Updated Retropie - No Menu Sounds

GreenHawk84

Odd.. I dont have a "themes" folder. All I see within EmulationStation are "downloaded_images" and "gamelists."

ferdnand

Start your system with kodi, when you power your Pi 3, this has helped me with the same problem you are talking about... when I'm in Kodi and want to play games, I just say exit out of kodi.... don't know how but it works...

edmaul69

@BuZz i actually liked it but i switched it to something even more annoying, the super mario bros. coin sound. :)

GreenHawk84

@edmaul69, where did you go to find it? I cannot see any folder called "themes" in my ES folder via Windows Network. I have a sound ready to use but I don't know where to place it when exploring files in Retropie.

Concat

@GreenHawk84
I believe you need root permission, and the folder might be hidden as well.

Enable root login, set the root password, log in via root in SSH, change the settings to show hidden folders. I can't remember exactly, but this should point you in the right direction.

BuZz

if customising the theme, it should be copied from /etc/emulationstation/themes to /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/themes/ as I mentioned earlier. Otherwise your changes will get overwritten when updating the theme (if you dont care, then feel free - it could also stop updating from working in the future also though)

A Former User

Where is the option to turn menu sounds back on again?

edmaul69

@BuZz said in Updated Retropie - No Menu Sounds:

if customising the theme, it should be copied from /etc/emulationstation/themes to /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/themes/ as I mentioned earlier. Otherwise your changes will get overwritten when updating the theme (if you dont care, then feel free - it could also stop updating from working in the future also though)

i put a theme here based on this suggestion and i cant get it to show up in emulationstation. Works if i put it in /etc/emulationstationlthemes/ though on 4.0 beta 2. I would like to do it this way...

skrapps914

i liked the sounds, weird that you chose to remove them, since there's an option in menu to disable them if you dont like them

Concat

@KiloPIE said in Updated Retropie - No Menu Sounds:

Where is the option to turn menu sounds back on again?

Read my comment earlier in the thread:

@Concat said in Updated Retropie - No Menu Sounds:

@mediamogul

It doesn't bother me one way or another if sounds are enabled or disabled by default, but I am curious as to the reason for the change. Was it by chance a performance/technical issue of some kind or simply a preference choice?

Just clarify - the sound wasn't disabled per se... The WAV file used was just changed to a blank one. That's my understanding. There's a topic in the Development subforum about the changes to Carbon.

Anyway, as Buzz said, you just need to swap the WAV file with one you want. Super simple.

BuZz

it's not weird - the theme designer made a choice - it's his design.

We may consider adding back a quieter / shorter navigation sound though, but please understand that things like this are subjective. Like with video smoothing. No matter what the default is, people will complain.

A Former User

@Concat It's not "super" simple though is it. Super simple, and logical, would have been to have an options to easily toggle it back on again

Concat

My comment about it being simple wasn't meant to be patronizing :/ I said it to encourage users who might be intimidated by the process to spend some time to set it up the way they want.

A Former User

@Concat No worries I didn't find it patronising. I know exactly what to do to get sounds back and it is fairly easy.

I just think It's absurd a system like retropie, of which It's core principles are to give people multiple options and ease of use, and patch by patch keeps getting more customizable, has had something like menu sounds removed with no option implemented to toggle them back on. Especially when there was an option to turn them off when they were on by default.

Also I don't see how this can be compared to the video smoothing change, which does have an easy to access option to toggle on/off...

BuZz

Where did you read those core principles ? or did you make them up ?

There is no such thing.

The designer decided he didn't want the sample. I already said we may look into re-adding another default sound (one less loud/annoying).

BuZz

in the meantime you can switch theme or customise it yourself.

Rookervik

Actually, the option in ES to reduce sound volume is applied system-wide. So turning the sound off resulted in reducing the volume of all of your games, too. So there wasn't actually any way to turn it off. Has that changed, recently?

There was a major discussion of sounds and an overwhelming number of people mentioned they couldn't stand the sound. So the sound was replaced by a silent wav file. You can overwrite it with what ever wav you want to use.

I've personally never had any issues with editing the files of the theme directly, even though the developers strongly condemn it. Use whatever method you want to gain write access to /etc/emulationstation/themes/es-theme-carbon-master/art/scroll.wav. (Please don't kill me if this isn't the exact name of the folder, as I don't actually insert themes into the retropie code.) And replace the scroll.wav with what ever WAV you want. The original sound file is still there if you want to use it. Delete "scroll.wav" and rename "scroll-old.wav" to "scroll.wav".

Please note: the sound was removed because of the limitations with the ES "sound" option that actually reduces system volume, and an overwhelming volume of complaints about the sound. "I love the sound" has not been something I've ever heard in my life. LOL.

If ES has been changed where the sound volume ONLY affects ES, then I can re-add the sound effect and let users manipulate the volume from inside ES. Can anyone verify this for me? Turn the volume of ES sounds completely down, then play a game. Try a couple systems. Let me know if those games play sound. If they do, we're in business :D

In the future, I could probably edit the theme to access a sound file from somewhere in the /home/pi/RetroPie folders so users could change the sound through samba.

BuZz

There is an option in ES to enable/disable sounds also. (under the volume)

Rookervik

I can verify that the "Enable Sounds" option does toggle the sound effect and retain the volume of the games. But there is no option to reduce it's volume. I wasn't aware of this. And since I made the theme, and took suggestions from many, many users, I thought the best option was to remove the sound and let the users know they could still use any sound they want.

Please see https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/2399/carbon-theme-suggestions/76 for the conversation relating to sound.

The original sound is still very much in the theme, just renamed. If you know a little about linux, you can rename it.

Otherwise, I see no reason the sound can't be re-added as default and let users disable sound completely.

Other changes need to be made, such as the RetroPie menu. So you're not alone.

Tho, the attitudes of some people make me wonder why I wanted to spruce the theme up at all? Perhaps I should have left it alone and not give people the option to change the colors of the theme, and streamline it for better performance. But I have heard you! And sound shall be done! :-)

I had no idea so many people liked the flipper sound. Honestly, I've had 100% bad comments on it for the last year. Hahaha.

Concat

@KiloPIE

I just think It's absurd a system like retropie, of which It's core principles are to give people multiple options and ease of use, and patch by patch keeps getting more customizable, has had something like menu sounds removed with no option implemented to toggle them back on. Especially when there was an option to turn them off when they were on by default.

Also I don't see how this can be compared to the video smoothing change, which does have an easy to access option to toggle on/off...

You should demand a refund!