's about it, "Save" from the File menu and you should be done. Jim

[martinlest2 58]

Thanks Jim - will copy that and try it out later, though in this instance I am quite happy just to disable the gauge file - I don't seem to lose anything else other than this horrible beeping noise. Martin

[Jim Robinson 122]

That's probably what I'd do too, Martin :) Jim