Audi Quattro Audio Tweaks

This is an article on how to tweak the Audi Quattro Sport Pikes Peak engine sounds for the DiRT3 game. If you've played DiRT3 and have compared the sounds to the real cars you will know they leave alot to be desired in terms of accuracy. I have tweaked a few settings and files for the Audi Sport Quattro Pikes Peak to make it a little more realistic. I tend to use the Pikes Peak version of the Audi Quattro as it more resembles the evolution 2 car used in the late 1985 and 1986 seasons, which is the same period where the other Group B cars are from.

 

DISCLAIMER: The following methods involve altering game files which could potentially stop Dirt 3 from working or cause it to have issues working. Therefore I take no responsibilty if you try these methods and something goes wrong. ALWAYS BACKUP YOUR FILES before making any changes to them.

 

Compressor Surge:

You may have noticed the Audi Sport Quattro Pikes Peak in DiRT3 appears to have more of a blow of valve or dump valve sound when it really should have compressor surge, as it uses Antilag rather than a blow off valve to reduce turbo spool time. For me this just had to be changed and as it turns out it was a reasonably easy fix which made a world of difference.

The first thing to do is change the turbo bank sound file the car uses. This is done by browsing to your DiRT3 installation folder (C:\Program Files\Codemasters\dirt 3\ or C:\Program Files\Steam\Steamapps\common\dirt3\ for steam users), then to the Audio subfolder. In here is the carSetup.xml which defines how the sounds are set for each individual car. Open this file in a suitable editor (Notepad will do but there are better editors out there like Notepad++). You should see something like this:

 

 

The Car name = field is what we are watching so scroll down until you find the one that says Car name = "aqp" and change the "Turbo Bank Value" below it from "mec_aspturbo16" to "mec_aspturbo12". Also a bit further down past the <Offsets> section will be a <Turbo> section which has a field called Dump volume. Change Dump Volume from "-0.0" to "5.0"

This will change the blow off valve sound to the chatter sound of compressor surge like the original car had as well as make it a bit louder. 

 

Detonations:

The pops and bangs just simply are not loud enough compared to the original car so I changed the Exhaust sound file as well. I changed the Exhaust field from "mec_exhdeton06" to "mec_exhdeton01" and DetIndex field from "6" to "1". There is also the DetVol field if this is not loud enough for you.

You should end up with the settings looking something like this:

 

 

 

Save your carSetup.xml and try it out. This should be a more accurate representation of the original car. I will be doing more sound tweaks soon so keep an eye out for it.

 

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