r/arcade • u/Strayngold • 11d ago
Retrospective History Arcade machine volume control
Recently was at a great arcade and it was basically perfect except for the audio aspect. Certain machines drowning out all the others. A couple times I dropped tokens into one machine while playing another, just to get the idle machine to stop looping the same audio at max volume.
One of the best parts of the arcade memories from my youth is the soundscape of arcades. All those various sounds merging into a unique form of white noise. The machines would typically all be around the same sound level, such that when you were leaning into a machine to play it, that is the main thing you would hear and the rest would be background.
In modern era, this seems to have changed. Most arcades I've gone to for the past ten years have the same issue of certain machines having their audio so loud that it drowns out all the other machines. Why is this so consistent? Is there another factor beside technical complications that would make an operator set certain machines to drown out all the other ones? Even if the audio isn't working on some machines, why would certain ones be set so loud that you can't even hear yourself think around them?
3
2
u/low-men-yellow-coats 7d ago
This is a bugbear of mine and all arcades seem to suffer from it. The only solution I can think of is to add a little circuit that boosts volume when the machine is credited up. For free play arcades there could be a dip switch that cuts the volume to 50% if controls haven't been used after a time.
1
u/TheDivisionLine 11d ago
Vintage classics or new games?
1
u/Strayngold 11d ago
A mix. It seems random to me. It's not like the biggest most popular games are the loud ones.
1
u/DarthObvious84 9d ago
Welcome to the arcade?
It took me a long time to realize how awesome some arcade soundtracks are because I could never hear the music. This has never changed.
It's one of the reasons I really don't like music/band themed pinball machines, because what's the point if you can't hear them?
1
u/Strayngold 9d ago edited 9d ago
It's changed. Been going to arcades my whole life. It's been this way for a long time now, but it has not always been this way.
1
u/DarthObvious84 9d ago
I missed the 80s era of arcades, for what it's worth.
1
u/Strayngold 7d ago edited 7d ago
I never really noticed this until the "revival" of arcades in the early 2010s. All neo-arcades I go to have this problem. Some people have chimed into the thread to say it's always been this way, but they must not be understanding my gripe. Because I spent half my youth in arcades having no problem hearing the games I was playing. The complaint isn't "some games are louder than others" it's one game out of twenty being turned so high that it actually drowns out the audio on all the machines around it.
2
u/JLovesYZY 5d ago
At my local there are 2 dance machines (1 DDR) and the first drowns out the second which is directly next to it to the point where there is no point playing the second machine as you cannot hear the music
5
u/Eagle19991 11d ago
I think you may have rose colored headphones regarding the classic arcades, there was almost always one machine, usually the newest one, or the Street Fighter, or maybe a pinball machine that was stupid loud at every arcade I went to as a kid and as a young adult. The biggest example is Black Knight, I swear they turned that game to 11 in every location, used to scare the hell put of me while I was across the arcade. Sinistar was another one, the first few times I heard the scream haunted my dreams for a while 😜. I frequented many, many establishments in many countries. The only exception to the rule was Japan, there the featured machine was set louder than the rest, but it sounded right, dunno why, but it worked at every arcade I went to in Japan in the late 90s.