Dissonnance with Unity NGO, hearing myself

[guillaumehf]

Hello, I'm running a simple NGO setup with Dissonance, and i can hear myself. (Unity 2022.3.26f1).
I run a host on a Debian server, and connect 1 client from a Quest 2.
When i speak, i hear my voice back with ~1s delay. This is not supposed to occur, i think.
I followed the NGO setup guide provided in the documentation.
What could possibly be the problem ?

[martindevans]

This sounds like feedback - the remote speakers play your voice, the remote mic records your voice and sends it back to you. To confirm this, try muting the host and speaking in the quest (or the other way around).

If it is feedback, I'd recommend a few steps to help reduce the problem:

• Acoustic Echo Cancellation. This is "proper" fix which is designed to solve this exact problem, however it isn't perfect.
• Background Sound Removal. Removes "unwanted" sounds (according to an ML model to decide what's unwanted). It will remove voice if is sufficiently quiet or distorted, as feedback often is.
• Audio Ducking reduces the amplitude of received voices when transmitting voice. This is very reliable and helps to reduce feedback (working well with the other two techniques).

[guillaumehf]

The point is there are no speakers and no mic on the host...

[martindevans]

Oh that's definitely not right! Normally in Dissonance it's almost impossible to hear yourself, because the system doesn't create an audio playback pipeline for yourself.

Can you reproduce this issue within the editor instead of the Quest? That will make it a lot easier to debug.

[guillaumehf]

The problem only occurs if i run the server as "host", if I run it as "server" things are working properly. Is there any internal audio loop on the server side if running as "host" ?

[martindevans]

In Dissonance a server can run in two modes:

• Dedicated Server: Just doing networking and has absolutely no audio handling. Does not send or receive audio, doesn't even count as a player in the session.
• Host: Does all the same things as a dedicated server, but also has a client as well. Sends and receives audio.

So if you're running as Host that means the remote end is sending and receiving audio. If you look in the DissonanceComms inspector on the client you should see the server listed as another player. It'll show (Speaking) in the list next to people when they speak, which should help narrow down where you're hearing the audio from.