To celebrate On Your Toes, I thought I’d see if shoes with walk sounds inspire love or hate among the Fashionista readership. It seems to be the newest craze sweeping through virtually every shoe designer. Bling, sounds, even animation overrides. Is it something you really want? Or just so much virtual noise pollution?
[poll=16]
I feel compelled to comment, as I basically entirely disagree, but still had to tone down thta vote because I love the spurs sound on my pair of cowboy boots (I can’t imagine mute spurs — can you ?). Apart from this kind of speciality, however, shoe sounds are just weird : SL sound is not directional, the sound is seldom in sync with the walk, and as to matching sounds with the ground type and room acoustics, you better forget that entirely. Plus they add to lag
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Basically, shoe sounds are acoustic bling : they can be right in exceptional conditions, but should be used very sparsely ; most of the time they just suck.
I can’t tell you how much I hate the noise.
I hate bling and I hate sounds on shoes. HATE. TACKY, TACKY, TACKY. I avoid it at all costs and shop elsewhere if I can.
I like the chance to make my own decisions.
Which means if i get shoes in two versions – bling and no bling – I can choose. Sound accessories and sexy walk should likewise come in the package but separately. Which is why i voted disagree
I agree with Laura. Zhao shoes, for example, gives you the choice of bling or no bling, and sounds or no sounds along with volume control of said sounds. Enkythings shoes comes with a hud for sound and volume control as well. Personally I like the choice and sometimes a soft click can be fun. One of the things I wish sl had that it doesn’t is something I used to see on MUSHs and MUCKs, which was essentially a kind of coded emote that would tell you birds were singing or that flowers were blooming or that there was a scent of incense in the air when you entered a particular area. We have means to play coded sounds such as fire crackles or snow crunches or heel clicks to increase the realism of our sl experience and frankly I like the ability to choose.
That annoying sound has to be the worst thing I have ever heard in SL. Almost worse then nails across a chalk board.
SL allows to limit sound to certain range from the source, and so if done proper i don’t see much problem with quiet click you get to hear when someone walks very close to you. It can enhance the immersion just like any other well used sound effect. But like the bling it’s just very easy to overdo it and then it goes straight into tacky area. Then again, same can be said about most things.
Unnecessary faux realism. In fact, when I think about it, I find noisy shoes in RL as annoying as noisy shoes in SL. lol
As a guy I probably shouldn’t say anything, but I generally find sounds obnoxious, that is the ones that are clipping like mad and give you hearing fatigue. I have heard two by now where sounds added a nice touch, but those sounds didn’t clip and they were subtle, not screamingly loud. I guess ‘subtle’ is the key here, as it is with many other things.
Just kill the clicky shoes. I was at a concert the other day,someone was wearing some clicky shoes and there was no way to turn the noise off. I was so bored with that audio pollution, I left. They should be forbidden.
Annoying. All I can hear is the coconuts in Python’s Holy Grail, except they don’t make me laugh. And bling, bah! If I can’t get rid of the sounds, the bling, and the superfluous sexy walk, I don’t buy there. Period.
I’d rather have a stiletto to the skull then listen to the clip clop.